In April 1933, Frida Kahlo arrived in Detroit, where her husband, the renowned muralist Diego Rivera, had a commission to fulfill. Young and unknown, Kahlo was also pregnant, which doubled the pain she suffered from severe injuries in her youth. Optimism sustained her, but she miscarried in May, a moment she would later depict in the self portrait Henry Ford Hospital. Featuring that work and others, this exhibition illustrates Detroit’s contribution to Kahlo’s emerging artistic vision: tough yet tender, expressing resilience and vulnerability. As she wrote to her doctor after losing the baby, “I have a cat’s luck since I do not die so easily and that’s always something.” —C.J.F.

Frida Kahlo In Detroit
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Detroit Institute of Arts / Detroit / Art
Detroit Institute of Arts / Detroit / Art
Bernard G. Silberstein, “Frida Kahlo in Tehuna Costume,” ca.1940. Gift of the artist.
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