Drawing upon the extensive Mary Reynolds Collection at the Art Institute of Chicago and extraordinary Kahlo loans from public and private collections in the US, Mexico, and Europe, the presentation sheds light on this little-known chapter of 20th-century art history, recounting the legacies of Kahlo and Reynolds—both artists themselves and partners of artists—as they navigated Surrealism, identity, and cross-cultural exchange on the eve of World War II.

Frida Kahlo, 1938
Julien Levy
The Art Institute of Chicago, gift of Patricia and Frank Kolodny in memory of Julien Levy

Mary Reynolds, 1930
Man Ray
The Art Institute of Chicago Archives, Mary Reynolds Collection, gift of Marjorie Watkins, October 1992. © 2025 Man Ray Trust / Artist Rights Society (ARS) New York / ADAGP Paris
Kahlo traveled to France in January 1939 at the invitation of André Breton, the architect of European Surrealism. Breton had visited Kahlo in Mexico the year previously and invited her to consider an exhibition in Paris. The French city, however, did not agree with Kahlo. She quickly found it eroding her sense of artistic freedom and her health—until she met Reynolds. When Kahlo was rushed to the hospital with a kidney infection, Reynolds invited her to convalesce at her home at 14 rue Hallé, a hub of the city’s visual and literary avant-gardes who regularly communed and dined there.

The Frame (El marco), 1938
Frida Kahlo
Centre Pompidou, State purchase, 1939, JP 929 P (1). © Banco de México Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, D.F. / ADAGP, Paris. Digital Image © CNAC/MNAM, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY

Les mains libres (Free Hands), published 1937, bound 1937–1942
Mary Reynolds
Written by Man Ray and Paul Éluard. The Art Institute of Chicago, Ryerson and Burnham Libraries, Mary Reynolds Collection
Reynolds and her partner, the artist Marcel Duchamp, treated this home as a living work of art and abundantly installed it with their own artworks and unique books, as well as paintings and sculptures by close friends, such as Constantin Brancusi, Alexander Calder, Yves Tanguy, and Jean Cocteau. This rich creative and domestic environment in many ways reflected that of Kahlo’s own beloved Casa Azul in Mexico City.

Untitled (clockwise from bottom right: Constantin Brancusi, Marcel Duchamp, Ezra Pound, Vera Moore, and Mary Reynolds), 1932
Constantin Brancusi
The Art Institute of Chicago Archives, Mary Reynolds Collection. © Succession Brancusi. All rights reserved (ARS), 2025
Our exhibition traces Kahlo’s artistic trajectory from her first solo exhibition to her short but highly consequential engagement with Mary Reynolds and the French Surrealists and then back across the Atlantic in 1940 with Kahlo’s participation in the International Exhibition of Surrealism in Mexico City. The story is told through approximately 100 objects, including paintings, book bindings, works on paper, photographs, and archival materials, notably letters from Kahlo to her lover, the photographer Nickolas Muray, where she recounts the experience of her Paris sojourn in her own voice.

Tree of Hope, Remain Strong (Árbol de la esperanza, mantente firme), 1946
Frida Kahlo
Private collection. © 2025 Banco de México Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, D.F. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Photo by Nathan Keay

Loin de Rueil (The Skin of Dreams), published 1944, bound 1945–1950
Mary Reynolds
Written by Raymond Queneau. The Art Institute of Chicago, Ryerson and Burnham Libraries, Mary Reynolds Collection
Taken together, these works open a new chapter on Kahlo’s career, at a moment when her engagement with European Surrealism was at its most direct. It also introduces Reynolds, a lesser-known but highly compelling artist and maker of innovative, one-of-a-kind book bindings. Showcasing these two artists together for the first time, this tightly focused presentation also reorients our understanding of how artists serve to inspire one another—whether through chance encounters or long-held friendships—or an extraordinary mixture of both.
Frida Kahlo’s Month in Paris: A Friendship with Mary Reynolds is curated by Caitlin Haskell, Gary C. and Frances Comer Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, with Tamar Kharatishvili, Daniel F. and Ada L. Rice Research Fellow in Modern Art, and Alivé Piliado, curatorial associate, National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago.
Catalogue
Kahlo and Reynolds’s intense encounter unfolds in this volume through the artworks they each made, their shared exploration of Reynolds’s expansive Surrealist library, and letters from Kahlo to her lover, American photographer Nickolas Muray, in which she recounted her time in Paris. Learn more.
Sponsors
Major support for Frida Kahlo’s Month in Paris: A Friendship with Mary Reynolds is provided by the Zell Family Foundation, Pat and Ron Taylor, Constance and David Coolidge, The Donnelly Family Foundation, Natasha Henner and Bala Ragothaman, and Kathy and Chuck Harper.
Additional support is provided by
