The relationship between Frida and Nick was punctuated not only by many photographs but also by a long correspondence, reproductions of which can be seen in this room. Frida often enclosed small memorabilia with her letters.
When Nick met Frida he was at the peak of his career and the height of his creative powers. Frida, on the other hand, was the young, not-yet-established wife of one of the symbols of Mexican art, Diego Rivera. Squeezed between an unhappy marriage and the physical ordeal of many operations following her accident, Frida found Nick’s elegant masculinity disarming and could not help but succumb to her exotic charms.
But this was only the superficial side of their relationship: on a sentimental level Muray, disappointed by the failure of his third marriage, was looking for someone who needed him and found in Kahlo, craving absolute attention, the perfect companion. The latter, however, would never be able to emancipate herself from Rivera and the drawing she enclosed with her first letter to the photographer, in which she declared that she would never forget him, was in fact a self-portrait hand in hand with her husband and with a foetus, barely accented in pencil, on her abdomen. The drawing would become a precursor to the fact that Frida would never be available for a serious relationship with Nick.
When the relationship between Frida Kahlo and Nickolas Muray was coming to an end, the painter asked the photographer, in a moment of jealousy, to return all the letters she had sent him. Fortunately, Muray never complied with this request and even photographed the letters to preserve them.
The love affair between Fida and Nick came to light seventy years after it was consummated, when the photos and rich correspondence the two entertained were found inside some boxes kept at the Nickolas Muray Photo Archive.
Muray was the photographer who portrayed Frida Kahlo more than anyone else.