Alice Rahon, Autorretrato con autobiografía (Self-Portrait with Autobiography), 1948. Oil and sand on canvas, 28 × 22 inches / 73.6 × 55.9 cm. The Art Institute of Chicago, Wirt D. Walker Endowment, Major Acquisitions Centennial, Luella Thomas, Samuel A. Marx, Simeon B. Williams Endowment, and Maurice D. Gelleher funds.
Two major paintings by Alice Rahon are currently on view in the Tate Modern's blockbuster exhibition, Frida: The Making of an Icon, open through January 3, 2027.
Frida: The Making of an Icon showcases over 30 of Kahlo’s most iconic works that introduce her ‘many selves’—the dedicated wife, the intellectual, the modern artist, and the political activist. Alongside treasured garments, jewellery, photographs and memorabilia, there are over 200 works by her contemporaries and the artists she inspired from later generations, celebrating her lasting impact on those who continue to reimagine and reclaim her remarkable story.
Alice Rahon (1904, Chenecey-Buillon, France – 1987, Mexico City, Mexico) began her career as a poet, publishing three volumes before turning to painting in her mid-thirties. She met and befriended Frida Kahlo in 1939 in Paris, before she and her husband, the Surrealist artist Wolfgang Paalen, fled Europe for British Columbia, making their way south from Alaska and, at the invitation of Kahlo and Diego Rivera, down the Pacific coast to Mexico City, where they would ultimately settle among émigré Surrealists including Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo.
The paintings by Alice Rahon—Autorretrato con autobiografía (Self-Portrait with Autobiography) and Le Chat Blessé (Retrato de Frida Kahlo) (The Injured Cat (Portrait of Frida Kahlo))—celebrate Rahon's enduring friendship with Kahlo. Rahon created Le Chat Blessé while Kahlo was working on The Wounded Deer, a portrait of an injured deer featuring Kahlo’s face. Rahon’s portrait depicts an abstract figure of a cat pierced by arrows. Like Kahlo, Rahon was fascinated by animals, nature and cosmic forces—and she also suffered childhood injuries which had a lasting impact on her health.
Frida: The Making of an Icon is curated by Tobias Ostrander, Estrellita B. Brodsky Curator at Large, and Beatriz García-Velasco, Assistant Curator, International Art, Tate Modern.
