Frida Kahlo’s ‘Month in Paris’ exhibit at Art Institute showcases obscure friendship with American artist

Sometimes good things do come in small packages. That is certainly the case with “Frida Kahlo’s Month in Paris: A Friendship with Mary Reynolds,” a new exhibition that runs through July 13 at the Art Institute of Chicago.

This smart, compact show offers a fascinating, highly focused look at an all-but-unknown moment in art history — 4½ weeks or so in February and March 1939 that Kahlo spent with American book artist Mary Reynolds in Paris, then the epicenter of the art world.

“I think it is the most specific show I have ever curated,” said Caitlin Haskell, the Art Institute’s senior curator of modern and contemporary art who organized it alongside Tamar Kharatishvili, a research fellow in modern art, and Alivé Piliado, a curatorial associate at the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago.

In recent decades, Kahlo has become something of a cultural phenomenon and feminist icon, and the 20^th-century Mexican artist’s name alone guarantees there will be at least small lines for this show, as there were Monday afternoon.

Though this is the first Kahlo exhibition in the history of the Art Institute — a startling a factoid, potential visitors should be aware this this is in no way Kahlo blockbuster and it is not meant to be.

Indeed, there are just seven works on view by her, but they are seven of Kahlo’s finest works, including, “Tree of Hope, Remain Strong” (1946), a double-portrait in which the oft-hospitalized artist depicts herself sitting next to a second version of herself with surgical wounds on a gurney.

Of particular interest are the exquisite “Self-Portrait in Miniature” (about 1938) — just 2 inches tall — and “The Frame” (1938), a strange and wonderful kind of assemblage in which Kahlo has placed a self-portrait in a red artisanal frame that she likely purchased at a market, the glass adorned with flowers and birds. The work was purchased in July 1939 by the French state and is now at the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

“Month in Paris” is worth visiting just to see these pieces, and no doubt some visitors will do just that, but the context for those works, essentially everything else on view, is of equal and arguably even greater interest.

In all, there are 100 selections, including a range of artworks, photographs and other archival materials. That might sound like a lot, but these are primarily small-scale objects all contained in three galleries on the second floor of the Modern Wing that together tell the before, during and after of Kahlo’s Parisian stay.

André Breton, the leader of the surrealist movement met Kahlo in Mexico in 1938 and quickly branded her a surrealist even though she never saw her art in that way. He offered to organize a show for her in Paris — what became a broader 1939 exhibition titled “Mexique (Mexico).”

Kahlo arrived in France on Jan. 21, 1939, for the show and a fell ill a short time later with a kidney infection that forced her to spend time at the American Hospital in Paris. After she was discharged, Reynolds invited Kahlo to her two-story home at 14 rue Hallé, where she remained through March 25. (The two had met via New York critic and curator Walter Pach.)

Although, Kahlo’s visit is the reason for “Month in Paris” and she is the principal draw, it can be argued that the main subject is as much or more Reynolds, who is little-known even among art cognoscenti.

The Minneapolis native was a romantic partner and artistic collaborator with Marcel Duchamp from 1923 to her death in 1950, and her home served as a haven and artistic gathering place for an array of famous artists like famed sculptor Constantin Brancusi.

Reynolds practiced reliure or bookbinding, creating highly inventive, one-of-a-kind bindings for an array of avant-garde artists and authors, especially those linked to the dada and surrealist movements. Among the abundant examples in this show are a binding with onlaid leather gloves for Man Ray’s “Les main libres (Free Hands)” and another book about the Marquis de Sade with blood-red stripes on the spine.

If that all weren’t enough, this amazing woman was also active in the French Resistance, staying in Paris at great peril until 1942, when she escaped on foot over the Pyrenees Mountains to Spain and ultimately took refuge in New York.

At first blush, Kahlo and Reynolds might not seem to have much in common, but both lived in the shadow of towering male artistic figures — Duchamp, and in Kahlo’s case, her husband, Diego Rivera. In addition, as Haskell points out, both women created similarly small, intimate objects.

As much as this exhibition is about Kahlo and Reynolds, it also shines a spotlight on the under-recognized Mary Reynolds Collection, her books and archives held in the Art Institute’s Ryerson and Burnham Libraries, and her art collection spread across several museum departments.

After Reynolds’ death in 1950, her brother, Frank Brookes Hubachek, an Art Institute trustee, worked closely with Duchamp to have her holdings transferred to the museum. In addition, three posthumous homages to Reynolds went to the Art Institute, including a witty 1955 drawing by her friend, Alexander Calder, depicting her with her five cats.

The idea for this show was sparked by two letters (on loan from the Archives of American Art in Washington, D.C.), in which Kahlo wrote to her New York lover, photographer Nickolas Muray, from Paris. In the first, she laments how unhappy she is in Paris and, in the second, she expresses a change of heart and offers praise for Reynolds’ warm hospitality.

“If we wanted to make that idea come alive, the Art institute of Chicago is the one museum that could tell that story,” Haskell said, pointing to the invaluable Reynolds materials that only the Art Institute owns.

“Month in Paris” is the kind of narrowly focused, art-historical show that used to be commonplace in art museums, but a rush to embrace popular culture and a preoccupation with attendance numbers has made such offerings a rarity these days.

Kudos to the Art Institute for finding room for this exhibition, and, if the galleries full of viewers attentively poring over its offerings on Monday were any indication, it is finding an open and ready audience.