How Frida Kahlo's Love Letter Shaped Romance for

Punk Poet Patti Smith

Sealed with a kiss, the 1940 note reflects the "earthly human love" between Kahlo and
fellow artist Diego Rivera
My mother, a waitress, was very diligent about figuring out what I was into, so that she could buy
me the right books. For my 16th birthday she found The Fabulous Life of Diego Rivera, this huge
and very famous biography.
I had already decided to be an artist, and I also dreamed of meeting another artist and being
supportive of each others work. This book was perfect. All of the relationships Diego Rivera had
were so interesting, but Frida Kahlo was by far the most compelling and enduring one. I loved her. I
was taken by her beauty, her suffering, her work. As a tall girl with black braids, she gave me a new
way to braid my hair. Sometimes I wore a straw hat, like Diego Rivera.
In certain ways, they were a model for me, and they helped me really prepare for my life with
Robert (Mapplethorpe, the late photographer and Smiths longtime collaborator). These were two
artists who believed in one another, and each trusted the other as a shepherd of their art. And that
was worth fighting for through their love affairs and fights and disappointments and arguments.
They always came back to each other through work. They were lost without each other. Robert used
to say any piece of work he did didnt feel complete until I looked at it. Diego couldnt wait to show
Frida the progress of his murals, and she showed him her notebooks. The last painting Frida painted
in her life was watermelons, and at the end of his life, Diego also painted watermelons. I always
thought that was beautiful: this green fruit that opens up, the pulp, the flesh, the blood, these black
seeds.
One dreams that we could meet these people that we so admire, to see them in their lifetimes. Ive
always had that drive. Why do people go to Assisi, where St. Francis sang to the birds and they sang
to him? Why do people go to Jerusalem, to Mecca? It doesnt have to be religion-based. Ive seen
Emily Dickinsons dress and Emily Brontes tea cups. I went to find the house where my father was
born. I have my sons baby shirt because he wore it. Its not more or less precious to me than St.
Francis slippers.
In 2012, I traveled to Casa Azul in Mexico City, the house where they led their life together. I saw
the streets where they walked and the parks where they sat. I sipped watermelon juice from a street
vendors paper cup. Casa Azul, now a museum, was so open. One could see their artifacts, where
they slept, where they worked. I saw Fridas crutches and medicine bottles and the butterflies
mounted above her bed, so she had something beautiful to view after she lost her leg. I touched her
dresses, her leather corsets. I saw Diegos old overalls and suspenders and just felt their presence. I
had a migraine, and the director of the museum had me sleep in Diegos room, adjacent to Fridas.
It was so humble, just a modest wooden bed with a white coverlet. It restored me, calmed me down.
A song came to me as I lay there, about the butterflies above Fridas bed. Shortly after waking, I
sang it in the garden before 200 guests.
I dont mean to romanticize everything. I dont look at these two as models of behavior. Now as an
adult, I understand both their great strengths and their weaknesses. Frida was never able to have
children. When you have a baby you have to relinquish your self-centeredness, but they were able
to act like spoiled children with each other their whole lives. Had they had children their course
would have altered.
The most important lesson, though, isnt their indiscretions and love affairs but their devotion. Their
identities were magnified by the other. They went through their ups and downs, parted, came back
together, to the end of their lives. Thats what I sensed even at 16. Thats what Robert and I
experienced that never diminished.
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This letter from Frida to Diego scrawled on an envelope she had once used to store valuables
during a hospital stay, written in 1940 as Frida departed San Francisco, and now in the collections
of the Smithsonians Archives of American Artis a testament to why they lasted. They didnt have
a passionate relationship that dissipated and was gone. They had an earthly human love as well as
the loftiness of a revolutionary agenda and their work. The fact that this isnt a profound letter
makes it in some ways more special. She addressed it to Diego, my loveeven though this is the
most mundane, simplest correspondence, she still noted their love, their intimacy. She held the letter
in her hands, she kissed it with her lips, he received it and held it in his hands. This little piece of
paper holds their simplicity and their intimacy, the earthiness of their life. It contains the sender and
the receiver.
As artists, every scrap of paper is meaningful. This is brown, folded. He saved it. Somebody kept it.
It still exists.

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