by Tom Gurney
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
An agave stands before a rounded, grooved hill in Frida Kahlo's small Landscape II. Helga Prignitz-Poda reproduces the watercolour beside its 1951 companion in Hidden Frida Kahlo, identifying this second picture as a work on paper whose whereabouts are unknown. [1] The plant gives it a sharper foreground focus than the banded terrain of Landscape I, while the two share an unpeopled, eroded landscape.
Its present location is unknown in the published specialist catalogue. The plate and caption allow the composition, medium and recorded size to be discussed, but they cannot show its present condition or establish a current owner. [1] An unknown location is not proof of destruction.
At a Glance
- Published title: Landscape (II), with the Spanish form Paisaje [II]; no artist-authored numbering has been established. [1]
- Published date and medium: 1951; watercolour on paper. [1]
- Recorded size: 12 × 18 cm, distinct from the companion's 12.5 × 17 cm. [1]
- Present location: The 2017 caption says “whereabouts unknown”; Prignitz-Poda also calls the pair missing. [1]
- Defining feature: A single agave in front of otherwise sparsely vegetated, deeply rutted hills. [1]
Contents
- Introduction
- The Agave and the Rise Behind It
- Beside, Not Beneath, Landscape I
- Landscape as More Than a Background
- The Limits of a Surviving Reproduction
- Related Reading
Landscape II (1951) in Kahlo’s career
The Two Fridas
1939Timeline source: Museo Frida Kahlo chronology [4].
Watch: Frida Kahlo
Five perspectives to view here alongside the article.
Frida Kahlo’s The Two Fridas: Great Art Explained
A focused visual introduction to the painting and its context.
The Agave and the Rise Behind It
The picture gathers around a wide orange-brown landform beneath a relatively pale strip of sky. Darker cuts run through the slope, and the agave's upright, pointed leaves stand in the foreground. [1] The plant interrupts a terrain that otherwise contains no visible figure, dwelling or sustained growth. Its placement makes the landscape feel less like an empty panorama than a close encounter between one living form and rough ground.
Prignitz-Poda identifies the plant as an agave in her discussion of the two 1951 watercolours. [1] The reproduction does not establish its exact species, a particular geographical setting or whether Kahlo painted from a directly observed plant. Its orange, brown and dark green relationships are visible in the printed plate, but a reproduction cannot settle the original's precise palette, paper texture or condition.
The small measurements matter to the picture's effect. At 12 × 18 centimetres in the specialist's caption, it is a compact work, not a monumental desert view. [1] The agave still commands a conspicuous place within it, set against a hill that occupies much of the field. The eye moves between the leaves' pointed forms and the broad eroded contours behind them.
Beside, Not Beneath, Landscape I
Prignitz-Poda's facing reproductions make the relationship unusually clear. The first 1951 watercolour spreads low ridges across the surface and has a strong dark horizontal passage; the second draws its hillside into a more rounded mass and adds the solitary plant. [1] They share an arid vocabulary, yet their spatial organisation and measurements differ. Reading the two together therefore reveals variation rather than a repeated template.
The book's index and captions number them I and II, but those are published identifiers. [1] No inspected letter, diary entry or inscription shows that Kahlo used those numerals or made the agave-bearing work second. The order is useful for distinguishing images, not for constructing a chronology of their making. The date 1951 is the book's catalogue attribution to each watercolour.
The Spanish thesis Frida Kahlo a través de su obra independently lists two Paisaje (1951) works. [2] Because its rows have no images, catalogue numbers, dimensions or I/II labels, neither row can be assigned securely to this agave composition. The thesis supports a two-landscape corpus in a late-career scholarly list, while Prignitz-Poda's matching plate supplies the object-level identification here. [1]
Landscape as More Than a Background
Prignitz-Poda describes the pair as brown hills cut by deep ruts and bare of people, with the lonely agave as the sole vegetation in one picture. [1] She compares the works to another landscape and to the eroded backgrounds of Kahlo's later paintings. That comparison invites attention to the land as an active element of her visual language, but it remains an attributed interpretation. The book does not establish that this watercolour was a study for a particular later canvas.
An agave can carry associations for viewers familiar with Mexican landscapes, yet there is no source here identifying a specific place or recording what Kahlo meant by this plant. It would be equally unsafe to read the grooves as a coded medical image because the book places the watercolours near its account of Kahlo's illness. [1] The chapter's sequence gives historical context, not a documented cause for this composition. Its most secure features are the photographed forms and the specialist's catalogue fields.
The painting also stands apart from an older Landscape dated around 1946/47 in Andrea Kettenmann's illustrated book. [3] The earlier image is neither the first nor the second 1951 watercolour. Kahlo's return to worn terrain across separate works is more interesting when the pictures' identities and dates are kept distinct.
The Limits of a Surviving Reproduction
Prignitz-Poda's caption records the original's whereabouts as unknown, and her following page describes both 1951 watercolours as missing. [1] Unlike the caption for Landscape I, it does not even give a private-collection location. The image survives in publication, but there is no examined owner file, physical signature or continuous provenance to identify where the sheet is now. “Unlocated” is a more measured description than “lost forever.”
That uncertainty narrows what can responsibly be said about the original, not what can be seen in the published composition. The agave remains a distinct visual anchor within its bare, rounded terrain; the companion first landscape offers a different arrangement of similar earth colours and ridges. Together they broaden the account of Kahlo's late work without requiring an invented location or hidden symbolism.
Related Reading
- Landscape I (1951) follows the companion's horizontal ridges and its qualified private-collection record.
- Landscape (c. 1946/47) covers an earlier, separate work.
- Frida Kahlo and Nature looks at natural forms across her art.
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
How does the lone agave organise this small landscape?
What do the book's caption and plate establish, and what remains unknown without the original?
Why do the I and II labels not prove the order in which Kahlo painted the pair?
Join the Conversation
Which reading best fits the evidence, and where does uncertainty remain?
References
- Helga Prignitz-Poda, Hidden Frida Kahlo: Lost, Destroyed or Little-Known Works (Prestel, 2017), printed p. 179 (right plate and caption: title, 1951, watercolour, size and unknown location), p. 180 (paired landscape discussion and agave), p. 213 (index) and p. 216 (general photo credits). These pages were directly read through an Internet Archive lending copy; the original watercolour and the exact 1988 and 2021 comprehensive entries were not. View source text.
- Frida Kahlo a través de su obra, UNAM-hosted thesis, PDF p. 54 / printed p. 50, table “Séptima etapa: La recta final,” containing two Paisaje (1951) rows without plates or numbering. View source text.
- Andrea Kettenmann, Frida Kahlo: Dolor y pasión, separate illustrated Paisaje of about 1946/47, around p. 70. View source text.
- 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.
