My Nurse and I

Introduction

In My Nurse and I, Frida Kahlo gives herself a grown woman's face on a small child's body, held across the arms of a masked wet nurse. Milk passes from an anatomically exposed breast to the child's mouth, while pale drops fall against a clouded sky and leaves crowd around the pair. Kahlo later described the adult head, child body and milk falling as if from the sky in a recollection recorded by Raquel Tibol; that unusually specific testimony grounds the painting without explaining every feature of it. ^{[1] [2]}

The work is also a picture of another person's labour. The nurse supports and feeds the child, yet her personal face and name are absent from the cited records. Museums and scholars have seen the mask as a link to Indigenous antiquity, land or collective inheritance; those readings must be held beside the fact that an unidentified caregiver is represented through an object rather than an individual likeness. ^{[1] [3] [5] [6]}

At a Glance

Contents

1. Introduction
2. A Small Painting with Two Unequal Figures
3. Kahlo's Recollection and Its Distance from Childhood
4. The Mask and a Carefully Limited Archaeological Lead
5. Milk, Rain and the Branching Leaf
6. Popular Art, Adult Child and Competing Cultural Readings
7. First Exhibitions in Mexico, New York and Paris
8. Photographs, Two Sales Approaches and Collection History
9. Why the Painting Has Drawn Different Readings

A Small Painting with Two Unequal Figures

The horizontal scene is tightly framed. A bare-chested, brown-skinned adult holds a much smaller pale-clothed body before a cloudy grey-blue field; green leaves rise close behind them and a red-brown band crosses the bottom. There is little depth or distant landscape. The colours describe this official reproduction, not a calibrated examination of the original pigments. ^{[1] [3]}

The adult's long, dark hair falls beside a frontal, stone-like mask whose openings and carved-looking features interrupt ordinary facial expression. One hand supports the child's lower body while the other arm crosses the torso. The physical act of holding is visible; affection, indifference or hostility is not. Calling the nurse “cold and distant” would mistake a face concealed in the image for an emotion known about a historical woman. ^{[2] [3]}

The smaller figure wears a pale short garment and has bare legs and feet, but her head is an unmistakably adult self-image. Kahlo's eyebrows, hair, eyes and lips face outward while the mouth meets the nurse's breast. Both faces address the viewer rather than one another, making the nourishing contact and the lack of mutual gaze coexist. That tension is a formal feature, not a diagnosis of the relationship. ^{[1] [3]}

One breast is rendered with a branching inner structure exposed, as though an anatomical diagram had been placed inside the body. Two larger pale drops descend from the other nipple; many finer light streaks fall through the sky. The broad pale leaf at the right and darker leaves below repeat branching veins found in the painted breast. A viewer can see the visual rhyme without identifying a specific medical plate or plant species, or assuming that every white mark is literally milk. ^{[2] [3] [5]}

The strip at the bottom can resemble soil, a ledge or a sill, but the reproduction does not settle its material identity. Nor does its smooth appearance establish the state of the metal support, the reverse, any signature, a short-haired underlayer or current condition. The owner-associated checklist, not the image, supplies the medium and dimensions; technical questions require the Museo Dolores Olmedo object file. ^{[1] [3]}

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Great Art Explained

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Kahlo's Recollection and Its Distance from Childhood

The 2022 exhibition catalogue transmits a memory Kahlo gave to Raquel Tibol in May 1953. Kahlo said her mother could not breastfeed her because her sister Cristina was born when Frida was eleven months old; a wet nurse fed her instead, and the nurse's breasts were washed each time she went to nurse. Kahlo described painting herself with the face of a grown woman and a little girl's body, with milk falling from the nipples as if from the sky. ^{[1] [4]}

This is strong evidence for autobiographical reference and for several deliberate pictorial choices. It is not a diary entry from 1937, much less a record made during infancy: it is Kahlo remembering many decades later, as recorded and later published through Tibol. The underlying handwritten note and complete Tibol editions have not been examined here, so the page paraphrases the museum's transmission rather than claiming a new primary transcription or building an exact psychological account from its punctuation. ^{[1] [4]}

The breast-washing detail is striking but not self-explanatory. Kahlo did not identify who ordered it, how long it continued or what the nurse herself thought. Celia Mercedes Alanís Rufino's Spanish-language social history shows that Mexican wet nurses were paid workers subjected to medical inspection and moral judgement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. That broader history makes hygiene, class, race and labour pertinent questions; it does not prove what happened in the Kahlo household beyond the artist's recollection. ^{[4] [6]}

Even the number of nurses remains open. A later magazine feature attributes a story about two Indigenous wet nurses and a first dismissal for drinking to Kahlo's conversation with Olga Campos, but the original 1949–50 interview has not been consulted. Without the original interview, the statement cannot be treated as reliable biography: the painting and Tibol passage alone identify neither a second nurse nor a dismissal. ^{[4] [26]}

The official Casa de México text calls the represented woman Indigenous. No inspected household document gives her name, community, language, age, contract or wages, and the mask cannot supply those details. The painting's central relationship therefore joins an intensely identifiable adult self to a caregiver whose individuality is withheld, while her supporting arms and feeding breast remain essential to the scene. ^{[2] [3] [6]}

My Nurse and I in Kahlo’s career

Year

193019351940194519501955

Frieda and Diego Rivera

1931

My Grandparents, My Parents, and I

1936

My Nurse and I

1937

The Two Fridas

1939

The Broken Column

1944

Marxism Will Give Health to the Sick

1954

Timeline source: Museo Frida Kahlo chronology ^[27].

The Mask and a Carefully Limited Archaeological Lead

The mask appears dark, stone-like and frontal in the official reproduction. Museo Dolores Olmedo's 2022 catalogue calls it Teotihuacan and suggests that the very object depicted was likely a mask once owned by Diego Rivera and later given to André Breton. “Likely” matters: an identifiable candidate and a plausible art-world path are not proof that Kahlo used that specific object as her model. ^{[1] [3]}

The candidate itself is well documented. The Musée du quai Branly records a Teotihuacan mask, twenty centimetres high, that passed through Rivera's and Breton's collections; Leonardo López Luján and Michelle De Anda Rogel identify its material as black limestone and report twentieth-century polishing. Those facts establish the candidate's history and material, not its identity with the painted mask, whose surface and exact shape cannot be technically compared through a single reproduction. ^{[7] [8]}

The original 1939 Mexique checklist makes the distinction sharper. It lists Moi et ma nourrice among Kahlo's paintings and then a separately numbered pre-Columbian section, but none of its item descriptions clearly names this particular black mask. Its 56 numbered entries may cover more than 56 physical objects because some are grouped; the later catalogue's total of 58 objects cannot be rejected merely by counting lines. The checklist does not prove the candidate was displayed beside the painting in Paris. ^{[1] [9]}

“Funerary mask” is another phrase to handle carefully. The quai Branly archaeological dossier says Teotihuacan masks were not normally wearable and that the few controlled finds are associated with public buildings rather than graves; they may have been attached to perishable figures. A critic may invoke death or ritual in interpreting Kahlo's image, but that is different from establishing the historical function of the particular mask type. ^{[5] [7]}

The mask also changes how the nurse appears as a person. Rivera interpreted its hard stone face as a way of representing a woman whose features Kahlo did not know or remember; his 1943 argument is currently available through Luis Roberto Vera and Raquel Tibol, not a fully read original bulletin page. That interpretation is valuable as a near-contemporary response by someone close to Kahlo, but it should not be recast as Kahlo's own account of why she painted it. ^{[11] [12]}

Milk, Rain and the Branching Leaf

Kahlo's 1953 recollection gives the falling milk a direct, if poetic, relation to the sky. The Casa de México object text also transmits a saying about rain as the Virgin's milk and describes nourishment reaching vegetation, but the underlying source for that particular saying is not exposed. The first is a mediated artist recollection; the second is a named curatorial interpretation with a further unverified origin. ^{[1] [2] [4]}

Joëlle Guyot follows the branching forms across the opened breast, falling drops and veined leaves. Her French study reads the nurse as an Earth Mother and the scene as a circulation between individual body, vegetation and land. The formal repetition is visible, but an Earth Mother identity is her critical proposal, not the painting's title or a goddess named by Kahlo. ^{[3] [5]}

Rivera's 1943 discussion likewise linked the glands to milk falling like rain and fertilising the earth. Raúl Flores Guerrero, writing in 1957, called the exposed anatomy a kind of glandular tree and treated the nurse as a figure of the people who nourished Kahlo culturally as well as physically. Their readings come from different moments and voices, yet each moves beyond a closed family memory toward collective and natural imagery. ^{[10] [11]}

That expansion carries a cost if the woman disappears into an emblem. A paid caregiver's body becomes the place where personal memory, natural abundance and national ancestry are made to meet, even though her individual circumstances are unknown. Alanís Rufino's history invites readers to remember work, surveillance and pay alongside the image's formal beauty; it does not justify the old claim that the falling drops specifically represent wages. ^{[5] [6] [10]}

In a later comparison written for Roots, Hayden Herrera describes a reversal: Kahlo receives nourishment from the nurse in this painting but gives nourishment to the earth through her own body in the later work. That is an illuminating relation between two compositions, not evidence that they share one complete fertility code. The study of Roots considers that later painting in its own right. ^[20]

Popular Art, Adult Child and Competing Cultural Readings

At 30.5 by 35 centimetres and painted in oil on sheet metal, the work can recall the scale and material of Mexican popular devotional pictures. Guyot argues that Kahlo transformed such conventions and critiques a reductive European “primitive” label. Material resemblance alone does not turn this picture into a categorical ex-voto: it lacks an established votive inscription or documented commission for a devotional purpose. ^{[1] [5]}

Flores Guerrero compared the adult-faced child with figures in popular Mexican religious imagery, where a Christ child can bear mature features. Guyot also discusses Nativity art and Mesoamerican nursing objects as formal comparators. Neither scholar supplies evidence that Kahlo copied a specific Nativity or archaeological figure for the self-image; Kahlo's own later recollection confirms the visual device but not that genealogical explanation. ^{[1] [5] [10]}

Vera proposes a more elaborate Teotihuacan or Tlalocan framework, including a cave-goddess association and a pyramidal arrangement of the figures. Such Spanish-language scholarship helps show how the image has been read through pre-Columbian cosmology rather than only individual biography. It remains an attributed hypothesis, not a deciphered artist-authored programme or a reason to identify the nurse as a named deity. ^[12]

These interpretations meet at a genuine tension. The composition gives Kahlo an adult self-image looking out from infancy while representing the Indigenous nurse as a masked, anonymous source of bodily support. A nationalist reading may value the mask as collective ancestry; a labour-historical reading asks what happens to the worker's own face and voice. Neither perspective can recover the woman's identity, and neither should erase the nourishment she visibly provides. ^{[2] [3] [5] [6] [10]}

First Exhibitions in Mexico, New York and Paris

An IFAR study cites a photograph of the painting hanging in a Mexican group exhibition in 1937 beside My Grandparents, My Parents, and I and Me and My Doll. The photograph and its full caption have not been consulted, and the accessible note does not identify the venue or show title. The evidence supports a lifetime public showing in Mexico without allowing a more exact label to be invented. ^[13]

Kahlo's first New York solo exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery ran from 1 to 15 November 1938, as its surviving invitation shows. That invitation is not an artwork checklist, although a Philadelphia Museum of Art finding aid identifies a relevant list of works in the gallery papers. Later sources associate My Nurse and I with New York, but the original list has not been read here; its inclusion, title and sale terms should therefore remain qualified. ^[14]

Paris is firmer. The original catalogue for Mexique, held in André Breton's archive, lists eighteen Kahlo works and identifies Moi et ma nourrice as number 69; the exhibition ran at Galerie Renou et Colle from 10 to 25 March 1939. This contemporary French title and number establish that the painting travelled into a show that deliberately juxtaposed modern and pre-Columbian Mexican art. They do not establish that the candidate black mask was in the same room or inspired this painting in advance. ^[9]

These records make the painting more than an autobiographical image retained at home. It entered Mexican, and securely Parisian, public contexts during Kahlo's lifetime, where viewers could relate it to other self-portraits, popular forms and archaeological objects. The exact New York and 1937 hanging details remain discoverable archival questions rather than gaps to fill with later summaries. ^{[9] [13] [14]}

Photographs, Two Sales Approaches and Collection History

Nickolas Muray photographed the painting in 1938. The George Eastman Museum catalogs his gelatin-silver print and records its identifying verso marks, making it an early photographic witness to the object's appearance, not evidence that Muray owned it. Its museum record documents a separate photograph rather than the painted original. ^[16]

The Philadelphia Museum of Art's Arensberg papers contain a file for the painting with a photograph and a Frances Toor letter dated 5 August 1939 offering it for possible purchase. The archival description proves a sales approach, but the letter itself, its price and any reply have not been read. It would be wrong to turn an offer into an Arensberg acquisition. ^[15]

A second approach appears in a December 1941 communication from Kahlo to Emmy Lou Packard, transmitted through Vera and Tibol. Kahlo asked Packard to interest the Arensbergs in “I and my nurse” instead of Birth, which she said was already Kaufmann's; Smithsonian archive descriptions independently identify the 15 December letter and 17 December telegram. The archive summaries secure the originals' identity but not their full wording, and neither the request nor the mediated text proves a completed transaction or the painting's location at that time. ^{[12] [17]}

The later chain has missing links. A 2004 La Jornada report says the Museo Dolores Olmedo exhibited the painting and relates the museum's acquisition of Morillo Safa family works; a 2026 report names My Nurse and I in that acquired group. The owner-associated 2022 catalogue supplies the firm current collection credit, but no inspected invoice or accession file connects every transfer from Kahlo to that collection. The proper credit is Museo Dolores Olmedo collection, not an invented continuous provenance. ^{[1] [18]}

Recent display also requires dates rather than a permanent “on view” claim. A 2004 exhibition report names the work at Museo Dolores Olmedo, and the official 2022 Madrid catalogue lists it in Frida Kahlo: Alas para volar. Mari Carmen Ramírez, curator of Houston's 2026 Frida: The Making of an Icon, names it among important Museo Dolores Olmedo loans; the general MFAH page gives exhibition dates but not a My Nurse and I line. A later Tate tour schedule alone does not prove the same object travelled to London, and the museum's reopening does not prove the painting is in a particular gallery now. ^{[1] [18] [19]}

Why the Painting Has Drawn Different Readings

Raúl Flores Guerrero reported in 1957 that this was the painting Kahlo preferred. His statement is unusually close to her lifetime, but it is his testimony, not a recovered sentence written or recorded by Kahlo. He also framed the scene through Mexican popular imagery and a people who nourish the painter, showing how early criticism could connect personal childhood with cultural identity. ^[10]

Rivera had already described the work in 1943 through the nurse's stone mask, exposed glands, milk and earth. His proximity to Kahlo makes that account historically significant, not automatically identical to her intentions. Guyot later emphasised popular and Mesoamerican forms, Vera proposed Teotihuacan cosmology, and Alanís Rufino supplies a social history of paid care rather than an artwork interpretation. Keeping their different dates and tasks visible is more useful than merging them into a universal symbol key. ^{[5] [6] [11] [12]}

No exact artist statement in the inspected corpus says that Rivera encouraged Kahlo to make this picture as part of a series. No technical file supports a tale that she painted short hair first and covered it with long hair; the front reproduction cannot reveal a concealed underlayer. The milk-rain image comes from Kahlo's recollection, but the claim that the drops stand for the nurse's wages does not. None of those stories is established by the available object records. ^{[1] [3] [4] [6]}

Books and Open Questions

A relevant comprehensive reference is Luis-Martín Lozano, Andrea Kettenmann and Marina Vázquez Ramos's Frida Kahlo: The Complete Paintings. The publisher confirms a 624-page catalogue, but its My Nurse and I entry, notes, technical data and photograph census have not been read here. Hayden Herrera's Frida and Gannit Ankori's Frida Kahlo may illuminate childhood narrative and the painting's critical reception; their relevant complete chapters and notes likewise remain unread, so no detailed claim on this page rests on them. ^{[22] [23] [24]}

More decisive for several open questions are exact primary or owner records: Tibol's original 1953 note or closest full edition; Olga Campos's interview; Rivera's 1943 printed passage; the 1937 exhibition photograph and caption; the Julien Levy work list; the Arensberg file and 1941 Packard communications; and Museo Dolores Olmedo's object, technical and accession file. The 2026 Houston exhibition catalogue is also a route to an object checklist and later display history. Until those materials are consulted, they cannot settle the questions above. ^{[13] [14] [15] [17] [25] [26]}

Related Reading

My Birth revisits Kahlo's beginnings through a different painted scene. The Love Embrace of the Universe develops another image of nurture on a different scale, while Roots joins the body to growing plants without depicting this nurse or child.

Questions Readers Often Ask

What the Nursing Scene Holds Together

The painting places adult memory into a child's body and sets a real feeding action beside an anatomical cutaway, falling drops and living leaves. Kahlo's 1953 recollection anchors the autobiographical scene; the mask, visual correspondences and exhibition history show why it cannot be exhausted by childhood anecdote. The nurse remains necessary to every reading, yet unidentified in the surviving records—a limit that responsible interpretation should disclose rather than fill with sentiment or a generic symbol. ^{[1] [3] [4] [5] [6]}

References

1. Fundación Casa de México en España and Museo Dolores Olmedo, Frida Kahlo: alas para volar (2022), PDF pp.40, 42 and 64 / printed pp.36, 38 and 60. The 68-page catalogue’s relevant text, reproduction and checklist were consulted; see the official exhibition and catalogue page. The exhibition page's present start-date display differs from an April 2022 press release, so no exact Madrid opening date is asserted here. View source text.
2. Fundación Casa de México en España, “Mi nana y yo”, Spanish and English object text credited to Museo Dolores Olmedo documentary material prepared by Josefina García. Complete page read; the Virgin's-milk saying is a curatorial transmission whose underlying source has not been found. View source text.
3. Fundación Casa de México en España and Museo Dolores Olmedo, Frida Kahlo: alas para volar catalogue (2022), PDF p.42 / printed p.38. Its full-object reproduction supports visual description, but not claims about the reverse, condition or exact pigments; the artwork is not reproduced here. View source text.
4. Frida Kahlo’s May 1953 recollection recorded by Raquel Tibol, as transmitted in the 2022 exhibition catalogue, PDF p.40 / printed p.36. The underlying Tibol note and complete edited volumes were not inspected; the account is paraphrased through its stated mediator. View source text.
5. Joëlle Guyot, “Mythes identitaires et histoire dans l’œuvre de Frida Kahlo”, América 3 (1988), pp.81–99, especially pp.89–94; DOI 10.3406/ameri.1988.928. Complete article and notes read in French; Earth Mother, devotional and Mesoamerican comparisons are attributed interpretations. View source text.
6. Celia Mercedes Alanís Rufino, “Las nodrizas ¿mercenarias?”, Saberes 5, no.11 (2022), pp.107–130, especially pp.109–127. Complete Spanish article read; its 1880–1952 social history does not identify Kahlo's nurse or prove household details. View source text.
7. Musée du quai Branly–Jacques Chirac, Teotihuacan exhibition dossier (university-hosted copy), inv.70.1999.12.1, local PDF p.24, including mask function and Rivera–Breton provenance. Complete relevant French section read; identification with the painted mask remains a hypothesis. View source text.
8. Leonardo López Luján and Michelle De Anda Rogel, “Teotihuacan in Mexico-Tenochtitlan: Recent Discoveries, New Insights,” The PARI Journal 19, no.3 (2019), printed p.9 / PDF p.5, inv.70.1999.12.1. Complete relevant Spanish/English object discussion read; it records black limestone, twenty-centimetre height and modern polishing, not a proved model for the painting. View source text.
9. Atelier André Breton, Mexique (Galerie Renou et Colle, Paris, 10–25 March 1939), institutional catalogue scan, scan 16, item 69, Moi et ma nourrice; scans 17–18, pre-Columbian items 86–141. All twenty scan images and the relevant checklist were inspected. View source text.
10. Raúl Flores Guerrero, Cinco pintores mexicanos (1957), pp.15–22, discussion of this painting in the official UNAM reprint at PDF pp.4–5 / printed pp.591–592. Complete relevant Spanish pages read; his report of Kahlo's preference is attributed testimony, not a verbatim artist statement. View source text.
11. Diego Rivera, “Frida Kahlo y el arte mexicano,” Boletín del Seminario de Cultura Mexicana 1, no.2 (October 1943), pp.89–101; ICAA/MFAH item 735544. The original passage on this painting was not fully accessible; its wording and argument were read through reference 12 and Tibol's cited route. View source text.
12. Luis Roberto Vera, “Raíz mesoamericana: Octavio Paz, Efraín Huerta y Frida Kahlo”, Impossibilia 4 (October 2012), pp.202–232, especially pp.211–212. Complete relevant Spanish article read; the Teotihuacan/Tlalocan construction, Rivera transmission and 1941 communication route are attributed to the author and his cited records. View source text.
13. Salomon Grimberg, Jane C. H. Jacob and Laurent Sozzani, “Two Frida Kahlo Portraits”, IFAR Journal 14, no.3 (2013), p.28 note 18. The authorised article was read; its note cites a 1937 Mexican exhibition photograph, but the original image, caption and venue have not been consulted. View source text.
14. Julien Levy Gallery, Frida Kahlo exhibition invitation, 1–15 November 1938, Museo Dolores Olmedo/Google Arts institutional scan; Philadelphia Museum of Art Library, Julien Levy Gallery records, Box 16 Folder 1, finding aid for the exhibition work list. The complete invitation and folder-level record were read, not the underlying work list; object-level inclusion remains unconfirmed. View source text 1; View source text 2.
15. Philadelphia Museum of Art Library, Walter and Louise Arensberg papers, Box 60 Folder 84, item WLA_B060_F084_001, My Nurse and I file, circa 1939. The item-level finding aid describes a photograph and Frances Toor's 5 August 1939 offer letter; the file itself and any reply were not read. View source text.
16. George Eastman Museum, Nickolas Muray's photograph of Kahlo's My Nurse and I, 1938, gelatin-silver print, accession 1977.0188.3114B. Complete object record read; the photograph is not reproduced here. View source text.
17. Frida Kahlo, 15 and 17 December 1941 communications to Emmy Lou Packard, Smithsonian Archives of American Art descriptions of the 15 December letter and 17 December telegram, Digital IDs 748 and 747; mediated wording through reference 12 and the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana Casa del Tiempo transcription, Escrituras route pp.203–205. The archive metadata was checked, but the original manuscript images and full Tibol edition were not inspected; the communication is evidence of an approach, not a completed sale. View source text 1; View source text 2; View source text 3.
18. La Jornada, “Frida Kahlo: viva la vida” exhibition report, 17 July 2004, and Museo Dolores Olmedo reopening/collection report, 29 May 2026. Both articles were read for dated display and the reported Morillo Safa purchase group; transaction documents and current room-level placement were not inspected. View source text 1; View source text 2.
19. Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Frida: The Making of an Icon, official exhibition page, 19 January–17 May 2026; Mari Carmen Ramírez interview, Gagosian Quarterly, 9 February 2026, naming this painting among Museo Dolores Olmedo loans. The curator's testimony supports Houston inclusion; an object-level Tate checklist was not acquired. View source text 1; View source text 2.
20. Hayden Herrera, catalogue note for Kahlo's Roots / Raíces, Sotheby's Latin American Art sale N08208, lot 6 (2006). Complete public lot essay read for Herrera's attributed comparison; it does not determine this painting’s provenance or technical facts. View source text.
21. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, Archivo Fotográfico Manuel Toussaint record IIE:AFMT:TP5095, Mi nana y yo. Complete metadata read; it gives 30.5 × 37 centimetres and restricts image use, whereas reference 1 controls this page's 30.5 × 35-centimetre owner-associated dimension. View source text.
22. Luis-Martín Lozano, Andrea Kettenmann and Marina Vázquez Ramos, Frida Kahlo: The Complete Paintings (TASCHEN, 2021), publisher record, 624 pages. The complete book and its entry for this painting, notes and technical apparatus have not been read. View source text.
23. Hayden Herrera, Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo (Bloomsbury edition), publisher record only; the complete painting-specific text and source notes have not been read. View source text.
24. Gannit Ankori, Frida Kahlo (Reaktion Books, Critical Lives, 2013), publisher/distributor record only; pages on this painting have not been consulted. View source text.
25. Mari Carmen Ramírez, ed., Frida: The Making of an Icon (Yale University Press, 2026), publisher record, 400 pages; the entry for this painting and the exhibition checklist have not been consulted. View source text.
26. Vanity Fair's 1995 biographical feature attributing the two-nurse/dismissal story to Kahlo's interview with Olga Campos. The original 1949–50 interview was not obtained, so the article cannot establish the reported story as fact. View source text.
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.

Frida Kahlo

Explore Kahlo’s paintings

Continue with twelve key works, from early portraits to paintings of identity, illness and the natural world.

1. 01The Two FridasRead the painting →
2. 02The Broken ColumnRead the painting →
3. 03Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and HummingbirdRead the painting →
4. 04Self-Portrait with Cropped HairRead the painting →
5. 05Henry Ford HospitalRead the painting →
6. 06What the Water Gave MeRead the painting →
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 →
11. 11The Wounded DeerRead the painting →
12. 12Viva la VidaRead the painting →

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