Frida Kahlo in the Blue House, Coyoacán, Mexico

Frida Kahlo in the Blue House, Coyoacán, Mexico 1943 by Leo Matiz
Digital Print on Hahnemuhle Bamboo paper
Image size: 14 in. H x 10 in. W
Sheet size 18 in. H x 14 in W
Framed size: 20 in. H x 16 in. W x 2 in. D
Edition 1/15
Printed later by the Leo Matiz Estate
All photographs are accompanied by a Leo Matiz Estate certificate of originality.

Leo Matiz, one of the most important photographers in Latin America, lived in Mexico in the 1940s and was a close friend of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, whom he immortalized with his camera.
The estate of Leo Matiz in collaboration with the conservators of the artist's clothes was inspired by these vibrant traditional Mexican dresses to color the portraits that Leo Matiz took of Frida in the happy moments of her life.
The estate used the original black and white negatives in combination with the art of coloring photos by hand, a technique which emerged in the nineteenth century, to create this limited edition set of images, capturing the spectacular hues of Frida’s everyday clothing. Frida Kahlo's wardrobe remained hidden for fifty years with about 300 outfits revealed to the public in 2004.
These intimate colored portraits allow viewers a glimpse of the culture of Mexico in the forties and the intimacy of friendship of Frida through the lens of Leo Matiz, who captured her artistic expressive force.
These images are also an attempt to temporize, with sophisticated technical procedures, an homage to the art of color photography, capturing its vivid tones the regional clothing of the great Mexican, and universal painter Frida Kahlo.


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Leo Matiz summarized his artistic pursuits by saying: “I am a painter because of activism, photographer because of hunger, and crazy because of talent.” Indeed, Matiz began his career as a caricaturist for political and literary publications, with a keen eye for gesture, features, and scathing humor. These illustrations were particularly influenced by the work of Gustave Doré, George Grosz, Nadar, and Guadalupe Posada. He later began working as a photojournalist in Mexico for a number of international publications but began to use the medium to explore more artistic themes. His keenness for caricature served him well in his photographic portraiture, for which he is best recognized today. Matiz’s subjects included Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, José Clemente Orozco, Marc Chagall, and Pablo Neruda.