Self-Portrait with Dr Farill

Introduction

Frida Kahlo sits in a wheelchair with paintbrushes and a heart-shaped palette, while a portrait of her doctor Juan Farill stands on the easel beside her. Made in 1951 after a period of severe illness and repeated spinal surgery, Self-Portrait with the Portrait of Dr Farill is both a record of gratitude and an assertion that Kahlo remained the maker of the image. Her diary says she began a small painting for Farill with affection, but the painting does not reduce her experience to recovery or the doctor’s intervention to a single uncomplicated miracle. ^{[1] [2] [3]}

At a Glance

Contents

1. Introduction
2. Looking at the Double Portrait
3. What Kahlo Wrote About Farill
4. The Operations and the Hospital Record
5. Juan Farill as Doctor and Sitter
6. Heart, Paint and an Ex Voto Reading
7. The Patient Who Paints the Doctor
8. Disability, Agency and an Unfinished Recovery
9. A Photograph of Kahlo and Farill

Looking at the Double Portrait

The small horizontal painting opens onto a spare room. A pale ochre upper wall meets a blue-grey lower band at a back corner, while reddish-brown floorboards run diagonally into the space. Kahlo and her chair fill the left and centre; the tall easel, with Farill’s bust portrait on it, occupies the right. These colours describe the checked printed reproduction, not calibrated measurements of the painting itself. ^[1]

Kahlo’s black skirt spreads across the lower part of the composition and partly conceals the chair, though one large spoked wheel remains plainly visible. She wears a loose white blouse or huipil-like garment, dark elements hanging from its neckline and several pieces of jewellery. The reproduction cannot establish the blouse’s fibre, maker or community of origin, and the clothing should not be assigned an ethnic identity from this image alone. ^[1]

A bundle of brushes lies across her lap, with small red paint-like marks on the white cloth nearby. A large red-brown palette has the outline and folded surface of a heart or other fleshy organ. The marks are painted marks within the picture; neither the image nor an examined material sample establishes that Kahlo used literal blood to make the work. ^{[1] [2]}

Farill appears only as a painted bust on the easel, dressed in a dark suit, white shirt and tie. His head is larger and higher than Kahlo’s, and its heavy brows look nearly joined, but a reproduction cannot prove that she deliberately gave him her own familiar brow. Nor does it establish direct eye contact between the two figures or allow their expressions to be diagnosed as protective, grateful or distressed. ^[1]

This arrangement puts a living artist with her tools beside an image she has made of the doctor. The portrait on the easel is a representation within the single material painting, not evidence that a detachable Farill portrait survives separately. The visibly different levels of representation are central to later interpretations, but they first deserve to be seen without imposing one symbolic explanation on every object in the room. ^{[1] [7]}

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.

▶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

Self-Portrait with the Portrait of Dr Farill in Kahlo’s career

Year

193019351940194519501955

Frieda and Diego Rivera

1931

My Grandparents, My Parents, and I

1936

The Two Fridas

1939

The Broken Column

1944

Self-Portrait with the Portrait of Dr Farill

1951

Marxism Will Give Health to the Sick

1954

Timeline source: Museo Frida Kahlo chronology ^[22].

What Kahlo Wrote About Farill

The most direct evidence for the painting’s purpose comes from an entry in Kahlo’s published diary headed 1950–51. She says she had been ill for a year and had undergone seven operations on her spinal column, then credits Dr Farill with saving her and restoring her wish to live. She also records that she has begun a little painting for him and intends to give it to him with affection. ^{[2] [3]}

Those sentences survive through two specified publication chains, not through examination of Kahlo’s original diary manuscript or a complete commercial facsimile. Elizabeth Jones maps the passage to plates 95–97 and printed page 252 of the published diary and supplies the Spanish and a published English rendering. Kettenmann quotes it in Spanish through Raquel Tibol’s 1983 book, page 63; Tibol’s volume and the full diary edition have not been consulted directly, so the two quotations remain mediated. ^{[2] [3] [6]}

The surrounding diary account resists a simple story of medical rescue followed by restored health. Kahlo says she remains in a wheelchair, is uncertain whether she will walk soon, and finds her plaster corset at once troublesome and useful. She describes exhaustion and despair alongside an insistence that she wants to live; her affectionate gift therefore belongs to a condition of continuing impairment rather than a neatly completed cure. ^{[2] [3]}

The entry also links the wish to paint with a wider sense of purpose, including a later statement about doing positive work for the communist revolution if health allows. This political commitment is part of the same diary context, but it is not an artist’s explanation of the easel, palette or doctor’s portrait as party symbols. The painting can hold personal gratitude and an active artistic self without being converted into either a private thank-you card or a coded political manifesto. ^{[2] [3]}

Kahlo’s words make the gift artist-initiated; no checked source shows that Farill commissioned it. INBAL’s later museum notice says she gave the painting to him in thanks for his medical care, strengthening the conventional gift account beyond the diary’s intention. Yet no receipt, dated presentation letter or inventory has been checked to establish the exact transfer and later chain of ownership. ^{[3] [6] [20]}

The Operations and the Hospital Record

The diary’s seven spinal operations are a strong anchor, but later accounts attach different calendars to them. The Museo Frida Kahlo chronology says Kahlo spent almost a year in and out of the American British Cowdray Hospital, while Kettenmann and several medical-history writers use a nine-month formulation. The hospital’s own popular feature repeats that shorthand; none of these summaries, by itself, is an operative log proving one uninterrupted admission. ^{[2] [8] [9]}

INBAL’s archive-based Kahlo Without Borders guide calls the 1950 hospitalisation several months and records seven surgeries, then separately lists ABC admission entries in January 1950 and January and December 1951. It states that the files for those admissions have been lost; the clinical file that survives concerns 1952 through October 1953. These facts do not disprove the broad account of prolonged treatment, but they prevent a reliable procedure-by-procedure reconstruction of 1950–51 from the surviving hospital papers. ^[10]

Farill was central to Kahlo’s orthopaedic care during the period commemorated in the painting. Kettenmann calls him the surgeon who performed the interventions and cared for her at ABC, while a Parrish Art Museum account says he operated on her seven times “over the years.” The diary places the seven operations beside her gratitude to Farill without identifying the operator and date of each one, so they do not establish a complete surgical roster. ^{[2] [3] [11]}

The wheelchair in the picture agrees with Kahlo’s account of her mobility, but it cannot measure the length of a hospital stay. Nor is the wooden floor-standing easel depicted here the specialised bed easel that Kettenmann says helped her paint during convalescence. The particular lumbar procedure, infected-graft account and conflicting numbers of toe amputations belong to the wider health history and remain too dependent on secondary accounts to improve this object page. ^{[1] [2] [12]}

Juan Farill as Doctor and Sitter

Juan Farill Solares was more than an anonymous physician supplied to make the painting’s symbolism work. Parrish Art Museum describes him as a pioneer in Mexican orthopaedics who knew Kahlo from 1939 and became a close friend. A historical Guggenheim Foundation record names Juan Farill y Solares as a 1932 Latin American Exchange Fellow in orthopaedics; it verifies his professional identity, not any intervention represented in this painting. ^{[11] [13]}

INBAL says Kahlo dedicated two works to him, this 1951 double portrait and a 1953 still life. That second dedication matters because it shows an ongoing relationship rather than a single ceremonial thank-you, though the still life is a separate work and cannot establish this painting's provenance. Later accounts describe Farill using crutches and propose a sympathetic recognition between two people living with impaired mobility. The crutches are reported context; the claim that shared experience motivated this composition is a later interpretation, not a diary statement. ^{[2] [10] [11] [12]}

A separate material gift makes the relationship more tangible. INBAL records a 1757 edition of Martín Martínez’s Anatomía completa del hombre given by Kahlo to Farill with an affectionate, humorous dedication dated 24 June 1951; the book appeared in its Kahlo sin fronteras exhibition. Its medical subject and mention of the heart in INBAL’s discussion enrich the context of their friendship, but no checked artist statement or preparatory source proves that this volume supplied the heart-shaped palette in the portrait. ^[20]

The name itself needs care. Kettenmann, INBAL, Parrish and the Guggenheim record use Farill, while a Museo Frida Kahlo chronology writes “Farrill.” The stronger convergence supports Farill as house spelling without pretending that the museum’s variant is a different doctor. ^{[2] [8] [10] [11] [13]}

Heart, Paint and an Ex Voto Reading

The palette’s heart-like form and the red marks near the brushes invite the familiar phrase that Kahlo painted her thanks “from the heart.” Kettenmann gives the more specific interpretation that she offers her own heart as a palette and seems to paint with her blood. This is a reading of an image, not a physical analysis of paint or a recovered declaration that the palette represents one named organ specimen. ^{[1] [2]}

Kettenmann also sees the painting as a thanksgiving image in the tradition of Mexican ex-votos, offerings made in gratitude for help in a crisis. In his comparison, Farill takes a place that a saint might occupy in a devotional image. That analogy illuminates Kahlo’s stated gratitude, but the work is not titled Ex-Voto, and the checked image lacks the narrative inscription found in many painted votive offerings. “Ex-voto-like” therefore says more precisely what the source can establish than declaring the object a conventional retablo. ^[2]

M. P. Park and R. H. R. Park discuss the picture within a history of gifts and commissions made by patients for doctors. They compare it with Francisco Goya’s Self-Portrait with Dr Arrieta, another visual acknowledgement of medical care. The comparison is a useful way to ask how a painter represents a doctor who has treated them, but the authors do not produce evidence that Kahlo studied or deliberately imitated Goya’s canvas. ^[12]

The heart is not the only possible centre of the image. The wheelchair remains visible; the brushes identify Kahlo as an active painter; Farill’s portrait is visibly something she has constructed. These features allow gratitude and self-representation to coexist, and they make an account centred only on wounded flesh or passive dependence incomplete. ^{[1] [7] [14]}

The Patient Who Paints the Doctor

Roxana Delbene and Sayantani DasGupta call the portrait on the easel a mise en abyme, a picture nested inside another picture. Their medical-humanities essay argues that this structure reverses the ordinary direction of the clinical gaze: rather than being only the patient whom a doctor examines and describes, Kahlo becomes the artist who looks at and represents him. Farill’s head is enlarged and elevated, but its image remains under the painter’s control. ^{[1] [7]}

The authors use that reversal to argue for narrative humility in medicine. A doctor may know a patient’s anatomy and treatment without possessing the whole account of her life; Kahlo’s instruments are therefore brushes as well as the wheelchair and corset of her medical history. Their argument is a later ethical interpretation, not evidence that the portrait documents a particular clinical conversation or that Kahlo used the phrase “medical gaze.” ^{[3] [7]}

A Spanish-language study by Eliana Laurino Cadenasso, Fabiana González Alzamendi and Giuliana Mardero Gastelumendi approaches the work through feminist and disability theory. It reads Kahlo as simultaneously patient and artist, with a visible impaired body that is neither erased nor passively offered up for medical definition. The painting’s double role can support that reading, though the essay does not establish what Kahlo intended by the scale of Farill’s head or the angle of his brows. ^{[1] [14]}

These accounts do not cancel the diary’s affection for Farill. Instead, they show that gratitude to a physician and authorship over one’s self-image need not be opposites. Kahlo’s wheelchair describes a real dependency and shapes the painting’s space, while her brushes and easel make her activity equally conspicuous; neither feature supplies a complete diagnosis of the other. ^{[1] [3] [7] [14]}

Disability, Agency and an Unfinished Recovery

Elizabeth Jones reads Kahlo’s diary through a changing or “pendular” disability identity, rather than a permanent choice between refusing impairment and being wholly defined by it. The 1950–51 passage is a strong example: Kahlo assesses a wheelchair and plaster corset as practical realities, feels despair, acknowledges uncertainty about walking and still plans a painting. Jones’s framework belongs to scholarship; the documented words and the image remain distinct evidence. ^{[1] [3]}

Jones also points to a later diary entry in which Kahlo again thanks Farill and other physicians while weighing her ability to walk and paint. It reinforces that medical care, artistic work and continuing limitation unfolded over time, not in a single triumphant before-and-after episode. The exact later entry is mapped by Jones to plate 145 and printed page 278, but the complete published diary and autograph manuscript have not been inspected. ^{[3] [6]}

The visible chair can be discussed without making it a metaphor for defeat, just as the palette can be interpreted without claiming that pain literally supplied pigment. Likewise, the 2023 “cyborg” study’s emphasis on agency does not prove that Kahlo had become independent of care or that surgery cured her. The picture retains both sides of the relationship: a doctor whose help she acknowledged and an artist who chose how to depict him. ^{[1] [3] [14]}

A Photograph of Kahlo and Farill

Gisèle Freund photographed Kahlo and Farill with the portrait around the time of its making. Parrish Art Museum describes a scene at Casa Azul in which Kahlo is in a wheelchair with brushes, Farill stands beside her and the painting is visible; Kettenmann reproduces a photograph of the group. The image helps connect the named sitter and painter with the completed object, but it does not document the exact day the board was finished, a legal handover or the present owner. ^{[2] [11]}

The published dates have differed: Parrish calls the photograph 1951, while Kettenmann’s caption says circa 1952. A Centre Pompidou collection record now identifies a Freund print titled Frida Kahlo et son médecin Juan Farill, Mexico City, dated 1951, printed in 1991 and donated by the photographer in 1992. Its inventory number is AM 1992-302, and its rights credit names the Freund estate and IMEC Images. The museum record establishes those details for its print, but the available textual records alone do not prove that it is the exact print used by both earlier publications. ^{[2] [11] [15]}

Corinne Cristini’s French-language study of Freund and Lola Álvarez Bravo identifies the 1951 Kahlo–Farill photograph in a credited figure and describes its positive as made from a 6 × 6 cm negative. She reads Freund’s arrangement of the doctor, the wheelchair-bound painter and the painted double as a deliberately staged visual echo of Kahlo’s nested portrait. That is an interpretation of the photographer’s composition, not proof of Kahlo’s own intended symbolism or of a fully traced negative-to-print history. ^[21]

The Freund photograph is a separate documentary object from the painting. Its collection record helps date their encounter but does not establish when the painting changed hands. ^{[1] [15]}

Private Collection and Public Exhibitions

The diary establishes Kahlo’s intention to give the painting to Farill, but the later chain of possession is fragmentary. Kettenmann’s 1999 object list calls it a private-collection work; a 2005 PBS/WETA list says private collection, Mexico City; Tate’s current credit returns to the broader “private collection.” These publications cannot be assembled into a continuous provenance or used to identify a current legal owner. ^{[2] [4] [5]}

Tate credits its current object photograph to Hauser & Wirth Collection Services. That phrase identifies a service or photographic credit, not a purchaser, lender or owner of the painting. No checked owner file, sale record, estate inventory, reverse photograph or conservation report establishes the initial transfer from Kahlo, any subsequent transactions or the board’s present physical condition. ^{[1] [4]}

There is firmer evidence for two episodes of public visibility. Carmen Pinto’s contemporary review of Tate Modern’s 2005 Kahlo exhibition discusses the Farill painting and its heart-like palette within her account of moving through the show. Tate’s current guide names Self-portrait with Dr. Farill among five highlighted works in Frida: The Making of an Icon, running at Tate Modern from 25 June 2026 to 3 January 2027. The latter is a time-sensitive display statement, not a guarantee that the painting will remain on view throughout the run. ^{[16] [17]}

Parrish’s 2022–23 Kahlo: An Expanded Body exhibition discussed or displayed Freund’s photograph, not demonstrably a loan of Kahlo’s painting. The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston announced its earlier 2026 presentation of Frida: The Making of an Icon, but the checked public overview does not name this painting individually. Neither exhibition association can fill a missing item-level checklist by implication. ^{[11] [18]}

What the Painting Cannot Yet Establish

The work is sometimes called Kahlo’s last self-portrait, but later self-images exist; Tate’s unqualified shop description is too broad. A narrower “last signed self-portrait” formula also circulates, yet no signature is legible in the inspected plate, the reverse has not been seen and a complete signed-work comparison was not available. Neither superlative belongs here as established object history. ^{[1] [2] [4] [19]}

Another familiar claim calls this the first painting Kahlo made after the operations. Kettenmann discusses her return to painting during convalescence and then this portrait, but that narrative order is not a dated catalogue of every work she began or completed. Without the exact 2021 complete-paintings catalogue entry or a more direct studio record, “first” remains unproved. ^{[2] [19]}

The painting also cannot supply the precise brand or construction of its board, the sequence of brushwork, a pigment identification, a condition diagnosis or a description of its frame. Kettenmann’s hard-fibreboard description and Tate’s Masonite label are both worth recording, but no technical examination was found to reconcile them beyond their compatible general support type. A printed plate is sufficient for careful looking, not for assertions about the physical surface or reverse. ^{[1] [2] [4]}

The ex-voto, blood and medical-gaze accounts remain valuable because they illuminate different features and histories. Their differences are a reason to keep them named, not to blend them into an invented statement of Kahlo’s complete intent. The diary gives the unusually strong fact of an affectionate gift; it does not supply a key that assigns one fixed meaning to every brush, brow or floorboard. ^{[2] [3] [7] [12]}

Books and Open Questions

The most important object-specific book still awaiting direct consultation is Luis-Martín Lozano, Andrea Kettenmann and Marina Vázquez Ramos’s Frida Kahlo: The Complete Paintings. Its publisher record establishes the volume and authors, and a search-indexed lead points toward the Farill entry around catalogue number 131 and page 598; the actual entry has not been read and therefore supplies no inscription, provenance or exhibition claim here. Kettenmann’s earlier Spanish Frida Kahlo 1907–1954: Dolor y pasión has been checked only at its relevant pages and plate, not represented as a completely read monograph. ^{[2] [19]}

A complete lawful diary edition, Raquel Tibol’s Frida Kahlo: una vida abierta, and presentation or owner records could clarify the source chain behind Kahlo’s words and the painting’s transfer. Gannit Ankori’s Frida Kahlo and Imaging Her Selves, Michael Davidson’s Invalid Modernism and the relevant 2005 and 2026 exhibition catalogues are relevant further reading, but their inaccessible pages supply no claims here. Their value would be to test object identity, chronology, provenance and interpretation, not merely to enlarge a bibliography. ^{[6] [19]}

Portuguese-language scholarship offers another perspective, but access to the relevant texts is uneven. The University of São Paulo record identifies Lígia Assumpção Amaral’s Frida Kahlo: personagem de si mesma, but marks its full PDF private; Brígida Duarte de Oliveira Medeiros’s Brasília dissertation has not been read at its relevant passage. By contrast, the checked Spanish INBAL guide changed the hospital account, and the Spanish-language disability essay provided a distinct reading of artist–patient agency. The checked Spanish-language studies contribute to the hospital history and disability reading; the unavailable Portuguese texts cannot corroborate them. ^{[10] [14] [19]}

Questions Readers Ask

Related Reading

The Frida Kahlo overview sets Farill's care within her later life. The Broken Column is an earlier, separate image of bodily impairment; Marxism Will Give Health to the Sick offers a later pairing of disability and political hope. Neither work supplies the missing surgical or ownership records for this portrait.

References

1. Andrea Kettenmann, Frida Kahlo 1907–1954: Dolor y pasión (1999 Spanish edition), printed p. 80/PDF p. 82 plate. The visual description is based on this printed reproduction, not a physical examination or colour-calibrated image of the painting.
2. Andrea Kettenmann, Frida Kahlo 1907–1954: Dolor y pasión (1999 Spanish edition), printed p. 79/PDF p. 81 on illness, diary and ex-voto analogy; plate at printed p. 80/PDF p. 82; Freund caption printed p. 81/PDF p. 83; exact object list printed p. 95/PDF p. 97; notes 37 and 39 printed p. 96/PDF p. 98. Only these relevant pages were checked, not the entire monograph.
3. Elizabeth Jones, “Frida Kahlo and Pendular Disability Identity”, Disability and the Global South 5.1 (2018), pp. 1234–51, especially pp. 1244–45 and notes. Jones maps the 1950–51 diary passage to plates 95–97/printed p. 252 and a later entry to plate 145/printed p. 278; her disability-identity account is an attributed interpretation. View source text.
4. Tate, “Self-portrait with Dr. Farill”, current object credit and product metadata, checked October 2026. Its 1951, Masonite, dimensions and private-collection credit are used; its last-self-portrait, compressed surgery and blood prose is not adopted as fact. View source text.
5. PBS/WETA, “Where to Find Frida’s Paintings”, historical Farill row, 1951 and private collection in Mexico City. The list does not identify the current legal owner. View source text.
6. Frida Kahlo, The Diary of Frida Kahlo: An Intimate Self-Portrait (Abrams, 1995 English edition), plates 95–97/printed p. 252 and plate 145/printed p. 278 as located by Jones, reference 3; Raquel Tibol, Frida Kahlo: una vida abierta (1983), p. 63 as cited by Kettenmann, reference 2. Neither complete commercial volume nor the original diary manuscript was directly inspected here.
7. Roxana Delbene and Sayantani DasGupta, “Self-Portrait with the Portrait of Dr. Farill: Frida Kahlo’s Recreation of Her Doctor”, The Intima, Academic Spring 2016, PDF pp. 1–3. Its nested-portrait, medical-gaze and narrative-humility readings are attributed, not documentary artist statements. View source text.
8. Museo Frida Kahlo, official chronology, 1950–51 entries on repeated ABC hospitalisation, seven operations and the “Farrill” spelling. An institutional chronology is not an operative chart. View source text.
9. Centro Médico ABC, “Frida Kahlo”, 1950 hospital feature and nine-month formulation. This later institutional synthesis cannot reconstruct the missing admission files. View source text.
10. INBAL and Museo Casa Estudio Diego Rivera y Frida Kahlo, Kahlo Without Borders exhibition guide (2024), PDF p. 2 on the 1950 illness and surgeries, p. 6 on Farill and two dedicated works, and pp. 7–8 on photographs, separate admission entries, lost charts and the surviving 1952–October 1953 file. View source text.
11. Parrish Art Museum, Kahlo: An Expanded Body exhibition texts (2022), PDF pp. 1–2 and 15 for Juan Farill Solares, his relationship with Kahlo and the Freund photograph. The exhibition text does not establish that the painting itself was lent to Parrish. View source text.
12. M. P. Park and R. H. R. Park, “The fine art of patient-doctor relationships”, BMJ 329 (2004), pp. 1475–80, especially p. 1478 for the Farill portrait, patient–doctor gifts and the comparison with Goya; José Meljem-Moctezuma and Leonor Almendra Burgos-Martínez, “Influencia de la relación médico-paciente en la vida de Frida Kahlo”, Revista CONAMED 18.3 (2013), pp. 139–43, especially pp. 142–43 on Farill and his crutches. Both are later interpretations or medical histories, not substitute operative records. View source text 1; View source text 2.
13. John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, historical fellows record for Juan Farill y Solares, 1931–32 Latin American Exchange Fellowship report, orthopaedics. The record corroborates his identity and professional training, not an object-specific operation. View source text.
14. Eliana Laurino Cadenasso, Fabiana González Alzamendi and Giuliana Mardero Gastelumendi, “Frida Kahlo Cyborg: una mirada de su vida-obra,” Revista Encuentros Latinoamericanos, second series VII.2 (2023), pp. 187–207, especially pp. 205–6/PDF pp. 19–20. Its artist–patient and disability-agency reading is attributed.
15. Centre Pompidou, Gisèle Freund, Frida Kahlo et son médecin Juan Farill, Mexico City, object record, creation date 1951, gelatin-silver print, 40 × 30 cm, print 1991, artist donation 1992, inventory AM 1992-302, Estate Gisèle Freund/IMEC Images credit. These facts concern the museum’s photograph, not ownership of Kahlo’s painting or its reproduction licence. View source text.
16. Carmen Pinto, “Frida Kahlo”, BMJ 331 (30 July 2005), p. 297, a contemporary review of the Tate Modern show and its Farill-palette discussion. It is not a complete exhibition checklist. View source text.
17. Tate, “Your guide to Frida: The Making of an Icon”, “Five Fridas not to miss” and exhibition-date lines, rechecked October 2026. It names the Farill portrait and gives the Tate Modern run as 25 June 2026–3 January 2027; display remains time-sensitive. View source text.
18. Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Frida: The Making of an Icon overview, 19 January–17 May 2026 and travel to Tate. The checked public overview does not name this painting individually. View source text.
19. TASCHEN, Frida Kahlo: The Complete Paintings, publisher metadata for the 2021 volume by Luis-Martín Lozano, Andrea Kettenmann and Marina Vázquez Ramos; the suggested catalogue no. 131/p. 598 for this portrait remains an unverified search lead. University of São Paulo, record for Lígia Assumpção Amaral, “Frida Kahlo: personagem de si mesma”, Imaginário 7 (2001), pp. 91–118, marks full text private. Gannit Ankori’s specialist monographs, Michael Davidson’s Invalid Modernism, Brígida Duarte de Oliveira Medeiros’s 2019 dissertation and the complete exhibition catalogues have not been consulted for claims about this painting. View source text 1; View source text 2.
20. INBAL, “El Museo Casa Estudio Diego Rivera y Frida Kahlo mostrará el lado científico en la obra de la pintora mexicana”, 29 July 2024, lines 31–44, also the matching institutional PDF, pp. 1–2. The notice says Kahlo gave the self-portrait to Farill, identifies a separately gifted 1757 anatomy book with a dedication dated 24 June 1951 and supplies bounded professional context. It is not a dated transfer receipt for the painting or evidence that the anatomy book was its palette model. View source text 1; View source text 2.
21. Corinne Cristini, “Des mises en scène du féminin. Frida Kahlo sous l’œil photographique de Gisèle Freund et de Lola Álvarez Bravo”, Iberic@l 8 (autumn 2015), printed pp. 51–67, especially printed p. 64/PDF p. 63 on the Kahlo–Farill photograph and printed p. 65/PDF p. 64, figure 4 and note 41 on the 1951 date, IMEC credit and 6 × 6 cm negative. Its account of staged visual doubling is an attributed reading of Freund’s photograph. View source text.
22. 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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