The Labyrinth of Frida Kahlo Death, Pain, & Ambivalence

El Laberinto de Frida Kahlo
Muerte, Dolor, y Ambivalencia

The Labyrinth of Frida Kahlo
Death, Pain, & Ambivalence

Book Description

Cartas ilustradas, dibujos y notas intimas - Illustrated letters, drawings and intimate notes.

A collection of more than 1200 Frida Kahlo letters, poems, paintings drawings and personal mementos has been recently discovered, investigated, and catalogued by Carlos and Leticia Noyola, antiquarians in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.

Published here for the first time, selections from that collection are presented both in the original Spanish and in English translation, accompanied by historical annotations and research notes.

Comentario - Commentary: Jennifer Church
Traducciones - Translations: Polly Ortega
Fotografia y anotaciones - Photography and annotations: Daniel Friedman

These works, chosen for their freshness and their intensity, offer new and special insights into the conflicting feelings that shaped Frida Kahlo's life the combination of horror and humor, honesty and anger, with which Kahlo met sex, death, pain, and betrayal.

These works, produced and hoarded over decades of Frida Kahlo s life, reveal how ambivalent she was about the most important aspects of her life.

Frida portrays her damaged leg as both wonderful and horrible, often in the same drawing. Her pictures of an aborted child fascinate and repel, as do her drawings of medical procedures, mutilations, amputations, violent accidents, and internal organs. Frida was fascinated by the bodies of animals - from birds and butterflies to toads and flies.

She frequently described and pictured Diego as her toad, with a mixture of deep affection and deep disdain. She constantly appears as a bird, a familiar, sometimes silent, but more often one that speaks for Frida herself by annotations on her drawings.

More important still is the way that Kahlo used her ambivalence to fuel her art, creating words and pictures that are powerfully affecting in their earthy yet transcendent treatment of bodies, relationships, and death.

...

Jennifer Church was full professor of Philosophy at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, now Emeritus. Church specializes in philosophy of mind. Daniel Friedman is a journalist, microscopist and forensic investigator in Poughkeepsie, New York, specializing in building and environmental investigations as well as in particle identification.

Both Church and Friedman spent more than four years in Mexico assisting in the cataloging, photo-documenting, and thus assisting others in the study of the Noyola's large collection of unique works, paintings, drawings, poems, letters by Frida Kahlo as well as her personal mementos ranging from corsets to bus tickets, boxes, and ceramics.

Assistance with translation of Kahlo's often eccentric slang from the original Spanish into English was Polly Ortega, also a San Miguel de Allende resident.

According to Noyola, prior to her death Kahlo passed these items on to a friend, perhaps wanting them out of her home because of their controversial, critical, and emotional nature. Later he added that this collection was given to a carpenter who had performed work for Kahlo/Rivera and subsequently placed for sale by a third party attorney and purchased by the Noyolas in a series of installments beginning in 2004.

The discoverers and current owners of the collection, themselves art experts: antiquarian Carlos Noyola and his wife and art conservationist Leticia Fernandez as well as their son Diego Noyola who (as of 2024) continues to operate an antiques and art gallery in San Miguel de Allende.

Really? The Bank of Mexico, who claim to own all Frida Kahlo material and rights in Mexico, challenged the provenance and authenticity of this collection. That dispute, which ended closed without action or final charge, was widely reported. For example, see

Malkin, Elisabeth, "Kahlo Trove: Fact or Fakery" [Web Page - use your Browser's Back Button to return here] The New York Times, 28 September 2009.

To Purchase this Book

The PayPal service used below is secure and reliable. You can make payments using your credit card, or you can use your own PayPal account.

For educational use the Labyrinth of Frida Kahlo, Death, Pain, & Ambivalence, is also available directly from the authors for the cost of shipping & postage.

$24.95 per copy

Payment by PayPal will permit you to use any major credit card if you do not already have your own PayPal account. Simply use the PayPal "Pay Now" button above. This step will allow you to pay for one or more copies of this book by multiplying the book quantity by the individual copy price. When payment has been completed we will both receive notice from PayPal.

Mailing instructions: If you have not already done so, you can provide mailing instructions via the PayPal button at left, or you may provide that information by email to us. Completing step will then automatically display a web page which indicates how to contact us.

Returns: We accept returns and provide full refund for copies that are returned to us in the same condition as sent.
Below, the back cover of this book.

Also see these

El Laberinto de Frida Kahlo Muerte, Dolor, y Ambivalencia