Frida Kahlo's Love Letters

by Suzanne Barbezat

 ‘I don’t know how to write love letters. But I wanted to tell you that my whole being opened for you. Since I fell in love with you everything is transformed and is full of beauty . . . love is like an aroma, like a current, like rain’ 

Frida Kahlo lived a passionate life and the letters shared between her and those she loved are an intimate insight into her life. Letters were sent to her first love, Alejandro Gomez Arias, and to her husband Diego Rivera. But she wrote declarations of love to many others, including Leon Trotsky, Nickolas Muray and Jose Bartoli. 

Genres: Nonfiction

160 pages, Hardcover

Published May 6, 2025

Reviews

[Marcus Hobson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fascinating book, focused on just one small part of the life of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. Put simply, we see in detail the letters that she wrote to the men and women that she loved. All the people that she intersected with at different stages in her life, from her teenage years right through to her death at only 47. As with her art, her love was always powerful, expressive and full of hidden meanings.
It has to be said that our impression is a little one sided. We hear Frida’s voice but very little from the people that she professed to love so deeply. It wold be wonderful to hear if they expressed the same amount of passion and love in their letters to her. We have glimpses. We know that her first love Alejandro kept all of her letters. Ignacio had a passionate affair with Frida for only about three months, but kept all of her letters and photos in a small lacquered box made of aromatic wood. Fifty years later, in 1986, he gave a lecture about Frida, and his words then capture some of her spirit.

Frida is the event of each day, with birds and flowers, forget-me-nots, pelicans, marigolds, the moisture of the garden, and the aroma of a burning comal…Scandalously beautiful Frida.

Not knowing the life of Frida that well, there was much to learn from this short collection. I knew that she was injured in an accident and often in pain. I had not realised that she continued to have operations throughout her life. The letter show something of the persistence of the pain she experienced. The week and sometimes months that she had to spend in different hospitals were hard for Frida, and must have left her feeling very lonely. The reliance on letters for any form of personal news must also have made these periods of isolation hard.
The love letters allow us to glimpse the artists passion for the people around her. She was not afraid to say how much she loved someone, in words that must have made them feel very special. There are twenty-five years between the first and last letters in the book, a period that represents almost the whole of Frida’s adult life. The words always remain full of emotion and passion. Over time they become more poetic and complex. At one point she uses an acrostic to spell out the name of her lover and at the same time make a list of words that describe the man or her emotions for him. From quite a young age there would also be drawings within her letters – faces or animals that foreshadow her later works and interests.

Frida’s story cannot be told without the mention of Diego Rivera. She married him in 1929, when she was just 22 and he was twenty years older. After difficult times they divorced in 1939, but were married again in 1940. In the midst of their first years of marriage, Diego continued to have affairs, even one with Frida’s sister. This may have been what pushed Frida to have affairs of her own, but she was much more discreet. We certainly see plenty of her passion for others. The letters to Nickolas Muray were particularly intense and some had a trail of lipstick kisses along the margins. Muray helped to support Frida financially during her divorce an met with her when she travelled to New York for exhibitions of her work. He was a renowned photographer, and some of the pictures in the book are ones that he took, both formal and candid. The book is richly illustrated with a pleasing mixture of photographs, drawings and paintings by Frida and also pictures of the letters themselves. The earliest were in Spanish, but later her letters were also in English.
Suzanne Barbezat has done great job to assemble and translate the letters and also to add content. There are eight sections to the book, each one with letters to a different lover, including women such as Georgia O’Keefee and Jacqueline Lamba. Barbezat begins each section with a short introduction to give us some of the background and the context. As well as giving us a brief glimpse of Frida’s life they also hint at the many other facets of her life that remain fascinating The early years of the twentieth century were ones of revolution, both in Mexico and in Europe. Frida was friends with the exiled revolutionary Leon Trotsky while he lived in Mexico. Many of her lovers had some link to revolutions or a fight for the common people. So many fascinating strands, they make you want to learn more about the fascinating force of nature that was Frida Kahlo.

[Abby Fergz · Rating 4 out of 5]

if you have watched "Frida Kahlo in her own words" this will feel very familiar. 'love is like an aroma, like a current, like rain.You know my sky, you rain on me and I, like the earth, receive you'

[Grace · Rating 5 out of 5]

Happy to place this little book of love letters on the echelon next to Pablo Neruda's Love Poems. Unsurprisingly, Kahlo's words are just as raw and evocative as her paintings. The reader has the pleasure of witnessing Kahlo's transformation, from youthful first love to the complexity of her relationship with Diego Rivera (who frustrated her with his cheating but also served as a vital source for her artistic inspiration) to passionate affairs between both men and women. The occasional sketch, visualizing metaphors conjured up through words, and the imperfect circles, demarcating her kisses, make me all the more nostalgic for mail as a tradition in long-distance communication and a practice for long-form writing.

I tend to view artists in the context of myths. After all, how Herculean it must be to completely anoint a style of your own! Yet Kahlo's letters remind me that for even the most prodigious artists, they, too, are deeply human. She yearns, as much as any other teenager might for a crush; she tortures herself, in the presence and absence of a toxic lover; she explores, through nicknames and sexuality. The flux of love is constant--across life, across people, across space.

[Richard Derus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Real Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: ‘I don’t know how to write love letters. But I wanted to tell you that my whole being opened for you. Since I fell in love with you everything is transformed and is full of beauty . . . love is like an aroma, like a current, like rain’

Frida Kahlo lived a passionate life and the letters shared between her and those she loved are an intimate insight into her life. Letters were sent to her first love, Alejandro Gomez Arias, and to her husband Diego Rivera. But she wrote declarations of love to many others, including Leon Trotsky, Nickolas Muray and Jose Bartoli.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Is somebody, other than the spy agencies, archiving people's emails? I doubt a book like this will be possible to collect in thirty years. That makes me sad.

It's lovely to have this peek into Frida's life of love.
who we're talkin' about
I deliberately said it that way because "love life" carries an entirely different meaning in English. I think no one exemplifies a "life of love" better than wounded, damaged Kahlo. Her many surgeries, her intense pain after the accident that mangled her, the earliness of her death...she was FORTY-SEVEN! I mean, I knew she was too young to die, but that's barely middle age!...all conspired to keep her isolated. It was inevitable. No wonder her artwork is a riot of color, is so intensely involved in portraying volumes in space...it had to be, or she'd go mad. Madder.
Frida in 1926, pre-accident
How I wish she'd lived in the time of the internet. How grateful I am that she didn't. It's like wishing her accident never happened, or she was not so severely broken by it...she wouldn't have been herself, then. Would we know of her as the monadnock of art she is had she not been made famous for overcoming her physical disadvantages? 17 September 1925 ruined one life, opened another. From the life before, her love letters to Alejandro Gómez Arias show a callow, intense crush on this handsome guy:
hubba hubba! me likee!
...who, to be honest, is very crushwortthy on value of face. The letters are, well, those of a young, very young, woman finding out about this amazing thing called Love:

It's the sort of thing that causes some people to insist their papers be burned after their death. I'm not sure that's wrong of them. After all, outpourings of Love are utterly cringe if you're not also in love; sometimes even if you are, but in a good way then.

I thoroughly enjoyed this collection of Frida's letters as an object, and as per usual give Frances Lincoln Ltd's designers big ups for their presentation. I understand this is a gift object. I would give it five of five stars if it had included some of the responses the recipients returned. I'm not al all sure that would've been the same book, of course, so that's why I got as close to the full five as I did. I'm quite sure I'd gift this to my lesbian pal (she's still iconic among us, despite the careful heteronormativity of this selection), or my Frida freak cousin, or just pretend I'll give it to someone and end up keeping it on my coffee table for people to flip through.

It's two hours well-spent learning about the close relationship between a gifted artist's openness to Love, and her creative intensity. This was a spirit not to be trapped, not to be bound, not to be trammelled; this was a woman who Loved where she would, who she would.

[Carrie · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a special little gem of a book! Absolutely beautiful.

[Mirabella. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love all my frida books, frida is endlessly inspiring, but this one is really great and beloved, on par with my favourite - forever frida by Murillo. I so appreciate the beautiful layout of this book, the inclusion of pages with just quotes from her emblazoned. The additions of the actual letters, illustrations, photographs, art. It’s just wonderful and whole brained. The letters themselves are wonderful insight into Frida’s nature and how she felt about her immense suffering too. The best letters were those she wrote in her diary addressed to Diego, I wonder if he ever actually saw them. They are pure magic, pure poetry, she writes ‘Words in chains, which we could not say except on the lips of a dream. Everything was surrounded by the verdant miracle of the landscape of your body. Upon your form, the eyelashes of the flowers respond to my touch, the murmur of rivers. All the fruits were in the juice of your lips, the blood of the pomegranate, the stretch of the mamey and the virtuous pineapple. I pressed you against my chest and the wonder of your form penetrated all my blood through the tips of my fingers.’

And it continues on and on for pages in this poetic form, the rest of her letters to him, that actually got to him are quite basic she pleads a lot for his love, and for her first boyfriend’s love. But she is always ardent and vulnerable. If you enjoy her poetic letters to Diego in her diary like I did, i really suggest you get the poetry books of Pablo Neruda or Octavio Paz they really read like this, in the same fashion. I felt like I was reading Nerudas poetry when she writes ‘I have the taste of almonds from your lips in my mouth, our worlds have never gone outside. Only one mountain can know the core of another mountain’. Something about the Spanish language lends itself well to passionate poetics. Really so glad I bought this book I was having a bad day, I’d lost myself, my creativity, my colour, my variety and it brought it all back to me, in a way that Frida does for so many hundreds of thousands of women. 🌿🎨

[Carolina Gardner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Growing up, I knew Frida Kahlo as an artist. A painter who makes beautiful visceral paintings of her herself and other works.

But Frida as a writer? I never would’ve known that about her if I hadn’t picked up this book!
Frida’s love letters gave me a glimpse into her life as a young woman in love and showed me the kind of person she really was. I really enjoyed reading her letters and her little poems. Her little art sketches were absolutely adorable too 🥰

[Disha · Rating 5 out of 5]

the insecurities and depth of love wow

[Amy booknookjourney · Rating 4 out of 5]

I got this book because I was going to Chicago to see her exhibit at the Chicago Art Museum. I loved learning about Frida through the letters that she wrote to those that she loved. She told her life in these love letters. Those that she gave the letters too kept them and they’re sharing with us. She writes so openly and raw that you feel that you know her and that she is writing it to you. Read this book if you’re wanting to know what a real love letter looks like, what love is like, and more about Frida herself.