I am reading Frida, the biography of Frida Kahlo by Hayden Herrera, as I realised I didn't know that much about this important artist, beyond her looks, marriage to Diego Rivera and bisexuality.
During her loving yet tempestuous marriage to Rivera, they both had many affairs. When Frida was in New York for her first solo exhibition in 1938, she fell in love with Nicholas Murray, a portrait photographer working for Harper's Bazaar and other mags who had helped her organise the show during a visit to Mexico. During her stay in Paris in 1939 (she despised the town and was not impressed by many of the Surrealist painters she met there), the affair floundered as she felt the need to return to Mexico to be with Diego and Murray got involved with a woman he eventually married that year.
Murray wrote to her:
"I knew NY only filled the bill as a temporary substitute and I hope you found your haven intact on your return. Of the three of us there were only two of you. I always felt that. Your tears told me that when you heard his voice. The one of me is eternally grateful for the Happiness that the half of you so generously gave. (...) When you left I knew it was all over. Your instinct guided you so wisely. You have done the only logical thing for I could not transplant Mexico to NY for you and I've learned how essential that was for your happiness."
Frida later wrote him a farewell which includes this paragraph I find extremely moving:
