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\t\tFrida Kahlo, \u201cSelf-Portrait with Cropped Hair (Autorretrato con pelo cortado)\u201d (1940), oil on canvas (Digital Image \u00a9 2025 MoMA, N.Y.; \u00a9 2025 Banco de M\u00e9xico Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, D.F. \/ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York)<\/p>\n
Following the bold critical acclaim of her first solo exhibition in New York in 1938, Frida Kahlo set out for her first and only voyage to a war-threatened Europe. French Surrealist Andr\u00e9 Breton, a friend and collaborator, had invited her to sojourn at home with his wife and daughter in Paris for a few weeks while he launched preparations for Mexique, the French version of the exhibition. However, Breton had not secured a gallery for the show, nor had Kahlo\u2019s paintings\u2019 customs been sorted. Kahlo also caught an infection at Breton\u2019s home that required hospitalization, after which she made arrangements to check into a hotel. \u201cTo hell with everything concerning Breton and all this lousy place,\u201d she expressed in a letter to her then-lover, Hungarian-American photographer Nickolas Muray.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In a stroke of serendipity, Mary Reynolds, American specialist of bindings of Dada and Surrealist publications and partner of Marcel Duchamp, encouraged Kahlo to stay in her home in Paris following her hospital discharge. The book Frida Kahlo\u2019s Month in Paris: A Friendship with Mary Reynolds, a companion to an exhibition of the same name<\/a> at the Art Institute of Chicago, chronicles Kahlo\u2019s short encounter with the world of French Surrealists at Reynolds\u2019s home.<\/p>\n \t\tMan Ray, \u201cMary Reynolds\u201d (1930) (\u00a9 2025 Man Ray Trust \/ Artist Rights Society (ARS) New York \/ ADAGP Paris)\t\t\t<\/p>\n Astutely conceptualized as a \u201cSurrealist Drama in Five Acts,\u201d the book was collaboratively written by exhibition curators Caitlin Haskell, Tamar Kharatishvili, and Aliv\u00e9 Piliado Santana, who explain that \u201cKahlo\u2019s time at 14 rue Hall\u00e9 gives us a glimpse into the everyday life that is needed to sustain artists\u2019 work.\u201d While preparing for Mexique, which also included photographs by Manuel Alvarez Bravo and pre-Columbian art at Paris\u2019s Galerie Renou et Colle, Kahlo spent a month communing at Reynolds\u2019s home, a most marvelous meeting space for creatives, generously decorated with unusual materials, objects, and art.<\/p>\n Frida Kahlo\u2019s Month in Paris, though aiming to centralize the titular figures\u2019 friendship at the peak of European modern art, is ultimately more about Reynolds and her ingenious artistic book bindings than anything else. The publication includes images of a fascinating selection of art books that Duchamp and Reynolds bound for their closest friends in natural and synthetic materials such as leather, silk, vellum, and animal skins.\u00a0<\/p>\n Their interest in organic forms and textures can be seen in a copy of French writer Alfred Jarry\u2019s 1896 play Ubu Roi (\u201cKing Ubu\u201d), bound in tan goatskin with gold stamping. Another visual standout from the collection is the 1936 Les derniers jours (\u201cThe Last Days\u201d) by French poet Raymond Queneau, bound in black calfskin and agate marble with gold stamping by Reynolds.\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\tMary Reynolds and Marcel Duchamp\u2019s binding of Alfred Jarry\u2019s Ubu roi (King Ubu), bound in 1935 (image courtesy the Art Institute of Chicago, Mary Reynolds Collection, Ryerson and Burnham Libraries)<\/p>\n The book also introduces several people who were instrumental in Kahlo\u2019s career in Europe and entangled with Reynolds, including artists Constantin Br\u00e2ncu\u0219i and Man Ray<\/a>, art dealer Pierre Colle, and art collectors such as Peggy Guggenheim<\/a>. Through individuals, art books, letters, and photographs, it vividly encapsulates the vast intellectual, material, and creative sphere Kahlo engaged with in just a month, even as she rejected Breton\u2019s \u201cSurrealist\u201d label for her work.<\/p>\n The precise moment when and how Kahlo and Reynolds first met remains unknown, but the blossoming of their felicitous friendship demonstrates a profound connection between their lives and art, one that mirrors the emphasis on chance discoveries in Surrealism itself. Amid Kahlo\u2019s letters and paintings, a 1939 typed letter by Reynolds to the artist acts as a testament to the lasting impact of their brief friendship. \u201cThe house is still and doesn\u2019t know itself,\u201d she wrote. \u201cEvery single thing misses you tremendously.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/mary-reynolds-1200x1625.jpg\")
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