Description

A gift-worthy hardcover edition reexamining Kahlo's most subversive yet heart-wrenching self-portrait

In 1940, in the wake of a divorce from her husband Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo (1907-54) turned to self-portraiture to express her deepest emotional and psychological impulses, and completed a painting inscribed with the lyrics of a popular folk song, "La Pelona" "Look, if I loved you it was for your hair. Now that you're without it, I no longer love you." In Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair, Kahlo's usual lively and saturated palette is supplanted by neutral hues, her Tehuana dress by a man's suit and her plaited hair by shorn locks that appear to wriggle up from the floor and around her chair, strangely alive. Nevertheless, the painting remains unmistakably Kahlo's, intensely felt, dreamlike and displaying references that encompass both popular culture and details from the artist's private life. In this richly illustrated volume, which includes the artist's most celebrated self-portraits and other related images, art historian Jodi Roberts situates the painting in the context of the Mexican Revolution, the Surrealist tradition and Kahlo's own changing of her artistic identity. This expanded hardcover edition includes additional illustrations and photographs, and features a die-cut on the front cover.