Échate l’Otra

Introduction

A blue pulquería stands at the corner of an imagined-looking but recognisably inhabited street in Frida Kahlo's Échate l’Otra. Churchlike domes rise behind it, while a lane climbs beside a green square or garden. The English title “Have Another One” translates the bar name visible in the scene; it does not describe a separate painting. ^{[1] [2] [3]}

This small watercolour belongs to Kahlo's experimental early years, when she painted the streets and popular buildings of Coyoacán as well as portraits of her school friends. Its precise date remains unsettled: the Tlaxcala collection's object card and a 2009 museum checklist give 1925, while art historian James Oles and a 2026 Rome checklist give circa 1927. What is secure is the painted street, the collection's identification of the work and a reported dedication on its reverse to Kahlo's friend Ángel Salas. ^{[1] [2] [3] [8] [9]}

At a Glance

Contents

1. Introduction
2. The Blue Pulquería and Its Neighbours
3. Coyoacán and the Limits of an Exact Location
4. Why 1925 and Circa 1927 Both Appear
5. A Message to Ángel Salas
6. A Popular Subject in an Experimental Period
7. From a Friend's Image to a Public Collection
8. Related Reading

The Blue Pulquería and Its Neighbours

The blue building sits low in the picture, edged by pale walls and dark outlines. Its corner position draws the eye from the broad foreground toward the narrow lane that rises behind it. Small human forms around the storefront and an animal-drawn cart near the lower edge make this a street scene rather than an isolated architectural portrait. ^{[1] [3] [9]}

The institution identifies the shop as a pulquería, a bar selling the traditional drink made from agave. Its exhibition text points to cut-paper papel picado and a drinking-glass emblem on the wall as signs of the business. A larger plate in the Rome museum's 2026 checklist makes the blue façade's “ECHATE L'OTRA” sign and the garden wall's “ENTRADA GRATIS” legible, giving written language a prominent role in the townscape. ^{[1] [2] [9]}

Behind the bar, pale domes and a tower rise over warmer walls. Their large forms compress the distance between the foreground shop and the upper town, while the diagonal lane draws the right side sharply uphill. Even the larger museum plate does not establish the identity of each dome, upper shop sign or person, and the available owner records do not name an exact street address. ^{[1] [3] [9]}

The green space at right provides a different rhythm from the tightly grouped buildings. A curved path and small round feature interrupt the broad colour, while the bar and lane carry most of the scene's figures and signs. The contrast lets Kahlo show public space as several adjacent experiences—a place to pass, a place to gather and a place to look—without describing a particular event. ^[1]

Watch: Frida Kahlo

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Frida Kahlo’s The Two Fridas: Great Art Explained

Great Art Explained

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▶01 · The Two FridasLooking at The Two FridasGreat Art Explained▶02 · Global iconThe making of an iconThe Museum of Fine Arts, Houston▶03 · Fashion and colourKahlo’s colourful wardrobeFashionUnited TV▶04 · Clothes and contextAppearances Can Be DeceivingFine Arts Museums of San Francisco▶05 · U.S. yearsFrida in AmericaUC Berkeley CLACS

Coyoacán and the Limits of an Exact Location

The collection card says the picture possibly represents a place in Coyoacán, the district around Kahlo's family home. Oles is more definite, calling the composition an actual intersection there, but neither accessible source supplies the intersection's street names. The best-supported description is therefore a Coyoacán-related view, not a mapped reconstruction of a specific corner. ^{[1] [3]}

Oles observes that Kahlo applied conventional perspective loosely and used bright colours, now somewhat faded, to organise the façades. The deep blue of the pulquería stands against paler architecture and small gold accents in his reading. His account of fading concerns the work as studied; it cannot be independently confirmed from the site's old, low-resolution research copy. ^{[2] [3]}

That looseness is a positive formal choice in his analysis, not evidence that Kahlo failed at drawing. The eye can move between the blue corner, the domes and the rising lane without all three resolving into a single strict viewpoint. The institution's early-work story likewise places these watercolours near popular painted façades and children's-art experiments that valued direct observation and freer composition. ^{[2] [3]}

Échate l’Otra in Kahlo’s career

Year

1925193019351940194519501955

Échate l’Otra

1925 / c. 1927 disputed

Frieda and Diego Rivera

1931

My Grandparents, My Parents, and I

1936

The Two Fridas

1939

The Broken Column

1944

Marxism Will Give Health to the Sick

1954

Timeline source: Museo Frida Kahlo chronology ^[11].

Why 1925 and Circa 1927 Both Appear

The Instituto Tlaxcalteca de la Cultura's public object card labels the work “Date Created: 1925.” The Museo Nacional de Colombia used the same year in its checklist for a 2009 exhibition that included the sheet. Yet the Instituto's longer story, credited to Oles, says none of the group's watercolours has an exact date and places them between 1925 and 1927. ^{[1] [2] [8]}

Oles's 2007 journal figure caption calls this particular sheet circa 1927, while his text makes more precise dates speculative. The Musei Capitolini's 2026 checklist likewise uses circa 1927. The disagreement is therefore present in direct museum catalogues as well as scholarship, not just in derivative online lists. ^{[3] [9]}

The reported reverse inscription cannot settle the disagreement. It gives 18 July but no year, and Oles warns that even dates within dedications need not be the dates when pictures were made. The present evidence supports a mid-1920s work with separate 1925 and circa-1927 catalogue traditions, rather than one confidently fixed day or year of execution. ^{[1] [3] [8] [9]}

Those distinctions matter because the two dates could otherwise change the biography attached to the image. Kahlo's 1925 accident and later convalescence are relevant to the wider early-work group, but neither date field proves that she made this sheet before the accident, during a particular period in bed or on the reported July day. The urban subject can be examined in its own right while that chronology remains open. ^{[2] [3]}

A Message to Ángel Salas

The collection's object card reports a dedication on the unseen reverse to Ángel Salas, a friend from Kahlo's school circle. It mixes English and Spanish, locates itself in Coyoacán, mentions 18 July and ends with Kahlo's familiar “Friducha.” The institution's exhibition account says Salas later studied at the National Conservatory and became a musicologist. ^{[1] [2]}

The printed versions of the message differ in a small but significant word: the card and Oles render the affectionate address as a form of “brother,” whereas the collection's English exhibition story says “friend.” Without direct examination of the reverse, the secure point is the reported addressee and playful bilingual character, not a newly standardised full transcription. The text makes this a personal image associated with Kahlo's friendships, but it does not by itself document every step of the sheet's later journey. ^{[1] [2] [3]}

Oles reports that the poet Miguel N. Lira eventually owned Échate l’Otra despite its dedication to Salas. A Mexican culture-ministry account of the Museo de Arte de Tlaxcala's 2011 reopening likewise includes it among seven Kahlo works once belonging to Lira and held in the state collection. Neither account explains precisely how the watercolour moved from the dedicatee's circle into Lira's hands. ^{[3] [4]}

A Popular Subject in an Experimental Period

Oles places this picture beside Kahlo's distinct Cantina Tu Suegra, another pulquería street scene. He finds Échate l’Otra relatively ordered, while the other watercolour has more skewed space and a policeman and seated vendor. Those figures belong to Cantina, not to the blue-bar scene here; the comparison reveals how Kahlo varied a related urban subject rather than making the two sheets interchangeable. ^[3]

The Instituto's story connects Kahlo's freely composed early watercolours to drawing programmes led by Manuel Rodríguez Lozano after 1924 and to painted popular façades. Oles develops the comparison, finding an affinity with direct, less rule-bound children's drawing rather than a rigid formal system. These are art-historical explanations of the work's style, not proof that Kahlo attended a particular class or followed a named exercise while making this sheet. ^{[2] [3]}

A Spanish review of the 2018 Frida Kahlo: Oltre il mito catalogue reports Juan Rafael Coronel Rivera's view that early works including Échate la otra reveal a connection to open-air painting schools. The complete catalogue passage has not been read for this article, so the review is a reported interpretation, not a new primary record of Kahlo's training. It does, however, underline how much the blue street scene belongs to conversations about art education and popular Mexico, not just to a later celebrity biography. ^[6]

The name of the bar also belongs to a broader visual and verbal culture. Historian Rafael Olea Franco describes the wit of Mexican pulquería names and Diego Rivera's 1926 praise of the way such words could become part of painted façades. This context makes Kahlo's prominent shop sign historically legible, but does not prove she read Rivera's text or visited an identified establishment. Olea Franco also discusses a different artist's work with the same pulquería name; that is José Clemente Orozco's picture, not Kahlo's watercolour. ^[7]

From a Friend's Image to a Public Collection

Oles says the Tlaxcala group was acquired from Lira's estate in 1982. A 2011 statement from the Mexican Secretariat of Culture identifies Échate la otra among the seven Kahlo works in the Museo de Arte de Tlaxcala's collection at its reopening. These dated sources support an important transition from an intimate school-circle image to public cultural patrimony, though they do not provide a complete accession file or every intervening owner. ^{[3] [4]}

A later Tlaxcala museum-network bulletin lists the watercolour among the state's holdings while naming four different works lent to the 2018 Milan exhibition. It does not put Échate l’Otra among those four loans. Earlier, however, the Museo Nacional de Colombia included this sheet in its 2009 Bogotá exhibition checklist, naming Tlaxcala as the lending collection. The events must not be collapsed into a claim that the watercolour travelled on every Tlaxcala loan. ^{[5] [8]}

The Musei Capitolini's works-in-exhibition PDF includes Échate l’Otra in its Rome show scheduled from 9 June to 13 December 2026. Its plate is a useful front-view research witness, and its label supplies the Government of Tlaxcala's inventory number, 5131000122-177. These institutional records substantially improve the public exhibition trail, though a checklist and schedule do not prove the sheet's precise position on a wall on any particular day. ^{[9] [10]}

The two museum checklists agree on watercolour on paper and Tlaxcala custody, but not on the first dimension: Bogotá lists 18.5 × 24 centimetres, Rome 17.5 × 24. The difference may reflect measurement conventions or a catalogue error; the accessible evidence does not decide which. Neither figure is adopted here as an unqualified physical size. ^{[8] [9]}

The work's enduring interest lies in those two scales of attention. It is a close view of a blue local bar, surrounding streets and signs, and also a small, privately dedicated sheet that later entered a public collection. Its unsettled date is part of its honest history: looking closely at what Kahlo painted yields more than forcing the watercolour into one unverified day of her life. ^{[1] [3] [4]}

Related Reading

Cantina Tu Suegra treats the separate, more angular pulquería watercolour. Adelita, Pancho Villa and Frida follows a different early painting associated with Kahlo's school circle, while the Frida Kahlo paintings guide gives a wider route through her work. The Diego Rivera overview is a companion for the artist's own engagement with Mexican popular imagery, not evidence that he directed this watercolour.

References

1. Instituto Tlaxcalteca de la Cultura, “Echate la Otra,” owner-contributed object card, especially title, artist, 1925 date field, possible Coyoacán setting, blue pulquería and reported Ángel Salas reverse dedication. The card does not establish an exact execution day or current gallery display. View source text.
2. Instituto Tlaxcalteca de la Cultura, “The Early Work of Frida Kahlo,” institution-contributed English story with text credited to James Oles, “Watercolors” and “Have Another One” sections. It translates the title, describes bar motifs and says the early watercolours lack exact dates. Its rendering of one word in the Salas dedication differs from the card. View source text.
3. James Oles, “At the Café de los Cachuchas: Frida Kahlo in the 1920s,” Hispanic Research Journal 8, no. 5 (2007), pp. 467–489, especially pp. 468–73, Figure 1 and note 9. The relevant full text was read through a scholarly full-text rendering; the publisher's DOI page confirms publication metadata but exposed only an abstract. View source text.
4. Secretaría de Cultura/Conaculta, “Reabre sus puertas el Museo de Arte de Tlaxcala con siete obras de Frida Kahlo,” 14 December 2011, director's statements on the seven former Miguel N. Lira works and the museum reopening. This is historic collection and display evidence, not a live gallery schedule. View source text.
5. Tlaxcala museum-network bulletin, “Tlaxcala presente en Italia con exposición de Frida Kahlo,” list of four Milan loans and other collection holdings, including Échate la otra as a watercolour. It does not identify this sheet as one of the four loans. View source text.
6. “Frida Kahlo. Oltre il mito,” caiana review, “El periodo formativo” section, reporting Juan Rafael Coronel Rivera's catalogue argument about Kahlo's early work and open-air painting schools. The review was read; the full exhibition catalogue passage was not. View source text.
7. Rafael Olea Franco, “En el principio, fue el nombre: los nombres de las pulquerías,” Otros Diálogos, El Colegio de México, discussion of commercial names, Rivera's 1926 writing and Orozco's separate work. This is cultural context, not a K100 owner record. View source text.
8. Museo Nacional de Colombia, Diego, Frida y otros revolucionarios, 2009 works checklist, entry for Échate l’otra (1925, watercolour on paper, 18.5 × 24 cm, Museo de Arte de Tlaxcala/ITC). The exhibition overview dates the Bogotá show 27 August–15 November 2009. The size and date are that catalogue's statements, not reconciled physical measurements. View source text.
9. Musei Capitolini, Opere in mostra for Diego Rivera e la costruzione dell’arte moderna in Messico nel XX secolo (2026), PDF page 115, printed p. 181: Échate l’otra, circa 1927, watercolour on paper, 17.5 × 24 cm, Government of Tlaxcala collection, inventory 5131000122-177, with a front-view plate. The first dimension conflicts with reference 8; the image is not licensed for this page. View source text.
10. Musei Capitolini, exhibition page for Diego Rivera e la costruzione dell’arte moderna in Messico nel XX secolo, dates 9 June–13 December 2026 and links its “Opere in mostra” checklist. This is a dated exhibition schedule, not a real-time wall-position report. View source text.
11. The Museo Frida Kahlo chronology supplies comparison-work dates. This sheet's Tlaxcala and Bogotá records give 1925 (references 1 and 8), while Oles and the Rome checklist give circa 1927 (references 3 and 9); the marker presents that unresolved catalogue difference. View source text.

Frida Kahlo

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7. 07Self-Portrait in a Velvet DressRead the painting →
8. 08Fulang-Chang and IRead the painting →
9. 09Self-Portrait as a TehuanaRead the painting →
10. 10Roots (Raíces)Read the painting →
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