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

The richly illustrated story of a brief yet pivotal encounter in Paris between Frida Kahlo and Mary Reynolds, two luminaries of the Surrealist movement

In February 1939, while visiting Paris at the invitation of writer André Breton, Mexican artist Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) became sick and convalesced at the home of American expatriate Mary Reynolds (1891-1950), an avant-garde bookbinder, collector of Surrealist artist books, and partner of Marcel Duchamp. This book traces the story of Kahlo and Reynolds’s connection and its influence on their work, even after the friendship had elapsed.

Kahlo and Reynolds’s intense encounter unfolds in this volume through the artworks they each made, their shared exploration of Reynolds’s expansive Surrealist library, and letters from Kahlo to her lover, American photographer Nickolas Muray, in which she recounted her time in Paris. Included in this focused study are paintings and drawings by Kahlo, selections of books by Reynolds, photographs by Muray of Kahlo, depictions of Reynolds by artists in Paris, and a selection of letters between Kahlo and Reynolds describing their defining experience together.

Distributed for the Art Institute of Chicago

Exhibition Schedule:

Art Institute of Chicago
(March 29-July 13, 2025)

Caitlin Haskell is the Gary C. and Frances Comer Curator in Modern and Contemporary Art and director of the Ray Johnson Collections and Research, and Alivé Piliado Santana is a research associate in Modern and Contemporary Art, both at the Art Institute of Chicago.