the diary of frida kahlo an intimate self portrait

Reading Fuentes's insights isn't a wholly negative experience, I found, but it does skew the encounter with Kahlo's very personal document. Imagine my surprise when I opened this book to discover that Fuentes not only translates into English all Kahlo's written notes, but also includes pages of 'translation' through his own lenses of history and experience every single word that she writes. The other authors list themselves only in conjunction with the introduction.

To begin with, if you look at the front of this book, the only author listed is Frida Khalo. I thought I would really love THE DIARY OF FRIDA KAHLO, but I merely liked it. This intimate portal into her life is sure to fascinate fans of the artist, art historians, and women’s culturalists alike. Her writing reveals the artist’s political sensibilities, recollections of her childhood, and her enormous courage in the face of more than 35 operations to correct injuries she had sustained in an accident at the age of 18. The text entries, written In Frida’s round, full script in brightly colored inks, make the journal as captivating to look at as it is to read. Her diary is sprinkled with irony, black humor, even gaiety, and augmented with translations of the diary entries plus commentaries and photographs, this volume stands as a reminder of not only Kahlo’s formidable talent, but also her resilience and courage.

In his introduction, Carlos Fuentes, one of Mexico’s most important writers and critics, ties Kahlo’s images of pain, loss, mutilation, and transcendence to Mexico’s historic cycles of revolution and reaction. Her views of love, politics, and more come into sharp focus in a kaleidoscope of creativity and thought. The 170-page journal contains the artist’s thoughts, poems, and dreams-many reflecting her stormy relationship with her husband, artist Diego Rivera-along with 70 mesmerizing watercolor illustrations. These passionate, often surprising, intimate records, kept under lock and key for some 40 years in Mexico, reveal many new dimensions in the complex personal life of this remarkable Mexican artist. Published in its entirety, Frida Kahlo’s amazing, illustrated journal documents the last 10 years of her turbulent life. “A visual document, engaging the eye with a volcanic profusion of penned-and-painted imagery.” - New York Times

The diary of frida kahlo an intimate self portrait