Casa Kahlo

The first publication of Casa Kahlo, Frida Kahlo’s private Mexico City family home and personal sanctuary, and its collections of her art, clothing, jewelry, and treasured keepsakes, the house has been opened to visitors for the first time in nearly 100 years.

Casa Kahlo offers an intimate new portrait of Frida Kahlo through the lens of the Kahlo family home that stayed in the family’s hands for nearly 100 years. Drawn from the memories, stories, and private archives of Frida’s great nieces, the book reveals what Casa Kahlo meant to the now world-famous artist and cultural heroine. The Kahlo family home was the artist’s safe haven away from her volatile marriage, where the people who anchored her—her parents, favorite sister, and beloved niece—lived. It’s where she brought friends and lovers away from the public life she lived in Casa Azul, where she taught legions of students in the home’s lush courtyard, and where the artist herself lived for several years in the late 1940s. Rich with family anecdotes, early artwork, unpublished letters, documents, and vivid details of daily life in Coyoacán, this is not another retelling of the Frida myth, but a rare insider account from Frida’s own family.

Readers encounter Frida not only as an artist and icon, but as a daughter, mentor, teacher, political thinker, and fiercely loyal family member whose creative life was inseparable from the homes and people around her. With its blend of personal testimony, cultural history, and never-before-shared family perspectives, Casa Kahlo reintroduces Frida Kahlo in a way that feels revelatory and profoundly human.

Highlights include:

- Previously unpublished letters and postcards exchanged with Kahlo’s sisters, parents, and extended family- The restored interior of Casa Kahlo, including a mural believed to have been painted by Kahlo herself- Never-before-seen stills from a vivid family film shot just a few years before her death- Personal belongings, jewelry, drawings, and select artworks, including Kahlo’s signature Indigenous clothing and handmade accessories- Her extensive collection of ex-votos, dolls, and pre-Hispanic figurines which connected her to Mexico’s rich ancestral heritage- Rare exhibition pamphlets and ephemera from Kahlo’s earliest shows in Mexico and the United States