A remarkable memento of the creative presence of the artistic super-couple Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera - ‘equals and accomplices’ as they were described - in the mid-western city of Detroit, early in 1933.
With these drawings into a young woman’s autograph album, made a few days before their departure for New York, Kahlo and Rivera marked the close of a period of great artistic achievement for them both. For just three days before these drawings were created Rivera finished his industrial frescoes and Kahlo ended her anguished sequence of Detroit canvases.
In her drawing Kahlo depicts a cat seen from behind, placidly sitting and looking away from both artist and the album’s owner. Next to this she has written ‘To Lidia with the love of Carmen Rivera’ - signing herself with her formal married name as she did on her Detroit paintings. According to Helga Prignitz-Poga only one other depiction of a cat is known in Kahlo’s work (Self Portrait with Thorn Necklace), lending special significance to this image. Rivera’s first contribution to the album shows, in portrait format, a full length image of a woman whose face is seen in profile, wearing boots and what may be a feathered Aztec(?) skirt, next to a little gate or perhaps a swimming pool ladder. This is signed ‘Diego Rivera’ and undated. Five leaves later Rivera has drawn a wild yet instantly recognisable portrait head of himself seen in profile, as in voluble full flow, using blue-black ink and inscribed it: ‘Diego Rivera. Detroit March 16 1933.’
Together Kahlo and Rivera spent much of 1932 and early 1933 in Detroit where Rivera was commissioned to create a series of frescoes for the Detroit Art Institute which would draw upon the city’s industrial heritage. It is generally acknowledged that while in the city both artists hit ‘a career peak’ as Rivera completed his DIA mural and Kahlo worked intensely on a series of portraits dealing with her personal struggles. Later Rivera remembered how: ‘Frieda began work on a series of masterpieces which had no precedent in the history of art... Never before had a woman put such agonized poetry on canvas as Frida did at this time in Detroit.’ Whilst they lived in the city the couple were feted and entertained by Detroit’s elite. Kahlo in particular responded provocatively to her American hosts: ‘the expansive Rivera speaking Spanish and French and demanding all the attention, with the petite and caustic Kahlo dressed in colorful Mexican costumes... At Henry Ford’s sister’s home, Frida talked on about the wonders of communism. At a dinner at Henry Ford’s she asked the anti-semitic industrialist if he was Jewish.’ One of the other elite Detroit households who entertained Kahlo and Rivera was the Cohen family, parents of Lydia -or Lidia - Cohen who, on the evening of March 13, 1933, persuaded Kahlo and Rivera to inscribe her little album. This album captures a pivotal moment in art history.
PROVENANCE: Lydia Cohen and by descent.
LYDIA COHEN’S ALBUM: Black roan with amateur tape repairs to the backstrip and loss at the head and tail of the spine; 55 paper leaves alternating pink, yellow and gree in colour; c75 inscriptions. Lydia Cohen has written her name on the front flyleaf and her schools in Detroit: William T Sampson School; George Brady School; Roosevelt Elementary; Durfee Middle School. The entries into the album do not follow chronological order but dot around between 1922-1934 with contributions from school teachers, friends, musicians, mostly English and sometimes written and drawn in Hebrew. Kahlo’s contribution appears first, followed by Rivera’s pair of drawings, all three inserted between other signed pages. A second Spanish speaker seems to have been present that night spent with the Cohens, Kahlo and Rivera on March 16. 1933. They have written: ‘El idioma es corto y la palabra tosca para hablar de las vellezas tullas mejor recibe mi galarte via en il idioma quero lo el alma entiende’ ('The language is short and the word is crude to speak of the tullas' virtuousness, it is better to receive my reward via the language that the soul understands') - perhaps suggesting they were also a creative figure and signed ‘Y Ay’.
