Frida Kahlo’s Love Letters Give Glimpse Into The Guarded Artist’s Private Life
*A good weekend read for all the Fridaphiles out there. What, or who was Frida’s famous “Tree of Hope?” VL
By Katherine Brooks, Huffington Post Latino Voices
“I don’t know how to write love letters,” Frida Kahlo wrote in 1946. “But I wanted to tell you that my whole being opened for you. Since I fell in love with you everything is transformed and is full of beauty… love is like an aroma, like a current, like rain.”
The renowned Mexican artist wasn’t pining for her then husband, Diego Rivera. The love letter was intended for Jose Bartoli, a Catalan artist and political refugee who moved to New York after escaping the horrors of the Spanish Civil War. She and Bartoli met there while Kahlo was recovering from spinal surgery — a procedure aimed at treating injuries she sustained in a tram accident when she was 18 years old. When Kahlo returned to Mexico, leaving Bartoli behind, the two embarked upon a secret, long distance romance, exchanging letters over a period of several years that touched on Kahlo’s paintings, health and relationship with Rivera.
Twenty five of these love letters, written between August of 1946 and November of 1949, are headed to auction on April 15 at Doyle New York. Including over 100 pages of correspondence, the letters were originally saved by Bartoli until his death in 1995, and were subsequently passed down in his family. Today, they are expected to fetch up to $120,000.
“Do not deny me other desires that form the whole of what I feel for you and that can only be called love.” -Frida Kahlo to Jose Bartoli
Despite living in separate cities and seeing each other only on rare occasions, the two artists continued a cross-country relationship for three years, exchanging sincere admissions of love, cloaked in deeply sensual and poetic writings. In one intimate letter, Kahlo confessed to Bartoli that her double self-portrait “Tree of Hope,” an image that depicts an outstretched Frida post-surgery next to a seated version of herself staring defiantly …
This article was originally published in Huffington Post Latino Voices.
[Photo courtesy of Hufington Post Latino Voices]