Think You Know Frida Kahlo? Think Again. Here Are the Mexican Painter’s Most Under-the-Radar Artworks—Ranked

We equate Frida Kahlo’s work with Frida Kahlo’s face. The
20th-century Mexican painter, who often documented her own features
when bedridden due to poor health, painted around 60
self-portraits—constituting more than a third of her total artistic
output. In the more than 60 years since her death, Kahlo’s likeness
has taken on a mythical quality, and images of her have flourished
everywhere: on make-up products, t-shirts, Vans sneakers,
socks, tote bags, Barbie dolls, paper dolls, and pillows.

The artist wasn’t a complete narcissist, though. She did paint
other people, from family to friends to patrons. We just don’t
generally see those images plastered on mugs and iPhone cases.
Perhaps the portraits Kahlo painted of people in her circle don’t
attract the same kind of attention because so much of the interest
in Kahlo’s art hinges on Kahlo herself—the way she dressed, the way
she lived. Several of the works in question also remain in private
hands, limiting their public exposure. Either way, they, too,
deserve a look.

To honor the fact that Frida Kahlo saw well beyond her own nose,
we’ve assembled five of her most under-the-radar portraits
(determined by how visible they’ve been to the public since they
were painted, and whether they’ve appeared in museum exhibitions).
They’re ranked below, in ascending order of obscurity.

5. Portrait of Leo
Eloesser (1931)

For decades, this portrait of one of Kahlo’s doctors and
confidantes, Leo Eloesser, was invisible in plain sight. It hung
high in the lobby of San Francisco General Hospital, but after
construction of a new building in 2017, the early oil-on-Masonite
work was reinstalled at eye level near the guard station.

The portrait belonged to Eloesser himself, a Spanish-speaking
doctor with socialist leanings who treated a 24-year-old Kahlo on
her first trip to the United States, in 1930. In the painting, he
stands near a model ship called “Los Tres Amigos”—a wink to the
budding friendship between the artist, Eloesser, and her husband,
muralist Diego Rivera. After meeting Eloesser in San Francisco,
Kahlo consulted him about her medical treatment for the rest of her
life. Portrait of Leo Eloesser has been included in a few
museum shows (mostly during the recent hiatus when the new San
Franciscan hospital was being built), but for the most part, the
doctor has kept a watchful painted eye over his former place of
employment since 1968.

4. Portrait of Natasha
Gelman (1943)

When Diego Rivera painted a portrait of socialite Natasha
Gelman, she was seductively slouched on a velvet chaise and clad in
a barely-there white dress that mirrored the calla lilies framing
her curves. But when Kahlo depicted her, she was bundled up in a
fur coat. The Czechoslovakian émigrée to Mexico is precisely done
up, with red lips, lined eyebrows, and coiffed curls (a European
mirror image of Kahlo’s usual look).

Natasha and her filmmaker husband, Jacques, starting building
their substantial Mexican art collection in 1941, but it was not
visible to the public for many years. When Natasha died in 1998,
the collection began touring the world—a selection including this
portrait is now on view at the North Carolina Museum of
Art.

3. Window Display on a
Detroit Street (1932) 

Not long after Kahlo completed this little-known painting during
her stint in Detroit, she created a far more famous painting,
Henry Ford Hospital (1932), which viscerally
illustrates the way she spent her 1932 Fourth of July:
suffering the physical and emotional agonies of a miscarriage that
left her hospitalized for 13 days. Kahlo had consulted with Dr.
Eloesser about whether or not her body could carry a child to term;
his answer is unknown, but she kept the pregnancy.

Just before her miscarriage, when she was still optimistically
pregnant, Kahlo painted this lesser-known still life that contained
a tiny portrait of George Washington, part of a patriotic window
display on an anonymous Detroit street. The back of the store is
bare, still being set up with a ladder and some cans of paint. In
the meantime, the stately first US president looks out at the
window shopper, his framed likeness decorated with a festive
garland that almost looks like it could be from the artist’s native
Mexico.

This work is in a private collection, and seldom exhibited.

2. Portrait of Marucha
Lavin (1942)

This portrait painted on a custom copper medallion depicts
Marucha Lavin, wife of engineer José Domingo Lavin, who also
commissioned Kahlo to paint a personal interpretation of Sigmund
Freud’s book, Moses and Monotheism (1939). The nearly
life-sized likeness is haloed by bright banana leaves. Lavin wears
a floral embroidered blouse that looks like it might belong in the
Kahlo’s own well-documented wardrobe.

The portrait has remained in the Lavin family, and has barely
been exhibited. It was first shown in a 1943 group show at the
Benjamin Franklin Library in Mexico City, and most recently at a
2014 Kahlo solo exhibition at Rome’s Scuderie del Quirinale (but
rarely seen in between).

1. Portrait of a Lady
in White (1929)

This early and unfinished Frida Kahlo portrait is so uncharted
that art historians are still debating whether this elegantly
white-gloved lady is an ex-lover of the artist, a friend of a
friend, or Kahlo’s former high school classmate, Elena Boder. The
blank mauve banner above the sitter’s head would have provided some
helpful details, had the painting been completed.

Kahlo gifted the canvas to her photographer friend, Lola Álvarez
Bravo. It then changed hands and ended up in a private collection
in Texas, before making its way to the collection of Dr. Helga
Prignitz-Poda—a Kahlo expert who loaned the work to Stanford
University. The artwork sold at Christie’s Latin American sale last
month for over $5.8 million (the second-highest price the
artist has ever reached at auction), but the buyer’s identity
hasn’t been publicized and it may be a while before this lady in
white is again posing for the public.

The post Think You Know Frida Kahlo? Think Again. Here Are
the Mexican Painter’s Most Under-the-Radar Artworks—Ranked
appeared first on artnet News.