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Rare Frida Kahlo Invitation

It is not very often that someone else is selling something so awesome that I feel the need to highlight it, but this one is such a treasure I can’t pass it up.  A dear friend and former employee of Logos sent out some pictures this week of a hand written invitation from Frida Kahlo.  Sarah works in San Francisco for a rare and collectibles bookseller called Libros Latinos that focuses in rare and out of print media exclusively from Latin America.  Here is their description of the invitation:

Mexico, D.F.: Galeria de Arte Contemporanea, 1953, 1955. Fine Item one: Invitation to the opening of Frida Kahlo’s first solo Mexican exhibit handwritten by Kahlo. Curated by Lola Alvarez Bravo and held at Mexico City’s Galería de Arte Contemporáneo, this exhibit took place the year before she died and just a few months before she had to have her right leg amputated due to gangrene. Advised by doctors that she was too ill to attend the opening, Kahlo notoriously insisted on being carried to the event on her four-poster bed. Laboriously printed in Kahlo’s elegant black calligraphy and adorned with drawings of a swan, dove and communist sickle and hammer. The invitation reads as a poem:

Con amistad y cariñonacido del corazóntengo el gusto de invitartea mi humilde exposición.
A las ocho de la noche~pues relox tienes al cabo~te espero en la Galeríad’esta Lola Alvarez Bravo.
Se encuentra en Amberes 12y con puertas a la calle,de suerte que no te pierdasporque se acaba el detalle.
Sólo quiero que me digastu opinión buena y sinceraeres leida y escribida; tu saber es de primera.
Estos cuadros de pinta vapinté con mis propias manosy esperen en las paredesque gusten a mis hermanos.
Bueno, my Cuate querido:
con amistad verdaderate lo agradece en el alma
Frida Kahlo de RiveraCoyoacán, 1953.

(12mo, 42 x 65 cm., three individual leaves of handmade pink paper tied together at the upper corner with mauve yarn.) Item Two: Illustration on heavy coated stock by Rivera of Kahlo, in memory of the first anniversary of her death. Inscription to Kahlo from Rivera: “Para la Niña de mis ojos, Fisita mia el 13 de Julio de 1955.” (Black pen illustration on fuchisa paper, laid-in black folder, with decorated gold corners, illustration: 8′ x 11′. folder: 9.5′ x 13.5′ Fine.)

This includes an illustration of Frida Kahlo made by her husband Diego Rivera in memory of the one year anniversary of her death.  Below are pictures from their site of the invitation: