My bookshelf·Index No. 0370

The Diary of Frida Kahlo

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The last ten years of her life in her own hand — a facsimile of the journal she kept from about 1944, reproduced in full color, so you get the actual pages: Watercolor and ink drawings, blots she turned into figures, dense automatic writing, love notes to Diego, and lists of colors with what each one means to her. Green: warm and good light. There’s a full translation and a commentary alongside. It’s not a diary of events. It’s the inside of a mind that had been in pain for twenty years, and the drawings do things her finished paintings never risk.

The Diary of Frida Kahlo
By Frida Kahlo. Abrams Books, 2005. 295 pages.