Two Nudes in a Forest

Introduction

Frida Kahlo's Two Nudes in a Forest (The Earth Itself) (1939) brings two nude women together in a small landscape that is anything but restful. One sits upright, touching the head of a lighter-skinned woman who reclines across her lap; a red cloth frames them, a monkey peers from dense vegetation, and roots cross broken ground beneath an unsettled sky. Their closeness is visible, while their names and the nature of their relationship are not. ^{[1] [2] [3]}

A letter Kahlo wrote to the actor Dolores del Río in March 1940 establishes that she had promised her this painting and was pleased Dolores liked it. It does not identify either sitter or explain the forest, fissure or red drops. Those open questions have given critics room to read care, desire, doubled identity, race, myth and the earth itself, but the document and the image must be allowed to say what each can actually support. ^{[4] [5]}

At a Glance

Contents

1. Introduction
2. What the Painting Shows
3. The Names of the Painting
4. Kahlo's Letter to Dolores del Río
5. Touch, Care and Desire
6. Skin Tone, Mestizaje and Colonial History
7. A Pair Across Three Paintings
8. Cloth, Roots, Earth and Monkey
9. Sacred and Mythic Readings

What the Painting Shows

The scene is horizontal, with the two women gathered slightly right of centre. A darker-skinned figure sits nearly upright, looking down toward a reclining woman whose lighter body stretches toward the vegetation at left. Their heads and long hair meet near the middle; the seated woman's hand touches or supports the other's hair or head, and their limbs overlap. ^[3]

Neither woman wears clothing. A saturated red textile rises behind the seated figure's head, folds around her and descends toward a dark opening in the lower-right earth. It can be called cloth or drapery, but neither the image nor an object record securely identifies it as a rebozo, regional shawl, veil or religious mantle. ^[3]

The left side presses inward with broad leaves, curling branches and dark gaps. A small monkey appears among the plants, partly concealed and separate from the human group. On the right, a comparatively bare ochre plain opens toward a low horizon. The women occupy the threshold between these unequal fields rather than one uniform forest. ^[3]

The foreground has been cut into ledges and cavities. Pale roots extend below the vegetated bank, while the cloth narrows above a fissure and two or three small red marks appear to fall from its tip. They are blood-like in colour, but no wound or direct bodily source is visible; calling them blood that fertilises the soil is an interpretation, not an optical fact. ^{[3] [5]}

Broad grey, white and near-black clouds move across the top of the picture. Their turbulent forms and the fractured ground surround a pair who remain physically still. Oversized vegetation and compressed depth make the scene imagined rather than a topographical account of a named forest, desert or country. ^[3]

The visible skin-tone contrast is important to later criticism, but colour cannot establish ancestry, ethnicity or social identity. Neither face provides a securely documented portrait likeness. The picture has no written title, dedication, male figure, child, visible wound, saint or identifiable geographic landmark to settle such questions for the viewer. ^[3]

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

The Names of the Painting

Christie's 2016 catalogue heads the work Dos desnudos en el bosque (La tierra misma), and its English essays call it Two Nudes in a Forest. The New York Botanical Garden independently used that short English form in its 2015 checklist. The longer heading here translates La tierra misma as The Earth Itself while making clear that the translated phrase is not a surviving English title written by Kahlo. ^{[1] [2]}

An older sale-metadata route reports La tierra misma o dos desnudos en la jungla for the 1989 auction, but the original catalogue line remains unread. Its “jungle” wording is a historical lead, not a reason to replace the current “forest” title. The inherited “in the Forest” wording is retained for the page route and search, not treated as the controlled museum title. ^{[1] [6]}

Kahlo's own register is more affectionate and informal. In the March 1940 letter she calls it a pinturita de las encueraditas—approximately a little painting of the naked girls. Raquel Tibol's later Las dos encueraditas is related but not textually identical. Neither phrase proves that Kahlo wished it to appear as the work's formal title. ^{[4] [7]}

One later essay repeats a claim that My Nurse and I is another title for this painting. It is not: Mi nana y yo / My Nurse and I is a separate 1937 work with its own museum record. That collision matters because an apparent title variant could otherwise move the wrong imagery, date or interpretation into this work's history. ^[8]

Kahlo's Letter to Dolores del Río

The Centro de Estudios de Historia de México Carso preserves Kahlo's letter to Dolores del Río in the actor's papers; Museo Soumaya published photographs of both sides with the archive citation. Dated Coyoacán, March 1940, it says Kahlo was pleased Dolores liked the little painting of the naked girls and that she had promised it to her earlier. Christie's independent provenance line records Dolores as its recipient by gift from the artist. ^{[1] [4]}

The letter also discusses a 250-peso debt, difficulty meeting expenses after Kahlo's divorce from Diego Rivera, a hoped-for Guggenheim grant and plans for a November exhibition with Julien Levy. These passages establish circumstances and intentions in March 1940, not that the grant was awarded or the show occurred. They do not connect the painting's women or landscape to the divorce. ^[4]

The promise must predate the letter, and Dolores had evidently seen or received the work by the time Kahlo wrote. Yet neither the date of the promise nor the delivery method is given. A gift does not prove a commission, identify a model, or establish that Kahlo painted it as a declaration of romance. ^{[1] [4]}

Later writers have treated the exchange as evidence of a sexual relationship between Kahlo and Dolores. The published letter itself does not say that; the museum commentary and the labels in later catalogue essays are interpretations that outrun this particular document. A sound account can acknowledge the painting's reception as an image of female same-sex intimacy without turning its recipient into a proven sitter or lover. ^{[4] [5] [9]}

Two Nudes in a Forest (The Earth Itself) in Kahlo’s career

Year

193019351940194519501955

Frieda and Diego Rivera

1931

My Grandparents, My Parents, and I

1936

The Two Fridas

1939

Two Nudes in a Forest (The Earth Itself)

1939

The Broken Column

1944

Marxism Will Give Health to the Sick

1954

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

Touch, Care and Desire

The seated woman's hand at the reclining woman's head, the overlap of their limbs and the closeness of their hair create an intimate bodily group. Hayden Herrera's Christie's essay first calls the figures anonymous and not portraits, then proposes both two aspects of Kahlo and a woman consoling Kahlo. That movement from visual caution to a named possible scenario should be preserved rather than flattened into certainty. ^{[3] [5]}

Herrera reports that Dolores read the darker figure as the stronger one consoling the lighter. The original interview or letter behind that remark has not been located, so the view should remain Herrera-mediated. It can illuminate how an early owner encountered the picture without becoming Kahlo's own explanation. ^[5]

An earlier Vanity Fair account made the opposite sitter guess, proposing that the lighter reclining figure resembles Dolores. It invoked an unpublished Olga Campos interview in which Kahlo reportedly mentioned painting a portrait of the actor, but the accessible account does not show that Kahlo named this work or either nude. The conflicting guesses, and the unread interview transcript, make a fixed identification less rather than more secure. ^{[5] [26]}

Diana Palaversich, writing in Spanish, places the work within female eroticism that does not depend on a male viewer or male figure. Gannit Ankori reads the pair as a radical alternative to conventional gender roles, even imagining an interracial female Eden. Camilla Sutherland describes protective and homoerotic contact; each names a different implication of the pose rather than identifying the sitters. ^{[9] [10] [11]}

These interpretations need neither censorship nor overconfidence. A hand in another woman's hair and a head resting in a lap are visibly intimate; they could support care, erotic attachment, friendship, maternal association or self-consolation. The image does not supply a biography of the pair, and its openness is a condition of serious interpretation rather than a defect to be repaired. ^{[3] [5] [9]}

Skin Tone, Mestizaje and Colonial History

Some critics have described the pair as “two races” and mapped their contrasting skin tones onto Indigenous and European parts of Mexican identity. Luis Roberto Vera uses that language in a Spanish-language account of the painting's movement between Kahlo's other doubled images. The contrast in paint is visible; the women's ancestry or cultural identities are not, and racial categories should not be reported as if pigment settled them. ^{[3] [7] [12]}

Sutherland's more recent study asks what such duality does rather than treating mestizaje—the mixing of racial and cultural lineages—as a harmonious national fact. She reads the darker woman's protective position against the colonial hierarchy of works such as José Clemente Orozco's Cortés and Malinche, while the split terrain complicates any peaceful synthesis. Her argument places female contact, gender and the violence of colonial classification together. ^[11]

Sutherland also questions whether Kahlo's use of Indigenous imagery could challenge Eurocentric norms while sometimes appropriating an identity not reducible to her own documented ancestry. This is a critical account of self-fashioning, not a genealogy that can be inferred from either nude's colour. The two women share ground and touch across difference; the painting need not be made to illustrate two fixed biological categories. ^{[11] [12]}

The dense left side and open right side should not be labelled Indigenous Mexico and Europe by fiat. Foliage rises behind both bodies, and the exposed roots pass beneath a single fractured foreground. Readings of nation, earth and colonial division become more persuasive when they explain these crossings as well as the contrast. ^{[3] [11]}

A Pair Across Three Paintings

Smaller versions of two reclining or embracing women appear within What the Water Gave Me (1938). Vera traces a formal sequence from that dispersed bathtub image to the enlarged, self-contained pair of Two Nudes in a Forest and then to the paired bodies of The Two Fridas (1939). The sequence is a scholarly comparison, not a documented preparatory plan or evidence that Kahlo conceived the three as one commission. ^{[5] [7] [12] [13]}

In What the Water Gave Me, the pair is one small event amid many and is placed on a sponge-like island. In the present painting the figures dominate a compact landscape, their heads and limbs joining through touch. The Two Fridas instead presents two fully clothed, frontal women at monumental scale, holding hands and joined by exposed blood vessels; the forest pair has no such visible vascular bridge. ^{[3] [13]}

The comparison makes differences productive. Here intimacy is asymmetrical, because one woman supports or encloses the other; the other major double portrait uses near symmetry and a repeated identifiable face. Belnap's discussion of the earlier bathtub image warns against making any such pair a private emblem with a single national or sexual meaning. ^{[13] [14]}

Melanie Otto offers a later relational reading through Gloria Anzaldúa's idea of nepantla, an in-between condition where identities are negotiated rather than simply opposed. The women's contact at the forest/plain threshold suits that lens, but Anzaldúa wrote later and cannot be Kahlo's source. Otto's comparison with the emotional distance in My Nurse and I remains useful while rejecting the essay's mistaken claim that it is another name for this painting. ^[8]

Cloth, Roots, Earth and Monkey

The Spanish title's La tierra misma makes “earth” a named part of the work's documentary history. Earth here can mean literal ground, land, territory, living nature or a personified generative force; the visible picture does not choose among them. Kahlo paints root-like strands under a broken bank, a plain beyond the group and a fissure receiving red marks from the cloth. ^{[1] [3]}

Herrera reads those marks as blood fertilising the earth, while Otto connects roots and earth to personal and political identity. Abby McEwen's Christie’s essay resists a convention in which a woman simply stands for passive nature: Kahlo's bodies interact with a fertile yet ruptured terrain rather than disappearing into it. These accounts work at different levels and should not be fused into a single statement of what Kahlo intended. ^{[5] [8] [15]}

The red drapery has prompted sacred comparisons, but no textile source has identified its type. It frames the seated woman and seems to continue visually toward the broken ground; it is not secure to call it a named regional garment. The small monkey in the left foliage is another visible presence, although its species, sex and relation to the women are unclear. Kahlo used monkeys elsewhere, but those works do not license a universal key for this particular animal. ^[3]

The forest has also been compared with Henri Rousseau's invented jungles. That formal association may help explain why large leaves and twisting branches feel imaginative rather than locally botanical. No specific Rousseau source canvas, copied plant or actual forest site has been demonstrated for this painting. ^{[5] [10]}

Sacred and Mythic Readings

One upright figure supporting a reclining body can recall the Christian Pietà, and Herrera makes that comparison in his catalogue essay. The shape of the pair and the red cloth can make the association intelligible without turning either nude into the Virgin or Christ. The painting contains no identified dead son, halo, cross, devotional inscription or scene of mourning. ^{[3] [5]}

Ankori proposes a more radical origin image: Eve and Lilith, rather than Adam and Eve, in a female Eden. Vera invokes European representations of paired women, including the School of Fontainebleau's Gabrielle d'Estrées and One of Her Sisters. Both comparisons broaden the work's art-historical company, yet neither proves direct quotation or mythological intent. ^{[7] [10]}

The oil-on-metal support and intimate size also invite comparison with Mexican retablos and other small devotional paintings. Teresa del Conde's Spanish study supplies that broader popular-art context, not an object-specific account of its making or function. This painting has no documented devotional commission or narrative of thanks, so it should not be catalogued as an ex-voto simply because it is small and painted on metal. ^{[1] [2] [16]}

1939 and the Limits of Biography

Kahlo dated the work 1939, the year of her Paris journey and divorce from Rivera. Her March 1940 letter mentions the divorce, but in its financial discussion, separately from the promised picture. No studio diary, preparatory drawing, commission record or making letter has been found to fix the work's month, location, live models or immediate occasion. ^{[1] [4]}

McEwen places the painting within Kahlo's encounter with Surrealism and argues that the intertwined women resist masculine images of woman as nature. The argument is worth discussing as criticism, while her essay's claim that Breton met Kahlo in Paris in 1937 conflicts with the controlled chronology: their meeting was in Mexico in 1938. A sophisticated catalogue essay can be useful for interpretation and unreliable for a separate historical detail. ^{[15] [17]}

Kahlo's divorce, bodily pain and relationships with women are relevant contexts, but none allows a specific emotion or sexual encounter to be read directly from the painted figures. The couple's intimacy and the agitated land are formally complex enough to merit attention before life events are assigned as their causes. The full personal and Surrealism histories belong to their own pages. ^{[3] [4] [15]}

From Dolores del Río to an Anonymous Buyer

The first transfer is unusually secure: Kahlo promised and gave the painting to Dolores del Río, and both the letter and Christie's provenance support that stage. Christie's next names Lewis A. Riley, who held it by descent around 1983, then identifies a New York sale on 21 November 1989, lot 17. The dealer Mary-Anne Martin/Fine Art acquired it at that sale, and the later 2016 owner bought it from the dealer. ^{[1] [4]}

The original 1989 catalogue and results sheet have not been read. Third-party records conflict over its price and even over the selling auction house, so the event can be stated through Christie's later provenance but the historical result should be left unpriced. The exact legal steps of Riley's descent and the dealer-to-collector transfer remain private or unverified. ^{[1] [6]}

The New York Botanical Garden's 2015 checklist credited the painting to the collection of Jon Shirley. Christie's 2016 lot called it property of a “Distinguished American Collection” without naming the consignor. The one-year sequence makes a link to Shirley plausible, but it is an inference; after the 2016 sale he must not be described as its present owner. ^{[1] [2]}

Christie's sold the work in New York on 12 May 2016 as lot 21 C of its Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale. Its reported estimate was US$8–12 million and its price realised was US$8,005,000, also reported as £5,551,318 in the auction house's half-year results. A price realised is not the hammer bid, and the sale does not identify the buyer or determine current value. ^{[1] [18]}

Christie's called the result a world auction record for Kahlo at the time. Sotheby's Diego y yo sale surpassed it at US$34.9 million in 2021, and Sotheby's reported US$54.7 million for El sueño (La cama) in 2025. These are dated stages in Kahlo's auction reception, not a present valuation of this privately held painting. ^{[18] [19] [20]}

Exhibited in Kahlo's Lifetime and After

Christie's exhibition history places the painting as no. 24 in Kahlo's April 1953 presentation at Galería de Arte Contemporáneo in Mexico City. Museo Frida Kahlo and Mexico's arts institute describe this as her only solo exhibition in Mexico during her lifetime. Kahlo's arrival by ambulance and participation from a bed belong to that event's history; they are not depicted in this painting, and the original 1953 checklist title and lender remain unverified. ^{[1] [17] [21]}

The auction catalogue also records a 1978–79 United States tour and subsequent displays in Madrid, Paris, Mexico City, Barcelona, Martigny and Japan, followed by Tate Modern in 2005 and the 2007–08 Minneapolis–Philadelphia–San Francisco retrospective. These are selected object-specific entries from a later catalogue, not a claim that all original exhibition checklists have been read. Their venues show circulation of the private painting well before its high-profile 2016 sale. ^[1]

The New York Botanical Garden supplies firmer direct evidence for 2015. Its Frida Kahlo: Art, Garden, Life checklist names Two Nudes in a Forest as no. 6, gives Jon Shirley's collection credit and places the original in a show about Kahlo's botanical world. The museum lists the run from 16 May to 1 November 2015. ^{[2] [22]}

Christie's 2016 sale-room notice said the painting had been requested for Philadelphia's Paint the Revolution, with proposed onward travel to Mexico City. A contemporary Philadelphia review then identified this painting among five Kahlo works displayed there; the cited sources do not establish its inclusion at the subsequent Mexican venue. A Rose Art Museum presentation in 2021 used a reproduction, not the original, and cannot extend the physical exhibition history. ^{[1] [23] [24]}

The cited primary and institutional sources establish no later physical display or named post-2016 owner. The current location should therefore remain “private collection; display unverified,” not a dated Shirley collection credit or an assumed museum loan. New exhibition or lender records could change that description. ^{[1] [2]}

Further Reading and Open Questions

The exact object entry in Frida Kahlo: The Complete Paintings is the priority for title, catalogue number, medium, provenance, exhibitions and bibliography. Herrera's biography and paintings book, the 1988 Gesamtwerk, the original 1953 and 1989 catalogues, the 2016–17 Paint the Revolution catalogue and owner or conservation files are also needed for firmer catalogue and technical history. The complete commercial books and original entries remain unconsulted. ^{[1] [25]}

Ankori's exact chapter passage was consulted, but not her complete book; Patricia Mayayo's Spanish monograph and Adriana Zavala's study are identified for further reading, not used as evidence for claims here. The available peer-reviewed and primary material still supports a substantial account because the object record, Kahlo's letter, the image, institutional checklists and multilingual scholarship answer different questions. The support alloy, pigments, frame history, condition and present owner remain undocumented in the cited sources. ^{[4] [10] [25]}

Related Reading

Compare the transformed pair of figures in What the Water Gave Me and the later, differently structured Two Fridas. My Nurse and I is a separate 1937 painting, not an alternative title for this one; Kahlo's style and Surrealism offers the broader context for the invented landscape.

Frequently Asked Questions

References

1. Christie's, Frida Kahlo, Dos desnudos en el bosque (La tierra misma), lot 21 C, 2016 object details, provenance, bibliography, exhibition list and sale-room notice; complete accessible record read and rechecked 3 October 2026. View source text.
2. New York Botanical Garden, Frida Kahlo: Art, Garden, Life art-gallery checklist, physical p. 3, no. 6; 1939, oil on metal, 25 × 30.5 cm and 2015 Jon Shirley collection credit. View source text.
3. Author's visual observations from the full painting shown in Christie's 2016 object record, checked against the New York Botanical Garden's object details (reference 2). The image is evidence for visible forms, not a technical examination or a publication licence; no artwork is reproduced here. View source text.
4. Museo Soumaya, July 2017 bulletin, physical pp. 16–18, photographs of Kahlo's March 1940 letter to Dolores del Río; Centro de Estudios de Historia de México Carso, Fondo Dolores Del Rio MXXIV, folder 2, document 165. The primary document is distinguished from the bulletin's later commentary on pp. 19–20. View source text.
5. Hayden Herrera, “Frida Kahlo: Two Nudes in a Forest,” essay within Christie's 2016 lot record; complete accessible essay read, with sitter, Dolores, Pietà, Rousseau, blood and self-consolation claims treated as attributed interpretation. View source text.
6. Christie's 2016 provenance records the 21 November 1989 New York sale as lot 17. The original 1989 catalogue and official results sheet have not been consulted; conflicting secondary price reports are not presented as an established result. View source text.
7. Luis Roberto Vera, “Raíz mesoamericana: Octavio Paz, Efraín Huerta y Frida Kahlo”, Impossibilia 4 (2012), 202–232, especially printed pp. 217–219; Spanish-language three-work and mestizaje discussion. View source text.
8. Melanie Otto, “Tierra entre medio: Borderlands of Knowledge in the Art of Frida Kahlo”, Irish Journal of American Studies 2 (2010), 60–74; relational-identity and nepantla interpretation, with its mistaken My Nurse and I title conflation rejected. View source text.
9. Diana Palaversich, “Repensando a Frida Kahlo en el centenario de su nacimiento”, Ciberletras 19 (July 2008), especially printed p. 359; Spanish-language female-eroticism passage and anti-reductive context. View source text.
10. Gannit Ankori, Frida Kahlo (Reaktion Books, 2013), chapter 7, printed p. 128; the exact passage about Two Nudes in a Forest was read in a separately hosted excerpt, not in the complete commercial book. The link identifies the publisher's edition, not public access to that page. View source text.
11. Camilla Sutherland, “Indigenismo and the Limits of Cultural Appropriation: Frida Kahlo and Marina Núñez del Prado”, Angelaki 27, nos. 3–4 (2022), 75–90, especially printed p. 80; complete article and relevant page consulted. View source text.
12. Luis Roberto Vera, “Maternidad: raigambre y clasicismo en El abrazo de amor de Frida Kahlo”, Tramas 40 (2013), 301–317, especially printed p. 311; Spanish-language three-work sequence and Tibol-label route. View source text.
13. Editorial comparison with the George Eastman Museum's 1938 photograph of What the Water Gave Me and the Museo de Arte Moderno's Two Fridas record; their forms can be compared without claiming that Kahlo planned the three paintings as a series. See the individual water painting and double-portrait studies. View source text 1; View source text 2.
14. Jeffrey Belnap, “Disentangling the Strangled Tehuana”, Genders 33 (June 2001), numbered paragraphs 3–4 and 19–20; paired-women comparison and anti-essentialist method. View source text.
15. Abby McEwen, second essay in Christie's 2016 Two Nudes in a Forest lot record; its woman-and-nature and Surrealism argument is attributed, while its Breton meeting date and unproved Dolores relationship label are not adopted as fact. View source text.
16. Teresa del Conde, “Lo popular en la pintura de Frida Kahlo”, Anales del Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas 13, no. 45 (1976), 195–203; Spanish-language popular/votive-art context, not a technical study of this painting. View source text.
17. Museo Frida Kahlo, life-and-work chronology, 1938–40 sequence and April 1953 exhibition context; it does not supply an object entry for Two Nudes in a Forest. View source text.
18. Christie's, 12 May 2016 evening-sale results and 2016 half-year results, physical p. 5; US$8,005,000 price realised, £5,551,318 equivalent and record at the time. View source text 1; View source text 2.
19. Sotheby's official November 2021 Diego y yo result announcement, US$34.9 million and explicit succession to the former US$8 million Kahlo benchmark; historical record comparison only. View source text.
20. Sotheby's, “The 10 Most Exhilarating Auction Records Set in 2025”, 19 December 2025, El sueño (La cama) section, US$54.7 million and subsequent Kahlo record; checked 3 October 2026. View source text.
21. INBAL's institutional history describes Kahlo's April 1953 Galería de Arte Contemporáneo exhibition and arrival by bed; the painting's no. 24 inclusion comes from Christie's object record (reference 1). View source text.
22. New York Botanical Garden, Frida Kahlo: Art, Garden, Life exhibition record, 16 May–1 November 2015 and botanical curatorial scope; object inclusion is documented separately by the checklist at reference 2. View source text.
23. Philadelphia Museum of Art's Paint the Revolution overview identifies the event; a contemporary Artblog review names Two Nudes in a Forest among five Kahlo paintings displayed in Philadelphia. The cited sources do not establish its inclusion at the Mexican venue. View source text 1; View source text 2.
24. Rose Art Museum's Frida Kahlo: POSE exhibition page establishes the 2021 show, while Murray Whyte's contemporary Boston Globe review reports a reproduction of Two Nudes in a Forest. This is secondary evidence for a reproduction, not proof of an original loan. View source text 1; View source text 2.
25. Further exact-source targets include the entry in Frida Kahlo: The Complete Paintings, Herrera's 1983 and 1991 books, the 1988 Gesamtwerk, original 1953 and 1989 catalogues, the 2016–17 Paint the Revolution catalogue and owner/conservation files. The TASCHEN link identifies an edition; none of those complete commercial books or original entries is claimed as read here. View source text.
26. Amy Fine Collins, “Frida Kahlo’s Diary: A Glimpse Inside Her Tortured, Scribble-Happy World,” Vanity Fair, September 1995, “Two Nudes in the Jungle” passage. Its sitter resemblance and inference from an unpublished Olga Campos interview are attributed journalistic speculation, not a verified artist identification; the interview transcript has not been read. 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 →

Browse Frida Kahlo’s paintings →