The tiny figure, fragile as a costume-doll, perches precariously on top of a classical column. Parts of her, the parts used to make art – an eye, a hand – are falling away, and the words, “Yo soy la DESINTEGRACIÓN” (“I am disintegration”) are scrawled above. Yet despite the desolation of the image, you can’t help but notice that its colours sing – lime green, aquamarine and a certain deep, dusky pink. This could be the work of only one artist: Frida Kahlo.
“Work”, though, may be the wrong word here. For this is not one of Kahlo’s oil paintings, the kind found on the walls of the world’s leading art galleries. It is from the personal diary that the Mexican artist kept in the 10 years before her death in 1954, at the age of 47.
This diary, which was locked away for decades (and is now being republished for the first time in 20 years), is of a very particular kind. There are few dates in it, and it has nothing to say about events in the external world – Communist Party meetings, appointments at the doctor’s or even trysts with Diego Rivera, the artist whom Kahlo loved so much that she married him twice. Instead it is full of paintings and drawings that appear to be dredged from her fertile unconscious.
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