FRIDA KAHLO’S most private papers had remained hidden until Barbara Levine was invited to inspect the five cases of ephemera being stored in La Buhardilla Antiquarios, a local shop in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. What she found was an astonishing cache of diaries, letters, and drawings, all bound together in one place, moments before their discovery would separate them forever.

Barbara makes no claims to the objects’ authenticity. Instead, this book presents the material exactly as she found it and offers the reader the same wonder that a discovery like this first elicits. The bulk of the book, typeset in both Spanish and English, is divided into five chapters, one for each container holding the archives. Each chapter unveils the contents in careful succession as if unpacking each box before our eyes.

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