by
Tom Gurney BSc (Hons) is an art history expert with over 20 years experience
Page created on March 2, 2018 / Page updated on October 6, 2026
Email: tomgurney1@gmail.com / Phone: +44 7429 011000

Introduction

A small room becomes an improbable encounter between a person, a salon chair and a machine in Frida Kahlo’s El Salón de Belleza. A face appears in the mirror, while another head projects sideways from a dark hood-like structure; a cable curls towards the wall. [1] [2] The familiar setting helps identify the scene as a beauty salon, but it does not settle whether the two faces represent the same person, precisely what treatment is under way or whom Kahlo portrayed.

The sheet is signed and dated 1932, according to Christie’s, which catalogues it as watercolour, pen and black ink and pencil on paper. [1] Its English titles include The Beauty Shop, Beauty Parlor and The Perm; none of the checked authoritative object records establishes that it is a numbered second version. [1] [3] [4] The unnumbered Spanish title in Christie’s catalogue therefore identifies the sheet more securely than the numeral sometimes attached to its English name.

At a Glance

  • Title: El Salón de Belleza (The Beauty Shop); a second numbered version is unverified. [1] [5]
  • Date and inscription: Christie’s transcribes 1932; a small upper-right mark is not fully legible in the published image. [1] [2]
  • Medium and size: Watercolour, ink and pencil on paper, 26.6 × 22 cm in Christie’s record; Museo Roca rounds the dimensions to 26 × 22 cm. [1] [6]
  • Collection history: Museo Roca credits C. Agustín Cristóbal in 2016; a secondary record points to a 1992 Christie’s lot. Present ownership is unverified. [6] [8] [9]
  • 1967 exhibition: Listed as a 1932 watercolour in a 1967 Sala Juárez tribute checklist; the precise venue within the multi-site programme is unresolved. [26]

Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. A Room Built Around a Mirror
  3. The Perm: Technology and Its Limits
  4. Is the Person Lola Álvarez Bravo?
  5. A Caption That Belongs to Another Drawing
  6. Material, Size and Historical Trail
  7. Further Reading and Open Questions
  8. Related Reading

A Room Built Around a Mirror

The composition is nearly square but slightly taller than it is wide. Pale walls occupy most of the upper sheet, and red-brown square tiles rise along the lower left and right. [1] [2] Between those tiled bands stands a partly obscured chair, backed by a tall orange-brown rectangle with a dark, curling crest. A small frontal face within that rectangle makes “mirror” a strong visual reading, although it is not a term transcribed from the Christie’s object line. [2]

The mirror does not give a complete optical account of the room. It frames a pale pointed enclosure and a still-looking face with dark brows, eyes, nose and mouth, but omits much of the chair, cable and large foreground form. [2] There is no secure basis for treating this selective reflection as a diagram that proves how many sitters were present. Its incompleteness is part of the drawing’s difficulty: we recognise the salon mirror, then find that it does not resolve what we are seeing.

The pale enclosure around the reflected face echoes another pointed pale form at the mirror’s left. Both carry small circular marks and grey shading; in front of them, a much larger dark hood-like volume tilts down towards the right. [2] The repeated shapes give the equipment a visual rhythm, yet neither the available catalogue entries nor the small available image identifies a precise machine model. Description of their position and relation is firmer than a reconstruction of their engineering.

From the dark volume a second, darker-toned head projects almost horizontally to the left. Its hair, brow, nose and shadowed or bearded lower face are more strongly modelled than the small frontal face in the mirror. [2] Concentric grey bands gather at its neck like a collar or mechanical joint. A short projection at mouth level is visible, but its purpose and colour cannot be determined securely from the available file. [2] [10]

A pale drape falls beside the head and over the left of the chair. Beneath it, a narrow brown shaft reaches the floor, while rounded lower forms can look like shoes, hooves, chair parts or limbs depending on where the viewer draws the boundaries. [2] The work makes furniture, person and apparatus hard to separate. That hybrid effect is visible; a named animal, weapon or bodily transformation is not established as a literal subject by the picture or a checked primary account. [2] [11]

At lower right, a black line loops across the pale floor and rises to a round wall fitting. The line reads as a cable and gives the room its clearest sign of powered salon equipment. [2] It also draws the eye out of the crowded centre, echoing some of the curves above. The fitting may be electrical, but the small image does not warrant a detailed claim about how it is wired or what device it serves.

Watch: Frida Kahlo

Five perspectives to view here alongside the article.

Frida Kahlo’s The Two Fridas: Great Art Explained

Great Art Explained

A focused visual introduction to the painting and its context.

El Salón de Belleza (The Beauty Shop) in Kahlo’s career

Timeline source: Museo Frida Kahlo chronology [27].

The Perm: Technology and Its Limits

One published caption names the sheet Beauty Parlour (I) or The Perm, while another image record uses Beauty Parlor or The Perm. [3] [4] “The Perm” makes permanent waving a plausible way to approach the repeated hoods and cable, not an artist-authenticated technical label. The varying titles do not prove a series: Souter's later “(I)” caption and Christie’s unnumbered Spanish title are different catalogue traditions, while no checked object record verifies a second version. [1] [3] [5]

The Smithsonian’s hair-care history describes permanent waving in the early twentieth century as a set of procedures using heat, chemicals or both; its account places the practice firmly within salon culture by the 1930s. [12] MoMA catalogues a 1930s hooded hairdryer built from perforated metal tubes, an independent example of the kinds of elaborate equipment then available. [13] Neither source identifies Kahlo’s illustrated apparatus, and a hairdryer is not automatically a permanent-wave machine. Their value is comparative: a modern viewer need not treat a hood, collar and trailing cable as fantasy merely because their precise arrangement is hard to decode.

The drawing does more than document a fashion technology. A large hood overwhelms the chair; the horizontal head seems to emerge through a ringed coupling; lower forms hover between supports and limbs. [2] Those are observations about the composition, not a claim that a real salon device operated this way. The ordinary room gives the image its point of departure, while its selective mirror and fused forms keep a literal reconstruction out of reach.

Kahlo’s wider attention to clothing, hair and self-presentation is well documented, including in the Victoria and Albert Museum’s account of her personal effects. [14] That context makes a salon subject worth taking seriously, but it does not identify the person in this drawing or make it a disguised self-portrait. The broader account of Tehuana dress and cosmetics belongs to the cluster’s dedicated fashion page; this sheet asks a narrower question about what its own small salon scene shows. [14] [15]

Is the Person Lola Álvarez Bravo?

ARTIKA Books, publisher of The Dreams of Frida Kahlo, says that Beauty Salon represents Kahlo’s friend Lola Álvarez and that numbers in the work correspond to her initials. [16] The small upper-right mark may read “12.A.”; if those characters are correct, 12 could be interpreted as the position of L in the alphabet. [2] [16] That is a possible decoding, not a directly verified inscription-based identification. The publisher’s public article does not provide the complete study-book entry, named passage author, page or cited primary evidence for this specific claim. [16] [17]

Lola Álvarez Bravo was a substantial figure in the Mexican photographic world, not merely an unnamed person in Kahlo’s circle. The Center for Creative Photography identifies her and places her in the Rivera–Kahlo artistic milieu, while MoMA catalogues photographs of Kahlo by Álvarez Bravo. [18] [19] These records independently support the relevance of their relationship, but they do not say that Álvarez Bravo sat for this 1932 sheet. They also cannot tell us whether the reflected face and projecting head are two views of one person, a before-and-after conceit or two distinct figures. [2]

ARTIKA’s hypothesis deserves to be preserved precisely because it offers an object-specific reading beyond generic symbolism. Yet it must remain an attributed reading until the 304-page specialist study book can be checked at the exact entry, with its image, note and bibliography. [16] [17] The drawing’s visible arrangement can explain why a coded portrait is an interesting proposition; it cannot verify the sitter from facial likeness at this scale or from an unconfirmed reading of four tiny marks.

A Caption That Belongs to Another Drawing

An image-agency record for Beauty Parlor or The Perm carries a sentence about Santa Claus and Venustiano Carranza, along with keywords suggesting a donkey, firearm and political cipher. [4] [11] A separate record for Santa Claus repeats the same Carranza language, while Margarucci’s catalogue places El salón de belleza and Santa Claus on adjacent pages as distinct 1932 works, with different images and entry numbers. [6] [20] The duplication is a metadata or caption problem, not a second interpretation established for this sheet.

A 2005 review of the Tate Kahlo exhibition likewise places a “Beauty Parlour” reference in a discussion of other drawings and reports a flag-coloured lollipop. [10] Its grouping is not a secure object-level checklist, and the small published image does not establish the claimed colour of the mouth-level projection. [2] Those records do not establish Carranza, Santa Claus, a gun or a donkey as subjects of this sheet. The copied caption belongs to another drawing; the salon scene's unusual visual structure can be considered on its own terms.

Material, Size and Historical Trail

Christie’s exact medium line distinguishes this sheet from Kahlo’s painted panels and canvases: watercolour, pen and black ink and pencil on paper. [1] Margarucci’s shorter Spanish description, “acuarela y lápiz sobre papel,” confirms the paper category while omitting the pen-and-ink detail and rounding the height from 26.6 to 26 cm. [6] These are catalogue differences, not evidence that two objects exist. The small physical scale also matters: the faces, dotted enclosures and upper-right mark would have demanded close viewing, even though digital enlargement can make them look more assertive. [1] [2]

The available study image is only 400 × 494 pixels, uncalibrated and cropped near the composition. [2] It cannot identify paper stock, ink chemistry, pigments, sequence of marks or changes beneath the visible surface. Nor can pale irregularities in a digital file be diagnosed as damage or restoration. A conservator’s examination, reverse and edge images, and a registrar’s measurement note would be needed for those questions. [21]

The historical ownership trail is correspondingly partial. Margarucci’s 2016 catalogue credits “C. Agustín Cristóbal,” Mexico; a published Souter caption gives “Augustín Cristóbal Collection, Galería Arvil, Mexico City.” [3] [6] Mexican cultural and Galería Arvil records establish that the named gallery and professional connection are real, but do not supply an acquisition date, a transfer document or proof of today’s owner. [22] The spelling difference in the English-language caption should not be turned into a second owner without further evidence.

An Artsy auction-result record associates El salon de belleza with Christie’s New York sale of 18 May 1992, lot 119. [8] Its dimensions conflict with Christie’s own current object record, so the sale identification is a lead to the original 1992 catalogue, not a substitute for it. [1] [8] The publicly accessed Christie’s sale landing page does not give this lot’s seller, buyer, estimate, result or full provenance. [9] It would be especially misleading to infer that a collection credit published in 2016 proves uninterrupted ownership after the 1992 sale.

Justino Fernández’s contemporary survey of Mexican exhibitions records a Kahlo tribute opened at the Museo de Arte Moderno on 6 July 1967 and describes city-gallery participation in the same homage. [26] Its ensuing Sala Juárez drawings list gives number 27 as Salon de belleza, dated 1932 and described as a 26 × 22 cm watercolour. The title, date, category and rounded dimensions align with the later Margarucci entry, making this a documented item-level listing rather than a generic claim that Kahlo had a show. [6] [26] The source does not unambiguously place that numbered item in the museum building rather than a participating city gallery, nor does it supply a lender, installation photograph or continuous custody trail.

No checked item-level record establishes that this specific sheet was shown at the Tate in 2005, and no present installation record has been verified. [10] [23] An agency’s availability of an image is not evidence that the original work is publicly displayed. The 1967 listing and dated market traces deepen the account while leaving current custody and later exhibition history open.

Further Reading and Open Questions

Christie’s literature field gives two unusually precise book coordinates: Martha Zamora’s El Pincel de la Angustia, page 276, and Prignitz-Poda, Grimberg and Kettenmann’s Frida Kahlo Das Gesamtwerk, page 187, number 155. [1] Their cited pages may clarify title history, the sitter and early ownership, but their captions and notes have not been consulted; neither book is treated as direct evidence for those questions. [24]

ARTIKA’s The Dreams of Frida Kahlo is a 304-page specialist study of Kahlo’s drawings, but its exact treatment of El Salón de Belleza has not been consulted. [16] [17] That text may qualify the publisher’s Álvarez Bravo identification and proposed numeric code. The original 1992 Christie’s lot record, any Tate item checklist, the 1967 installation records and a current owner file remain useful independent evidence for provenance and display, not facts established by their mere existence. [9] [23] [24] [26]

TASCHEN’s 2021 Frida Kahlo: The Complete Paintings is identifiable through its publisher record, but no entry for this work on paper has been located or consulted. [25] Its title alone cannot establish that the sheet appears in a catalogue of paintings. The directly inspected object and exhibition records, rather than presumed book contents, carry the account above.

The supported result is a compact, visually intricate salon scene with a secure 1932 catalogue line, an unresolved relation between two head-images, a plausible period-technology setting and a serious but unverified sitter hypothesis. [1] [2] [12] [16] Its most useful questions—who is represented, what the small code says, precisely how the device should be understood and where the sheet is now—remain open despite the various titles and copied captions.

The drawings and works-on-paper guide places this sheet within Kahlo's wider practice without counting it as an oil painting. Frida's Fashion and Tehuana Dress examines self-presentation beyond this salon scene, while Technique and Materials explains why a catalogue medium line is not a full technical examination.

Frequently Asked Questions

It is catalogued as a 1932 watercolour, ink and pencil work on paper, not as an oil painting. [1] The “II” sometimes attached to its English name is unsupported by the checked object records; a later caption's “(I)” does not establish a pair of numbered versions. [3] [5]

The Perm is one published title variant, and a hood-like structure with a cable makes a salon-technology comparison reasonable. [2] [3] Period hair-care sources confirm that heated and hooded equipment existed, but no checked source identifies the exact device in Kahlo’s drawing. [12] [13]

ARTIKA Books proposes that identification and links a numeric mark to her initials. [16] Independent institutions establish Álvarez Bravo’s place in Kahlo’s circle, but the precise study-book argument and the tiny inscription have not been verified well enough to turn the proposal into an established sitter identification. [2] [17] [18] [19]

A 2016 catalogue gives a historical Agustín Cristóbal collection credit, a contemporary survey lists the sheet in a 1967 museum tribute, and a derivative record points to a 1992 Christie’s lot. [6] [8] [26] None establishes its current owner, location or public display. [9] [23]

Discussion

Use the cited evidence and your own close looking to explain your view. The prompts below are starting points, not fixed interpretations.

Reader Insights

Close Looking

Do the two faces depict one sitter or two?

Context

What can the salon apparatus establish about the procedure?

Open Question

Do the different published titles prove a second version?

Join the Conversation

Which reading best fits the evidence, and where does uncertainty remain?

References

  1. Christie’s, El Salón de Belleza, Details and Literature: title, signature/date, medium, dimensions, 1932 and exact book citations. View source text.
  2. Christie's catalogue image (reference 1) and Ivanna Margarucci's 2016 Museo Roca plate, physical p.75 (reference 6), support description of the visible sheet. The available 400 × 494-pixel study image does not establish paper fibres, pigments, reverse or physical condition, and viewing does not grant reproduction rights.
  3. Gerry Souter, Frida Kahlo & Diego Rivera preview caption, “Beauty Parlour (I) or The Perm”; publisher book record. Only the linked preview caption and publisher record were consulted; the complete book has not been read. View source text 1; View source text 2.
  4. Album / Erich Lessing, Beauty Parlor or The Perm image record, asset alb6490492; title variant only, with conflated political caption and low-authority keywords. View source text.
  5. Christie's El Salón de Belleza object entry gives the unnumbered Spanish title. Souter's preview caption (reference 3) calls the sheet Beauty Parlour (I) or The Perm; neither source verifies the inherited ‘II’ route numeral or a second version. View source text.
  6. Ivanna Margarucci, Frida Kahlo: una vida a través del arte (Museo Roca, 2016), printed/PDF p.75, entry 070, El salón de belleza, plate and “C. Agustín Cristóbal”. The catalogue's “C. Agustín Cristóbal” is a historical credit, not a verified present owner. View source text.
  7. Christie's object medium and Margarucci's 2016 catalogue entry (reference 6) identify a work on paper, not an oil painting. The companion Drawings article treats this category without converting the sheet into a painted-oeuvre entry. View source text.
  8. Artsy, auction-result record, 18 May 1992, Christie’s New York, lot 119; derivative lead with conflicting measurements. View source text.
  9. Christie’s, Important Latin American Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture sale page, auction 8534; no directly consulted object-specific lot result or provenance. View source text.
  10. 2005 Tate exhibition review, paragraphs 51–53; conflating reception source, not an item-level exhibition authority. View source text.
  11. The Album record for Beauty Parlor or The Perm (reference 4) repeats political copy also attached to its separate Santa Claus record (reference 20). Margarucci's distinct plates (reference 6 and p.76, entry 071) do not support identifying a donkey, rifle, politician or sitter in this sheet from those copied keywords.
  12. Smithsonian National Museum of American History, Hair Care, permanent-waving section; period context, not machine identification. View source text.
  13. Museum of Modern Art, Hooded Hairdryer, 1930s object record; comparison only. View source text.
  14. Victoria and Albert Museum, “Making Herself Up”, Kahlo cosmetics and self-presentation sections; general context only. View source text.
  15. See the companion Frida's Fashion and Tehuana Dress article for Kahlo's wider self-presentation; this page confines its claims to the salon sheet and its cited object records.
  16. ARTIKA Books, “Celebrating the Month of Frida Kahlo”, Beauty Salon paragraph on Lola Álvarez and numeric initials; publisher claim. View source text.
  17. ARTIKA Books, The Dreams of Frida Kahlo, study-book description and contributors; the exact passage on this sheet has not been consulted. View source text.
  18. Center for Creative Photography, Lola Álvarez Bravo, biography and archive description; relationship context, not an identification of this sheet's sitter. View source text.
  19. Museum of Modern Art, Lola Álvarez Bravo artist record, including photographs of Kahlo; not an identification of this sheet. View source text.
  20. Album, separate Santa Claus record, and Margarucci, p. 76, entry 071; distinct composition confirms caption migration. View source text.
  21. Christie's catalogue image and medium line document the front and published materials. They do not supply fibre or pigment analysis, reverse imaging, a conservation report or condition data. View source text.
  22. Mexican cultural directory record for Galería Agustín Cristóbal and Galería Arvil institutional history; context only, no chain of title. View source text 1; View source text 2.
  23. Justino Fernández's contemporary UNAM catalogue (reference 26) supplies a 1967 item-level tribute listing. The 2005 Tate exhibition review (reference 10) conflates this sheet with other works and does not prove its display there; no current owner or on-view record is established by these sources.
  24. Further sources not yet directly consulted include Zamora p.276, Frida Kahlo: Das Gesamtwerk p.187 no.155, the ARTIKA specialist entry, the original 1992 Christie's catalogue, Tate's 2005 item checklist and a current owner file. These locators do not establish the unseen contents of those records.
  25. TASCHEN, Frida Kahlo: The Complete Paintings publisher record, 2021; the complete volume has not been consulted and no exact entry for El Salón de Belleza is securely located. View source text.
  26. Justino Fernández, Catálogo de las exposiciones en 1967, Anales del Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas supplement 37 (UNAM, 1968), printed pp. 114–116 / PDF pp. 112–114: “Homenaje a Frida Kahlo” opened 6 July; the following Sala Juárez list gives item 27, Salon de belleza, 1932, watercolour, 0.26 × 0.22 m. The official PDF was read; the exact building for item 27, lender and installation remain unresolved. View source text 1; View source text 2.
  27. Museo Frida Kahlo, Frida interactive chronology, selected work dates used for the comparison timeline. The current work's date follows its cited object record. View source text.