Frida Kahlo is worldwide famous for three things: her distinctive self-portraits and iconic aesthetics, her heartbreaking story full of physical pain and her stormy relationship with Diego Rivera. There are many myths and legends about her due to her eccentric personality and revolutionary outspoken ideas regarding the times she lived in, but little is known about the close and unexpected friendship she had with Marcel Duchamp, one of the most controversial figures in 20th century art.
Marcel Duchamp is considered to be one of the most brilliant minds of the twentieth century, according to André Breton himself. His thinking influenced a great extent in the evolution of Dadaism and the re-signification of works of art in relation to the passing of time, context and contemporaneity. Along these lines, Duchamp practiced art as a voluntary exercise, where talent, knowledge or preparation were not necessarily required.
Duchamp had formal artistic studies, began his career in the Fauvist style, gradually became more abstract until he reached Cubism and finally began to develop object art or ready made with everyday objects that were extracted from his environment and then considered works of art. Duchamp was focused on the discourse or reflection generated by a piece than by the piece itself. Thus it was that in 1917 he presented his masterpiece: The Fountain, an irony-laden critique of the absurdity in canonizing artistic practice.
According to Evodio Escalante, Mexican critic and researcher, the meeting between both characters took place in Paris in 1939, when both enjoyed a remarkable popularity in the world art circuit. Kahlo was looking for a way to mount her second exhibition outside Mexico with the help of André Breton, who offered her lodging in his house. But Frida developed a severe intestinal infection, for which she had to be hospitalized. Breton completely ignored her, but Marcel Duchamp and Mary Raynolds, his wife, found out about this situation and decided to take care of Frida Kahlo. From this moment on, a close friendship was born.
Another friendly nod to this relationship occurred in 1943, when Benjamin Péret and Wolfgang Paalen, Duchamp’s friends, made a trip to Mexico and Marcel took the opportunity to send “affectionate greetings to Diego and his painter friend, and expressed his interest in getting to know Mexico,” as Alberto Chong Gutiérrez said in an article, Generación magazine.
Duchamp had the opportunity to visit Mexico until 1957, three years after Kahlo’s death. However, he had the opportunity to meet the painter Arturo Estrada, Kahlo’s student and personal friend. At that time, Duchamp was an adviser to the Noma and William Copley Foundation, and went to Mexico to visit the studio of Arturo Estrada, who had applied for a scholarship from the same foundation. Estrada won the scholarship by impressing Duchamp with a still life with surrealist airs, “a nostalgic Duchamp would have paid a posthumous tribute of admiration to the painter he met in Paris,” writes journalist Evodio Escalante about the personal meeting he had with Arturo Estrada, who shared this anecdote with him.
Within the framework of the exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, which commemorates the 80th anniversary of the creation of Las Dos Fridas, Carlos Segoviano spoke about the research that arose when preparing this exhibition, which highlights the relationship between Frida Kahlo and Marcel Duchamp, their meeting in Paris and the correspondence they exchanged some time later as a result of this encounter.
In the exhibition of Las Dos Fridas, you can see a facsimile of the catalog from the Paris exhibition, a letter Frida sent to Nickolas Muray, her lover at the time, where she tells him about Marcel Duchamp’s support with a photograph of Duchamp that Frida kept in the bathroom of the Casa Azul, and an image of Frida’s room in which you can see a reproduction of Desnudo Bajando una Escalera (Nude Descending a Staircase) that Duchamp painted in 1912.
These are some glimpses of this curious and unknown friendship between two highly controversial figures in the history of art.
This story was originally written in Spanish by Cultura Colectiva.
