The Mexican artist Frida Kahlo was renowned for her paintings and other visual artworks, including numerous self-portraits. However, her written work also reveals a great deal about her and shows the importance of words as well as images in understanding a creative figure.
Kahlo conducted a great deal of correspondence by letter with family, friends, and romantic partners throughout her life. Many of her letters survive to this day.
In addition, she kept a personal journal that combined her handwritten reflections with vivid color illustrations and numerous sketches in the margins. Kahlo's handwritten notes and letters illustrate that she was fluent in both Spanish and English and could move comfortably between the two languages.
Kahlo's letters are frequently intimate and informal. She often showed vulnerability to others in discussing her personal troubles. She would sometimes add the imprint of a lipstick kiss to letters to close friends.
When some of her letters were sold at auction by Sotheby's many years later, the item description even singled out this detail: "Signed by the artist, with drawings and lipstick kisses."
The way Kahlo signed her letters is also telling. She usually used only her first name, and it was much less common for her to sign her full name. Most of her surviving correspondence is signed off with the single name "Frida," and only a handful use "Frida Kahlo" in its entirety to conclude the letter.
Some handwriting analysts describe her writing as calm and measured and note that she dotted her i's carefully, without rushing her notes and letters.
Words and images mingled in her letters, too. Kahlo added illustrations to some of them, and a letter to a friend in 1931 included a drawing of a cameo-style portrait of a woman.
Her notes were not always personal. In 1947 she even wrote a short note confirming that drawings a friend was carrying abroad were her originals and gifts to him.
From the lipstick kisses and the colorful journal illustrations to the simple signature "Frida," Kahlo's handwritten work shows how naturally words and images blended in her everyday writing.