One of Frida Kahlo\u2019s self-portraits is coming home. The Harry Ransom Center will display Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird starting Saturday. <\/p>\n
Acquired by the Harry Ransom Center in 1965, the portrait is one of 55 self-portraits Kahlo painted throughout her life. It has been displayed in galleries and museums around the world, most recently at the Bendigo Art Gallery in Australia.<\/p>\n
A window into Frida\u2019s mind<\/p>\n
Tracy Bonfitto, an art curator at the Harry Ransom Center, said Kahlo painted this self portrait in 1940 during one of the most productive periods in her career.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe had been painting for a number of years, but she had not been exhibited until 1938,\u201d Bonfitto said. \u201cShe was just kind of in her early years of seeing herself as a successful artist.\u201d<\/p>\n
As her career was taking off, Kahlo was struggling in her personal life. The year prior, she divorced her husband, fellow Mexican painter Diego Rivera.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis painting was painted during that one year window of time where she was divorced from Diego Rivera and really sort of simultaneously working hard to see if that relationship could continue, but also being pretty angry with him,\u201d Bonfitto said.<\/p>\n
At the end of that same year, her near decade-long love affair with Hungarian-born photographer Nickolas Muray came to an end. Kahlo gifted the portrait to Muray after she finished it, and re-married Rivera in December of 1940.<\/p>\n
The rest of Nickolas Muray’s collection<\/p>\n
The painting was acquired by the Ransom Center in the ’60s as part of a collection of works from Kahlo and other Mexican painters owned by Muray. The end of her affair with Muray in 1939 was not the end of her personal relationship with the photographer.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know from extensive letters in the archives of the Casa Azul and also the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian that they kept in contact, pretty frequent contact, letter writing back and forth,\u201d Bonfitto said.<\/p>\n
Muray was also a financial supporter of Kahlo\u2019s career right up to her death in 1954. The collection he assembled also features Still Life with Parrot and Fruit, painted by Kahlo in 1951, and the drawing Diego y Yo from 1930. Muray\u2019s collection featured other works from seminal Mexican artists from the 20th century, including Rufino Tamayo and Miguel Covarrubias.<\/p>\n
The self portrait is the only piece the Ransom Center will display from the collection, but there are plans to display the entire collection in 2027<\/a>. <\/p>\n