Un ruban autour d'une bombe: How Frida Kahlo Spurned André Breton and the Surrealists

Frida Kahlo y André Breton 

(Mexico,1938) 

 

They are so damn intellectual and rotten that I can't stand them ... 

I'd rather sit on the floor in the market of Toluca and sell tortillas, 

than have anything to do with those Surrealist sons of bitches ...[1] 

 

 

I. 

 

The more I read about Frida Kahlo - and I've been doing nothing else but read about this Ballardian Angel for the past week - the more my affection for her increases ... 

 

She loved animals, collecting dolls, drinking tequila, and wearing traditional Mexican dresses - all things which immediately put a person in my good books. 

 

She also spurned the High Priest of Surrealism, André Breton, when he attempted to draw her into his artistic fold - and this significantly boosts my admiration for her.

 

So, as much as I'd love to chat about her pet spider monkeys, her drinking habits, or her fashion sense, it's Frida's relationship with Breton and her contempt for the Surrealists that I've chosen to focus on here ... 

 

 

II.

 

There are several reasons why I don't like André Breton; why I instinctively side, for example, with Bataille and his base materialism over the former's idealism. 

 

For one thing, while Breton was not mistaken to call Bataille an excremental philosopher, Bataille was spot on to characterise Breton as a false revolutionary with a Christ complex.   

 

Anyhoo, whatever the reason, the point is I don't like him. And so I'm glad Kahlo had the good sense to reject his (slightly creepy) overtures to her, when he visited Mexico in 1938. 

 

 

III.

 

Apparently, upon seeing her work Breton was immediately captivated. He declared Frida to be a natural born surrealist, describing her art as like a ribbon around a bomb (i.e., superficially pretty, but with a violent emotional reality at its heart). 

 

Eager to co-opt her unique vision, Breton offered to promote her work in Europe and organise a major exhibition of Mexican art in Paris that would include some of her paintings. And, to be fair, he did do this [2].

 

But while Kahlo gratefully accepted his help, she fiercely resisted Breton's attempts to claim her as one of his own, making it clear that she had no intention of becoming merely an exotic muse who fulfilled male aesthetic fantasies. 

 

She famously stated: "They thought I was a Surrealist, but I wasn't. I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality." 

 

 

IV. 

 

For Kahlo, her art was a deeply personal and material reflection of her lived experience. She found the European Surrealists' preoccupation with symbolism and accessing the subconscious mind at odds with her goal of processing physical pain and trauma.

 

Furthermore, her trip to Paris in 1939 for the Mexique exhibition [1], completely soured her view of Breton and his circle. In letters to her lover, the photographer Nickolas Muray, she scathingly dismissed Breton and the French Surrealists as pretentious, disorganised good-for-nothings who sat in cafés all day [3]. 

 

In fact, she went as far as to call Breton a cucaracha - which is not a nice thing to be called in any language.   

 

 

Notes

 

[1] I'm slightly paraphrasing from a letter written by Frida Kahlo to Nickolas Muray on 16 February 1939. As one commentator notes: 

      "Her letters to him are the sharpest, funniest and most brutally honest accounts we have of her time in France. She wrote to Muray not just to update him, but to release steam - to unload her frustrations about the Surrealists, the filth of the city, her failing health, and her utter disappointment in Breton's empty promises." 

      See the post titled 'Frida Kahlo in Paris', on (the excellent blog by Wally and Duke) The Not So Innocents Abroad (21 April 2025). 

      Finally, note that Kahlo's handwritten letter to Muray - in English and containing a lipstick kiss - is preserved in the Archives of American Art, at the Smithsonian Institution.    

 

[2] The Mexique exhibition took place in Paris from March 10 to March 25, 1939, at the Galerie Renou et Colle (aka the Pierre Colle Gallery) and was organised by Breton and Marcel Duchamp. 

      Intended to provide a window on to Mexican culture in general, it nevertheless featured eighteen paintings by Frida Kahlo and marked her European debut. Her self-portrait, The Frame (1938), was acquired by the French state, making her the first 20th-century Mexican artist to have a work included in their collection. 

 

[3] It should be noted that there were exceptions to this: Kahlo did have time for Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp, whom she praised for keeping his feet on the ground. But the rest were, in her eyes, pompous windbags and lunatics.