I Will Never Forget You...: Frida Kahlo to Nickolas Muray [Hardcover]

Salomon Grimburg (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 2005

In the fall of 1938 Frida Kahlo traveled to New York for her first solo exhibition. There she met photographer Nickolas Muray whom she had first met in Mexico, and they started a passionate affair. Muray, born in Hungary, was a successful New York fashion and commercial photographer known for his portraits of celebrities such as Fred Astaire, Marlene Dietrich, F. Scott Fitzgerald, George Bernard Shaw, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Claude Monet. Having experimented with color from early on, Muray found his most colorful model in Frida Kahlo. Their liaison yielded a series of breathtaking, mostly color photographs, most of them never published. Our book for the first time presents a large selection of this series, with excerpts from the Kahlo/Muray correspondence and an essay by Salomon Grimberg.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"Kid, don't forget me. Write once in a while... That will be enough to know that you still remember this wench!" Khalo writes in this volume of love letters and photographs, making charming use of then contemporary English slang-her preferred mode when addressing Muray, the American glamour photographer and her lover. Reading Khalo's wildly funny tirades against Andre Breton and other French surrealists ("coocooo lunatic son of bitches") is a unique and worthwhile pleasure, but this book's finest offerings are its photographs, though the results are of uneven merit. The many casual snapshots have a patina of unearned nostalgia-an effect that will satisfy many, but leave others feeling as if they're sifting through yellowed photos in an antique store. The standout images are Muray's more formal portraits of his lover. The photographic techniques available to Muray in the late '30s and early '40s created layered colors that have an almost painted effect, and are delicious to look at now. Khalo was both a woman and a myth-complicated, challenging, talented and, perhaps, masochistic (or so the Khalo specialist Grimberg asserts in the book's one essay)-but readers will see these qualities best through Muray's photographs, not Khalo's letters.
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 120 pages
• Publisher: Schirmer/Mosel (February 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 3829601212
• ISBN-13: 978-3829601214
• Product Dimensions: 12.6 x 9.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,436,539 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars More than just another biography, September 11, 2007

By 

M. Brooks "Frida Kahlo - Amrita Sher-Gil Fan" (Sacramento, California) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: I Will Never Forget You...: Frida Kahlo to Nickolas Muray (Hardcover)

This book, authored by the "Kahlo Guru" Salomon Grimberg, is not just another Kahlo biography nor is it just another book of Kahlo photos. This book tells of a love story between the photographer Nickolas Muray and the painter Frida Kahlo. Written in somewhat of a biographical format, it begins with Muray's life "before Kahlo" followed by Kahlo's life "before Muray"... and then they meet. When these two icons collide, the love story begins. This book captures the most intimate moments of that secret relationship as told through their love letters and the many photographs taken by Muray. 56 of those photos, some never before published, are shown in this book in full color and duotone plates.

This book begins with a one page acknowledgement written by Grimberg. In the back of the book there is a 3 page chronology of Nickolas. Following that is an index of 88 known photos of Frida taken by Muray, complete with a thumbnail photo and identifying information.

When you've read of all the mundane biographies and want to read something more personal about Frida, then this book is for you. Although it's a love story, it's just another tragic chapter in Kahlo's anything but ordinary life.