The Art Institute of Chicago has opened "Frida Kahlo’s Month in Paris: A Friendship With Mary Reynolds," its first dedicated exhibition to the Mexican artist. The show explores Kahlo’s 1939 stay in Paris, where she lived with American bookbinder Mary Reynolds and artist Marcel Duchamp after being hospitalized with a kidney infection. Featuring 100 objects—including seven self-portraits, letters, photographs, and book bindings—the exhibition draws on the Art Institute’s own Mary Reynolds Collection and loans from public and private collections across the U.S., Mexico, and Europe. Curated by Caitlin Haskell, Tamar Kharatishvili, and Alivé Piliado, the display reveals new details about Kahlo’s recovery and creative re-inspiration in the avant-garde hub of Reynolds and Duchamp’s home.
The exhibition matters because it shifts focus from Kahlo’s individual iconography to the transnational communities that sustained her, highlighting the role of women like Reynolds in building cross-cultural art networks. By foregrounding letters and personal objects, the show offers fresh biographical insight into a lesser-known period of Kahlo’s life—her month in Paris—and underscores the collaborative, supportive relationships that shaped her work. It also brings attention to Reynolds as a significant artist and bookbinder in her own right, expanding the narrative around early 20th-century avant-garde circles.