Self-Portrait Dedicated to Leon Trotsky

Uncommon card · No. 177864

Self-Portrait Dedicated to Leon Trotsky, also known as Between the Curtains, is a 1937 painting by Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, given to Leon Trotsky on his birthday and the 20th anniversary of the October Revolution. Kahlo and her husband, artist Diego Rivera, had convinced government officials to allow Trotsky and his second wife, Natalia Sedova, to live in exile in Mexico. The Russian couple moved into the Blue House (La Casa Azul), where they resided for two years. Soon after the couples met, Kahlo and Trotsky began showing affection towards each other. A brief affair occurred, but ended by July 1937. A few months later, she presented Trotsky with a self-portrait dedicated to him, which he hung in his study. When Trotsky was assassinated in 1940, Kahlo was heartbroken and planned to destroy the painting. A friend who was visiting at the time, Clare Boothe Luce, convinced her not to do so and acquired the painting herself. In 1988, Luce donated the painting to Wilhelmina Holladay, co...

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