Frida Kahlo’s The Frame became the first work by a twentieth-century Mexican artist acquired by the Louvre.
Kahlo painted The Frame in 1938, and the Louvre acquired it in 1939 after her work was shown in Paris. The painting is an unusual double-sided self-portrait: one side presents Kahlo in a colorful folk-inspired style, while the other uses a more formally painted face.
The work’s title refers to the elaborate glass-and-tin frame surrounding the image. Its acquisition was a major institutional milestone because it placed Kahlo’s art in one of Europe’s most prestigious museum collections.
The Louvre purchase is sometimes confused with Kahlo’s first European exhibition, which took place in Paris in 1939. The exhibition and the museum acquisition were related, but they are separate facts.