A gift-worthy hardcover edition reexamining Kahlo's most subversive yet heart-wrenching self-portrait
In 1940, in the wake of a divorce from her husband Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo (1907–54) turned to self-portraiture to express her deepest emotional and psychological impulses, and completed a painting inscribed with the lyrics of a popular folk song, "La Pelona": "Look, if I loved you it was for your hair. Now that you're without it, I no longer love you." In Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair, Kahlo's usual lively and saturated palette is supplanted by neutral hues, her Tehuana dress by a man's suit and her plaited hair by shorn locks that appear to wriggle up from the floor and around her chair, strangely alive. Nevertheless, the painting remains unmistakably Kahlo's, intensely felt, dreamlike and displaying references that encompass both popular culture and details from the artist's private life. In this richly illustrated volume, which includes the artist's most celebrated self-portraits and other related images, art historian Jodi Roberts situates the painting in the context of the Mexican Revolution, the Surrealist tradition and Kahlo's own changing of her artistic identity. This expanded hardcover edition includes additional illustrations and photographs, and features a die-cut on the front cover.
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On view through September 12, 2026, the MoMA blockbuster Frida and Diego: The Last Dream showcases works by two titans of twentieth-century art, equally known for their passionate but tumultuous relationship. The exhibition, created in collaboration with the Metropolitan Opera, features a set design by Jon Bausor, who designed the opera El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego, scheduled to open May 14 in New York. One of the central works of art in the MoMA show is Kahlo’s iconic “Self-Portrait witih Cropped Hair,” painted in 1940 in the wake of the artist couple’s infamous divorce. It is a painting unlike any other by Kahlo, and it is the subject of a new, expanded hardcover edition of Jodi Roberts’ classic study, Frida Kahlo: Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair—featuring 40 reproductions, including the artist’s most celebrated self-portraits, additional illustrations and photographs—and a die-cut front cover. “Her self-portraiture, the genre she favored above all others, seems to divulge the subjective experience of an artist keenly attuned to her deepest psychological urges and core emotional truths,” Roberts writes. “Kahlo insisted that her paintings flowed from an interior source: ‘My work consisted of eliminating everything that did not come from the internal lyrical motives that impelled me to paint.’” continue to blog
My Grandparents, My Parents, and I (1936) illustrates the transnational roots of Frida Kahlo’s family tree. Kahlo’s maternal grandparents, of mixed Indigenous and Spanish descent, are projected above the Mexican mountain ranges while her German paternal grandparents float over the Atlantic Ocean. Kahlo painted this work a year after Nazi Germany enforced the Nuremberg Race Laws—in effect stripping German Jews of their civil rights and prohibiting interracial marriage—falsely substantiated by a genealogical chart that determined who was Jewish according to bloodlines. Kahlo’s interpretation of a family tree is a counter to such violent, supremacist ideas. Today, as we see families ripped apart due to their national origin, Kahlo’s work takes on a profound new dimension as a denunciation of state violence and imposed borders.
My Grandparents, My Parents, and I is reproduced from Frida Kahlo: Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair, forthcoming from the Museum of Modern Art, New York, to accompany Frida and Diego: The Last Dream, on view at MoMA through September 12, 2026. This expanded hardcover edition of the MoMA classic includes additional illustrations and photographs, and features a die-cut front cover. continue to blog
FORMAT: Hbk, 8 x 10 in. / 64 pgs / 40 color. LIST PRICE: U.S. $35.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $49 ISBN: 9781633451940 PUBLISHER: The Museum of Modern Art, New York AVAILABLE: 4/21/2026 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: In stock TERRITORY: NA ONLY
Frida Kahlo: Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair Expanded Edition
Published by The Museum of Modern Art, New York. By Jodi Roberts.
A gift-worthy hardcover edition reexamining Kahlo's most subversive yet heart-wrenching self-portrait
In 1940, in the wake of a divorce from her husband Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo (1907–54) turned to self-portraiture to express her deepest emotional and psychological impulses, and completed a painting inscribed with the lyrics of a popular folk song, "La Pelona": "Look, if I loved you it was for your hair. Now that you're without it, I no longer love you." In Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair, Kahlo's usual lively and saturated palette is supplanted by neutral hues, her Tehuana dress by a man's suit and her plaited hair by shorn locks that appear to wriggle up from the floor and around her chair, strangely alive. Nevertheless, the painting remains unmistakably Kahlo's, intensely felt, dreamlike and displaying references that encompass both popular culture and details from the artist's private life. In this richly illustrated volume, which includes the artist's most celebrated self-portraits and other related images, art historian Jodi Roberts situates the painting in the context of the Mexican Revolution, the Surrealist tradition and Kahlo's own changing of her artistic identity. This expanded hardcover edition includes additional illustrations and photographs, and features a die-cut on the front cover.
