Lola Álvarez Bravo and Frida Kahlo

Frida Kahlo

Self-Portrait With Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird / Frida Kahlo / 1940 © Estate of Frida Kahlo

Lola Álvarez Bravo

Triptych of the Matyrs II / Lola Álvarez Bravo / 1950 © Throckmorton Fine Art, Inc. New York

Despite arguably

being the most famous female

artist of all time, Frida Kahlo only had one solo exhibition in her home country of Mexico during her lifetime. And it was her friend, Lola Álvarez Bravo, who hosted it at her gallery La Galería de Arte Contemporáneo. She had realised that time was running out as Frida’s health declined.

Kahlo suffered from chronic pain throughout her life, the result of polio in childhood, a traumatic bus accident which saw a handrail penetrate her back leaving her body through her pelvis, multiple miscarriages and an amputation of her right leg. Doctors insisted that Frida should take to bed rest, and not attend her exhibition, but that didn’t stop her.

Kahlo had her entire four-poster bed delivered to Bravo’s gallery, in which she lay for the duration of the party.

Much has been said of

Frida Kahlo’s brilliance, but Bravo herself was a highly visionary and successful, photographer. “If my photos have any value,” she once said, “it’s because they show a Mexico that no longer exists.” The interest in capturing daily life in the

wake of Mexico’s Revolution was one the two women shared. Bravo’s statement rings true with Kahlo’s description of her own work, “I paint flowers so they will not die.”

Many of the iconic photographs of Frida Kahlo

were taken by Bravo. In one, she’s captured lost in thought, her chin cradled in her palm. In another, she lies back on the bed which so often became her prison. Many of Bravo’s portraits of show her friend gazing into mirrors. They’re reminiscent of Kahlo’s compulsion to reflect and reveal the self in her own work. Bravo clearly understands the pain, trauma and emotional conflict that Kahlo experienced throughout her life—a sense of ease and understanding between the two is evident in every frame. In turn, Kahlo gifted Bravo many works over their friendship, including her painting, Portrait of a Lady in White . So deep was their artistic understanding, the pair wrote a surrealist

"MY PHOTOS SHOW A MEXICO THAT NO LONGER EXISTS"

film script together, with plans for Bravo to film and Kahlo to star. Sadly, Frida’s rapidly deteriorating health prevented the project from being finished. She died almost exactly a year after her solo show.

It’s evident that Bravo a revolution, with a passion missed her friend dearly for capturing the intimate after her death. She lives of women so casually photographed Kahlo’s body dismissed by politicians and lying in state, and later “serious” male artists, she opened her own exhibition was an unrelenting free-spirit. dedicated to the life of the She photographed poverty, artist, entitled “Frida and Her prostitution, her friends, World”. In her final years, strangers—sides to Mexico the writer Olivier Debroise never before documented. notes that Bravo “repeated “I was the only woman the same old stories” about fooling around with a camera her friend over and over. Lola in the streets,” she reflected continued to work until her years later. “All the reporters own death in 1993. Standing laughed at me. So, I became camera in hand at the dusk of a fighter.”

LEFTThe Two Fridas / Frida Kahlo / 1939 RIGHTFrida Kahlo / Lola Álvarez Bravo / 1944

“I was almost thinking of… The Two Fridas, when I photographed her,” Bravo later recalled.