Frida Kahlo Museum The Blue House

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The Frida Kahlo Museum, a beautiful space in the Mexico City neighborhood of Coyoacan, this was the home of the Kahlo family at the start of the 20th Century.  During Frida’s childhood, the house’s architecture slowly transformed over the years by adding Pre-Hispanic elements as well as a lovely interior garden.   This is where Frida lived during the last years of her life, after her separation from the painter Diego Rivera. We recommend visiting the Diego Rivera studio house where Frida lived with Diego for a short period before returning to the blue house.

The Frida Kahlo Museum is one of the most emblematic cultural sites in Mexico City’s Coyoacán neighborhood.

The painter’s parents lived in this house since 1904.  The house refurbished in 1937 and 1946, and in 1958 became the Frida Kahlo’s museum.

Originally the house built on the style of the end of the 19th Century in Mexico. However, Diego and Frida wished to transform it into a house that joined Pre-Hispanic, Colonial and popular Mexican styles.

The objects evoke the painter’s presence, including her crutches, corsets, ex-votos, toys, dresses, even her diary with her writings and drawings, and a multitude of odds and ends.  A visitor can get an idea of the daily life in the house.

Her wheelchair remains in her studio, as well as the easel with the painting that she left unfinished (a portrait of Stalin), and some books. The great window leading out into the garden.

Her tiny bedroom is found to the side of a hallway, full of details and intimacy.

While immobilized because of her spine reconstructive surgeries, Frida used a day-bed (to paint) and another bed for nighttime. “Pain has started to grow roots inside of me,” she used to say.

The kitchen preserved just how it was, with the firewood stove, the pots and earthenware cookware hanging on the wall.

 

This is where countless celebrities arrived.  This is where Diego and Frida received Leon Trotsky and his wife, Natalia Sedova.

 

After Frida’s death, Diego requested the poet and museum specialist Carlos Pellicer to turn part of the house into a museum.

 

Years later other spaces –where valuable objects, documents and photographs were kept– opened to the public.

A visit to Frida Kahlo’s “Casa Azul” is a voyage to Mexico’s past, a time of great national pride and at the same time opened to the world, full of contrasts and surprises.

Frida’s house is very close to the Leon Trotsky’s House and Museum, in a neighborhood of attractive tree-lined streets, walkways, restaurants and bars.  This magical, dreamlike environment protected amidst turbulence of the contemporary world.

Visit Frida Khalo´s “Casa Azul” in Mexico City Londres 247, Col. del Carmen, Coyoacán, Mexico City. Hours of operation: Tuesday through Wednesday, 11:00 – 17:45 hr. Thursday – Sunday, 10:00 – 17: 45 hr.