This book is so fascinating and well written that I found myself just sucked right in and didn’t want to stop reading. It wasn’t even next on my list but I flipped through it and couldn’t put it down.

The first half of this book is a brief biography of Frida Kahlo followed by Olga Campos’ memories of Frida and how their relationship developed. The middle section is sort of interview/reciting of her life by Frida herself and the book ends with a breakdown of the psychological tests that Olga Campos worked on with Frida and I loved the different perspectives offered and how they blended together to create a more nuanced and understandable portrait of a complicated and damaged artist.
I also appreciated how this book handled Frida’s physical and mental health issues, providing great insight without feeling exploitive, appologistic or condemning.

There was a nice sampling of her art, both her more professional pieces and doodles and casual pieces and I was impressed by how many color plates there are as that is often a issue I have with books about art and artist. I would have appreciated a different layout for the plates, having them placed nearer the text that covered them as it was very annoying to have to keep flipping through the book to find the image in question so you could better make a connection between the to but that is such a minor quibble compared to the overall quantity and quality of the images.

Frida Khalo is one of those artists who has always fascinated me but I’ve never felt an understanding of or connection to her art, this book has gone a long way towards putting both her and it into a context I can relate to. ( )