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

Frida Kahlo brings her face close to the edges of a small tin in Self-Portrait with Curly Hair. Dark curls frame an outward gaze; pale beads and a double-hoop earring interrupt the red garment and dark shoulder wrap. [1] [2] The portrait has often been read through Kahlo’s separation from Diego Rivera in 1935, but its size, restrained setting and history as a gift to Ella Wolfe also deserve attention in their own right. [1] [3] [4]

Christie’s catalogues the work as oil on tin, 18.3 × 14.6 centimetres, painted in 1935. [1] Museo Frida Kahlo uses the Spanish title Autorretrato (con pelo rizado) and dates it approximately to that year. [4] It is neither a variant nor an early state of the 1940 Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair, which has a different support, composition and set of objects. [5]

At a Glance

  • Title: Self-Portrait with Curly Hair / Autorretrato (con pelo rizado); other Spanish title variants refer to the same painting. [1] [4] [6] [7]
  • Date, medium and size: 1935, oil on tin, 18.3 × 14.6 cm in Christie’s record. A Spanish catalogue gives 19.3 × 14.7 cm; the difference remains unresolved. [1] [4] [6] [8]
  • Gift: Christie’s names Ella Wolfe as recipient; Museo Frida Kahlo names Bertram and Ella. The exact gift date is unknown. [1] [4] [9]
  • 2003 sale: Christie’s New York, lot 25, 18 November; reported result US$1,351,500. The current owner is unverified. [1] [10] [11]
  • Reverse: Christie's reports a carved self-portrait sketch on the tin's reverse; no reverse image was available for independent examination. [1] [12]

Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. A Portrait at Close Range
  3. Short Hair and the 1935 Separation
  4. The Gift to Bertram and Ella Wolfe
  5. Tin, Portrait Traditions and Their Limits
  6. From Ella Wolfe’s Estate to the 2003 Sale
  7. A Promised Exhibition Is Not a Confirmed Showing
  8. A Modern Image Study and What It Cannot Show
  9. Further Reading and Open Questions

A Portrait at Close Range

The head and shoulders nearly fill the vertical field. The crown approaches the top edge, the shoulders meet both sides, and the lower boundary cuts across the upper torso; behind the figure is a pale, cool-toned ground without a recognisable room or landscape. [2] On the original tin’s published dimensions, this is a compact encounter rather than the large, theatrical scene that a screen enlargement might suggest. [1]

Short, dense curls form a dark cap around the face. Individual coils turn in different directions, making the upper silhouette more irregular than the smooth background, while the face itself turns only slightly and the eyes look outward. [2] Joined eyebrows, long lashes, tiny pale eye highlights and fine upper-lip hair receive close attention. Those features can be described, but the gaze cannot by itself prove anger, defiance, resignation or any other emotional state.

The visible colours set warm face, lips and red garment against a cooler blue-grey field. A dark brown-black textile crosses one shoulder and appears at the other edge, interrupting the red area asymmetrically. [2] No seam, fibre or full garment construction can be recovered from the small reproduction. “Wrap” or “outer textile” therefore describes what is visible more cautiously than a named regional costume.

One ear is exposed at the viewer’s right and carries an ornament of two cool-toned hoops or crescents. At the neck, a close line of dark beads is accompanied by larger pale blue-grey or lilac-looking elements. [2] The image does not identify their material, origin or whether there is a matching earring out of view. Herrera compares a necklace in an earlier portrait with pre-Columbian jade; that does not establish that the beads here are jade. [13]

Curls, hoops, beads, irises and highlights repeat small rounded forms across the portrait. The painting’s depth comes mainly from overlaps—hair over forehead, jewellery against skin, dark textile over red clothing—and from warm and cool modelling of the face, rather than from a receding setting. [2] Such organisation gives the figure presence without requiring every formal choice to carry a decipherable symbol.

No signature, date or dedication is recorded on the front in Christie’s description or legible in the available 400 × 527-pixel image. [1] [2] That does not prove the physical front is unsigned. The only reported mark beyond the painted face is Christie’s statement about a carved self-portrait sketch on the unseen reverse, whose pose, completeness and relationship to the front remain unknown. [1] [12]

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.

Short Hair and the 1935 Separation

Museo Frida Kahlo places the portrait after Kahlo learned of Rivera’s relationship with her sister Cristina and says she spent time with Bertram and Ella Wolfe in New York during this difficult period. [4] The museum’s chronology makes that setting relevant to the painting and its gift. It does not provide a diary statement in which Kahlo explains the curls, red garment or outward gaze, nor does it fix the month or place where the tin was painted. [4] [14]

In his signed Christie’s essay, Salomon Grimberg reads the short curled hair and absence of elaborate Tehuana dress as a move towards androgyny during the separation. [3] He describes the hair as a “permanent curl,” but no salon appointment or styling procedure is documented by that phrase. What is visible is the short, densely curled coiffure; its meaning and how it was achieved belong to a different level of evidence. [2] [3]

Hayden Herrera, writing for the same sale, sets the plain red clothing and dark wrap against Kahlo’s more elaborate forms of self-presentation, and interprets the portrait through independence and anger. [13] Ivanna Margarucci’s Spanish catalogue calls it the first short-haired portrait and sees the haircut as a response to Rivera’s preference for her long hair. [6] Both accounts can help explain why hairstyle has become central to the work’s reception, but neither turns motive into something visible on the tin. “First” would also require a complete and securely dated portrait chronology to prove. [6] [15]

Spanish-language studies by Orli Monakier Klein and Carlos Omar Segoviano Rodríguez extend the separation reading into questions of gender and changing self-image. [7] [8] Their arguments show how the picture has been interpreted across languages, not that Kahlo renounced femininity or intended a single psychological message. The still-present earring, beads and red garment complicate any description of a simple switch from feminine to masculine dress; the cropped image itself cannot inventory an entire outfit. [2]

The 1940 Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair makes a useful boundary, not an explanatory shortcut. That later canvas includes scissors, loose cut hair, an oversized suit and a song inscription; none appears in this 1935 close bust on tin. [5] A comparison can clarify that hair recurs as a subject without carrying the later work’s objects or more explicit staging backwards into this gift portrait. The larger history of dress and Tehuana presentation belongs to the cluster’s dedicated fashion account. [16]

Self-Portrait with Curly Hair in Kahlo’s career

Timeline source: Museo Frida Kahlo chronology [38].

The Gift to Bertram and Ella Wolfe

Christie’s provenance begins with Kahlo and a gift to Ella Wolfe; Museo Frida Kahlo says the portrait was given to Bertram and Ella Wolfe. [1] [4] That variation may distinguish the couple’s social relationship from Ella’s later legal or household custody, but the records do not explain it. The secure point is that the small portrait entered their circle as a gift and remained associated with Ella. [1] [4] [9]

The Wolfes were longstanding contacts of Kahlo and Rivera, as the Hoover Institution’s description of their papers confirms. [17] Bertram Wolfe also wrote about Rivera, though that career does not explain the painting's transfer into the couple's household. The recipients matter because the painting’s passage from artist to friends and then through Ella’s estate is much better documented than the private circulation of many Kahlo works. [1] [17]

Art dealer Mary-Anne Martin later recalled visiting Ella Wolfe and seeing Kahlo’s little Self-Portrait with Curly Hair in her home; Martin said Wolfe told her it had been a gift. [9] The Smithsonian Archives of American Art interview was recorded in 2009 and its transcript reviewed in 2019, long after the visit it remembers. [9] [18] It is valuable named eyewitness testimony to household custody, not a contemporaneous 1935 transfer receipt or proof of the precise date and setting of the gift.

Other archives thicken the relationship without filling that gap. The Hoover Institution holds Ella Wolfe’s 1982–83 oral history and Wolfe family papers, but the relevant audio and object-specific folders have not been heard or inspected here. [17] [19] A letter from Ella to Kahlo preserved by the National Museum of Women in the Arts shows affectionate contact, yet its 15 March date lacks a year and it does not name this portrait. [20] The exact gift conversation remains unknown despite strong evidence that the friendship and object were real.

Tin, Portrait Traditions and Their Limits

The Christie’s medium line, oil on tin, identifies a small metal support. [1] Kahlo used metal grounds elsewhere, and MoMA describes retablos as small devotional pictures commonly painted on metal plates. [21] The shared material makes that tradition relevant to Kahlo’s practice, but it does not make this self-portrait an ex-voto: no saint, miracle, petition or written thanks is visible, and no checked exact-object source assigns it that genre. [2] [21]

“Tin” is a catalogue term rather than an analysis of the plate’s alloy. The front image shows neither an exposed edge nor the reverse, and no conservation report has been obtained. [2] [12] The carved sketch reported by Christie’s might eventually illuminate how Kahlo handled or reused the support; until it is imaged, even the sketch’s relationship to the painted face is unknown. The compact medium can be discussed without inventing a studio procedure.

Herrera compares the portrait’s frontal presence and careful small-scale description with nineteenth-century Mexican regional portraiture, naming José María Estrada and Hermenegildo Bustos. [13] Institutional accounts of Estrada and Bustos confirm that those artists made distinctive, closely observed portraits; Bustos also worked in devotional formats. [22] [23] That background helps explain what Herrera is noticing, but no letter, sketch or source statement shows that Kahlo copied a particular work by either painter. Their paintings differ in format, purpose and circumstance from a gift made by Kahlo in 1935.

Herrera also invokes Roman-Egyptian mummy portraits often called Fayum portraits. [13] The Metropolitan Museum of Art describes such panels as face-centred images with direct gazes, generally made on wood for funerary use. [24] Kahlo’s oil-on-tin gift shares a compact face-to-viewer intensity, but not their material, date or function. The analogy is a critic’s way of sharpening attention to formal presence, not evidence of a recovered source or of Kahlo’s intent.

From Ella Wolfe’s Estate to the 2003 Sale

The published Christie’s provenance follows the work from Kahlo to Ella Wolfe, then to Wolfe’s estate and Artemundi. [1] An Artemundi announcement says the portrait remained in Ella’s dining room until her death in January 2000; that detail is a seller’s retrospective account, though Martin independently remembered seeing the picture in Wolfe’s home. [9] [10] Richard York Gallery archive folders dated 2000–03 may clarify the later handling, but their contents have not been examined. [25]

An unusually direct glimpse of that intervening market period appears in Lindsay Pollock’s report from the 2002 New York Art Show. During setup on 20 February, she saw Self-Portrait with Curly Hair on the wall of Richard York Gallery’s booth, offered at an asking price of US$1.2 million. [37] The report gives the fair’s public dates as 21–25 February, but the on-site sighting itself was during setup; it does not prove precisely how long the work remained hung. It also misdates the portrait to 1934, which cannot overrule the 1935 Christie’s and museum records. [1] [4] [37]

Pollock records York reading the expression as self-confident and defiant. [37] That is useful contemporary dealer reception, not an artist statement or something the painted gaze can prove. The report confirms a documented pre-auction presentation in New York and gives a concrete reason to inspect the surviving Richard York Gallery files; it does not by itself establish whether the gallery owned the painting, represented Artemundi or acted under another arrangement. [25] [37]

The work appeared at Christie’s New York on 18 November 2003 as lot 25. Artemundi’s contemporary announcement and independent market reporting give the result as US$1,351,500, against a published pre-sale estimate of US$1.5–2 million. [10] [11] [26] The result is a dated transaction, not a measure of artistic merit or evidence of why Artemundi sold. One Artnet report mistakenly dates the painting to 1953 even while reporting the 2003 result; the convergent object records establish 1935. [1] [4] [11]

The cited public records do not identify the buyer. A 2005 PBS/WETA resource located the picture in a private California collection, but that is a dated historical statement, not current custody. [27] Bridgeman’s “Private Collection” image field and a portrait tile still displayed on Artemundi’s site are likewise not present-tense ownership records after the documented sale. [28] There is no checked later auction, accession, loan or location record that would justify naming an owner or telling readers where they can see the original now.

The size itself has an unresolved catalogue history. Christie’s 7¼ × 5¾ inches corresponds closely to its 18.3 × 14.6 cm line, also repeated by Bridgeman. [1] [28] Margarucci and Segoviano publish 19.3 × 14.7 cm, a difference of a full centimetre in height. [6] [8] The sale-specific measurement controls this page, but the disagreement should remain visible until an owner or registrar establishes whether the sources measured different boundaries or one simply erred. The available image cannot settle that physical question. [2] [12]

A Promised Exhibition Is Not a Confirmed Showing

Christie’s 2003 catalogue text said the portrait had been promised for the forthcoming travelling exhibition Retratos: 2,000 Years of Latin American Portraits. [1] A promise before a sale shows intention at that date, not that the eventual buyer or organisers carried it out. A Smithsonian visitor study of the Washington installation explicitly identifies the exhibited Kahlo as the 1940 Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird, not this small tin portrait; the San Antonio catalogue listing confirms a later venue but does not supply its complete checklist. [29] [30]

Independent newspaper reports identify the 1940 painting in Washington and Miami, in agreement with the Smithsonian's Washington study. [31] [32] They do not prove that every travelling venue had exactly the same checklist, but they prevent the advance promise from being printed as this portrait’s completed exhibition history. The full Retratos catalogue and venue lists may clarify whether the 1935 portrait appeared at another stop, remained a planning proposal or was replaced. [30]

This does not diminish the verified gift or sale history. It makes the evidential line clearer: Christie’s recorded an intended future loan; later reporting identifies a different exhibited Kahlo; no identified item-level record confirms that Self-Portrait with Curly Hair was displayed. [1] [31] [32] No post-2003 public display of this original has been verified. [33]

A Modern Image Study and What It Cannot Show

A 2022 peer-reviewed study of digital reproductions placed this portrait among forty-three Kahlo self-portraits and assigned its image the lowest fractal-dimension value in that dataset, 1.9. [34] The authors connected the comparatively simple digital image with a prior catalogue narrative of anger or pain. That result describes their chosen files and computational method; it does not measure the physical tin or independently establish how Kahlo felt in 1935. [34] [35]

The distinction matters because the researchers downloaded web images, prepared them manually and analysed whole reproductions without consistent photography or calibrated colour. [35] Their emotional categories also drew on earlier biographical writing, so a numeric score cannot become fresh evidence that the red garment or face encodes anger. The study is useful as a modern reception example precisely when its methodological limits are kept beside its finding.

Further Reading and Open Questions

Christie’s catalogue points readers to Herrera’s 1983 biography (pp.180–187, note 37), Martha Zamora’s 1987 study (p.285), the 1988 Frida Kahlo Das Gesamtwerk (p.106, no.41), Herrera’s 1991 paintings volume (p.109), and ArtNexus 45 (p.82). [1] [36] Their exact passages may refine the portrait’s early history or interpretation; this article does not attribute a claim to those unverified pages.

The TASCHEN catalogue indexes this portrait as number 46, around page 511; a separate scholarly table supplies that locator, not the entry’s contents. [36] MoMA curator Anne Umland also points to Gannit Ankori’s Imaging Her Selves (pp.175–187) when comparing the 1935 and 1940 portraits. [5] [36] These are useful further-reading routes, but the article’s claims rest on the sources identified above rather than on unverified book passages.

The original 2003 sale catalogue and complete lot file could clarify the condition note and reverse image; the Richard York Gallery files and Ella Wolfe oral history could sharpen the 2000–03 and earlier household sequence. [19] [25] [36] The Retratos catalogue and venue checklists are needed before a promised loan can be called an actual showing. [30] A current owner or registrar would be required to settle the dimensions, inspect the carved reverse, document condition and establish where the original is now. [12]

The small portrait has a substantial documented history: it was a gift within the Wolfe circle and appeared at a dated 2003 sale. [1] [2] [9] [10] Its dimensions conflict, interpretive attributions and present-location gap remain part of that history, rather than details to smooth away.

Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair examines a separate 1940 painting and its song, suit and haircut; the two works should not share a single object history. The 1940 thorn-necklace portrait is the Kahlo work identified in the Washington Retratos report, not proof that this 1935 tin was shown there. Frida's Fashion and Tehuana Dress provides broader clothing context without turning the portrait into an artist-authored statement about a single garment.

Frequently Asked Questions

No. The 1935 work is a small oil-on-tin bust with short curls, jewellery and a red garment. [1] [2] The 1940 canvas shows scissors, loose cut hair, an oversized suit and song text; they are separate paintings with separate histories. [5]

Museo Frida Kahlo places the work amid the 1935 separation from Rivera and her stay with the Wolfes. [4] Grimberg, Herrera and later Spanish-language writers interpret the hair and simplified dress through that context, but no checked artist statement explains why Kahlo made those particular choices. [3] [7] [13] [14]

Christie’s provenance names Ella Wolfe as the recipient, while Museo Frida Kahlo describes a gift to Bertram and Ella Wolfe. [1] [4] Mary-Anne Martin later recalled seeing the work in Ella’s home; the exact gift date and transfer circumstances remain undocumented. [9]

It sold at Christie’s New York in November 2003, and a 2005 source then placed it in a private California collection. [10] [27] The purchaser, later transfers and present location have not been verified. [33]

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

How do the curls and small tin format shape the encounter?

Context

What does the gift history establish beyond later separation readings?

Open Question

Why must this be kept distinct from the 1940 cropped-hair portrait?

Join the Conversation

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

References

  1. Christie’s, Self-Portrait with Curly Hair, object line, provenance, verso note, literature and exhibition notice. Its erroneous 1910 birth year is not used. View source text.
  2. Christie’s front image (reference 1) and Ivanna Margarucci's 2016 Museo Roca plate (reference 6) support description of the visible portrait. The available 400 × 527-pixel study image does not permit reverse examination, calibrated colour or physical-condition claims.
  3. Salomon Grimberg, signed Christie’s catalogue essay, 3 October 2003; hair, dress, gift context and psychological reading remain attributed. View source text.
  4. Museo Frida Kahlo, Frida chronology, bilingual 1935 entry, Autorretrato (con pelo rizado), circa 1935 and Wolfe gift context. View source text.
  5. Anne Umland, Museum of Modern Art, Frida Kahlo: Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair, course PDF pp.3–4 and note 7. The 1940 painting is distinct; Umland cites Ankori, whose pages have not been consulted directly. View source text.
  6. Ivanna Margarucci, Frida Kahlo: una vida a través del arte (Museo Roca, 2016), PDF and printed p.76, entry 082 and plate 80. It gives the 19.3 × 14.7 cm variant and a historical California private-collection credit. View source text.
  7. Orli Monakier Klein, Frida Kahlo y el surrealismo, UNAM master's thesis (2000), printed pp.52–53 and 75–76. Gendered reading is the author’s, not artist testimony. View source text.
  8. Carlos Omar Segoviano Rodríguez, La fridomanía: difusión y comunicación de la imagen de Frida Kahlo, UNAM thesis (2011), printed pp.80–82, 212 and 250. Spanish reception, dimension variant and market discussion require source-specific caution. View source text.
  9. Smithsonian Archives of American Art, Mary-Anne Martin oral history, 8 and 22 July 2009, transcript reviewed 2019, Ella Wolfe visit passage. View source text.
  10. Artemundi/Javier Lumbreras, Europa Press-hosted sale announcement, 23 November 2003, on the 18 November result and Ella Wolfe's dining-room display. This is attributed seller publicity, not present-owner evidence. View source text.
  11. Artnet, November 2003 Latin American auction report, result and estimate. Its 1953 object-year error is rejected against Christie's and museum records. View source text.
  12. Christie's object and verso description reports a carved self-portrait sketch on the back of the tin. No reverse image, registrar record or conservation examination is supplied there, so the sketch cannot be described from direct view. View source text.
  13. Hayden Herrera, signed Christie’s catalogue essay, 3 October 2003; formal comparisons and emotional readings attributed. View source text.
  14. Christie's object entry dates the portrait 1935; the Museo Frida Kahlo chronology uses circa 1935. Neither gives a documented execution month, exact place or artist statement explaining the haircut. View source text 1; View source text 2.
  15. Christie's Self-Portrait with Curly Hair, the museum's 1935 chronology entry and Anne Umland's MoMA essay (reference 5) identify this as distinct from the 1940 cropped-hair canvas. They do not establish that it was Kahlo's first short-haired self-portrait. View source text 1; View source text 2.
  16. See the companion Frida's Fashion and Tehuana Dress article for dress and self-presentation across Kahlo's practice; the present portrait's clothing is described through Christie's signed essays (references 3 and 13).
  17. Hoover Institution, feature on Bertram and Ella Wolfe's relationship with Kahlo and Rivera, with Wolfe archive descriptions. This documents the relationship, not the exact terms of the portrait's 1935 transfer. View source text.
  18. Smithsonian Archives of American Art, Mary-Anne Martin oral-history record and transcript, 2009 interview with transcript reviewed in 2019. Her later recollection is not a 1935 document. View source text.
  19. Hoover Institution, Bertram Wolfe papers and Ella Wolfe oral-history digitisation notice. The interview and object-specific files have not been consulted for this portrait. View source text.
  20. National Museum of Women in the Arts, Ella Wolfe letter to Frida Kahlo, 15 March, year unknown. It names neither this portrait nor the gift. View source text.
  21. MoMA's audio interpretation of My Grandparents, My Parents, and I describes devotional painting on metal, and the Museo Frida Kahlo chronology documents other metal-supported Kahlo works. This comparative context does not establish that Self-Portrait with Curly Hair is itself a retablo or ex-voto. View source text 1; View source text 2.
  22. Museo Nacional de Arte's partner records for José María Estrada's Portrait of Miguel Arochi y Baeza and Portrait of Manuela Gutiérrez provide comparison context, not evidence that Kahlo directly studied these works. View source text 1; View source text 2.
  23. INBAL's institutional account of Hermenegildo Bustos provides comparison context for nineteenth-century Mexican portraiture; it does not prove a direct model for Kahlo's picture. View source text.
  24. The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Ancient Faces exhibition and Portrait of the Boy Eutyches object record clarify the Fayum portrait tradition invoked by Herrera. They do not establish that Kahlo saw this ancient portrait. View source text 1; View source text 2.
  25. Smithsonian Archives of American Art, Richard York Gallery artwork-file inventory, box 31, folders 3–4, “Self Portrait With Curly Hair,” 2000–03. The folder contents have not been read. View source text.
  26. Art.Salon's 2003 lot summary repeats the reported result and estimate. It is derivative corroboration, not evidence of current ownership. View source text.
  27. PBS/WETA, 2005 Frida Kahlo painting-locations list, row for Self-Portrait with Curly Hair. Its California private-collection attribution is historical, not evidence of current custody. View source text.
  28. Bridgeman Images asset CH5947216 repeats the 18.3 × 14.6 cm dimensions and an undated “Private Collection” label; Artemundi's current site displays an artwork tile. Neither establishes present ownership or grants this page a reproduction licence. View source text 1; View source text 2.
  29. Smithsonian Institution Office of Policy and Analysis, Do Portraits Speak and Tell Stories? A Visitor Study of Retratos (February 2006), PDF p.5 / printed p.1 for Washington dates, PDF p.11 / printed p.7 for the 1940 thorn-necklace portrait, and PDF p.31 / printed p.28 for its caption and Harry Ransom Center credit. It identifies the Washington painting, not every travelling venue's checklist. View source text.
  30. San Antonio Museum of Art, Retratos: 2,000 Years of Latin American Portraits catalogue listing, with the San Antonio exhibition dates of 4 February–30 April 2006. The complete catalogue checklist has not been consulted; this listing does not identify Self-Portrait with Curly Hair as exhibited. View source text.
  31. Paul Richard, “A Distinguished, Serious Look at the Latin American Face”, Washington Post, 22 October 2005, naming Kahlo's 1940 Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird in the Washington presentation. This is item-level press evidence, not a complete travelling checklist. View source text.
  32. Tanya Perez-Brennan, “Eye-Opening Exhibit: Experience 2,000 Years of Latin American Portraits”, Florida Times-Union, 8 August 2005, p.E-1, ProQuest reproduction PDF p.3. The text identifies the 1940 thorn-necklace portrait in the Bass Museum presentation; Associated Press is credited only for photographs. View source text.
  33. Christie's published provenance and sale notice stop at the 2003 market transfer; the Smithsonian Retratos record (reference 29) does not name this painting individually. Neither record verifies its present owner or an actual post-sale exhibition of this portrait. View source text.
  34. Federico E. Turkheimer et al., “The art of pain: A quantitative color analysis of the self-portraits of Frida Kahlo”, Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 16 (2022), Table 1 and results. View source text.
  35. Federico E. Turkheimer et al., “The art of pain”, Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 16 (2022), methods and image-acquisition sections. The analysis concerns prepared web images, not measurements of the physical portrait. View source text.
  36. Further sources not yet consulted include the Self-Portrait with Curly Hair entry in TASCHEN's Frida Kahlo: The Complete Paintings (catalogue 46, pp.510–512), Gannit Ankori's Imaging Her Selves (pp.175–187), and the older literature listed in Christie's catalogue (reference 1). These locators do not establish their unseen contents.
  37. Lindsay Pollock, “Art Show Action”, Artnet, 22 February 2002, Art Show account at lines 57–66; reporter saw the portrait on Richard York Gallery’s booth wall during 20 February setup and recorded a US$1.2 million asking price. Her 1934 object date and York’s emotional reading are not adopted as object fact. View source text.
  38. 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.