Frida Kahlo’s Month in Paris: A Friendship with Mary Reynolds

Drawing upon the extensive Mary Reynolds Collection at the Art Institute of Chicago and extraordinary Kahlo loans from public and private collections in the US, Mexico, and Europe, the presentation sheds light on this little-known chapter of 20th-century art history, recounting the legacies of Kahlo and Reynolds—both artists themselves and partners of artists—as they navigated Surrealism, identity, and cross-cultural exchange on the eve of World War II.

Kahlo traveled to France in January 1939 at the invitation of André Breton, the architect of European Surrealism. Breton had visited Kahlo in Mexico the year previously and invited her to consider an exhibition in Paris. The French city, however, did not agree with Kahlo. She quickly found it eroding her sense of artistic freedom and her health—until she met Reynolds. When Kahlo was rushed to the hospital with a kidney infection, Reynolds invited her to convalesce at her home at 14 rue Hallé, a hub of the city’s visual and literary avant-gardes who regularly communed and dined there.

Reynolds and her partner, the artist Marcel Duchamp, treated this home as a living work of art and abundantly installed it with their own artworks and unique books, as well as paintings and sculptures by close friends, such as Constantin Brancusi, Alexander Calder, Yves Tanguy, and Jean Cocteau. This rich creative and domestic environment in many ways reflected that of Kahlo’s own beloved Casa Azul in Mexico City.

Our exhibition traces Kahlo’s artistic trajectory from her first solo exhibition to her short but highly consequential engagement with Mary Reynolds and the French Surrealists and then back across the Atlantic in 1940 with Kahlo’s participation in the International Exhibition of Surrealism in Mexico City. The story is told through approximately 100 objects, including paintings, book bindings, works on paper, photographs, and archival materials, notably letters from Kahlo to her lover, the photographer Nickolas Muray, where she recounts the experience of her Paris sojourn in her own voice. 

Taken together, these works open a new chapter on Kahlo’s career, at a moment when her engagement with European Surrealism was at its most direct. It also introduces Reynolds, a lesser-known but highly compelling artist and maker of innovative, one-of-a-kind book bindings. Showcasing these two artists together for the first time, this tightly focused presentation also reorients our understanding of how artists serve to inspire one another—whether through chance encounters or long-held friendships—or an extraordinary mixture of both.

Frida Kahlo’s Month in Paris: A Friendship with Mary Reynolds is curated by Caitlin Haskell, Gary C. and Frances Comer Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, with Tamar Kharatishvili, Daniel F. and Ada L. Rice Research Fellow in Modern Art, and Alivé Piliado, curatorial associate, National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago.

Sponsors

Major support for Frida Kahlo’s Month in Paris: A Friendship with Mary Reynolds is provided by the Zell Family Foundation, Pat and Ron Taylor, Constance and David Coolidge, The Donnelly Family Foundation, and Natasha Henner and Bala Ragothaman.