Frida Kahlo and her lover Nickolas Muray

Photo by Nickolas Muray, © Nickolas Muray Photo Archives.

Nickolas Muray  (15 February 1892 -
2 November 1965) was a Hungarian-born American photographer and Olympic fencer.
Muray attended a graphic arts school in Budapest, where he studied lithography, photoengraving, and photography. In 1913, with the threat of war in Europe, Muray sailed to New York City.
Muray quickly became recognized as an important portrait photographer, and his subjects included most of the celebrities of New York City. In 1926, Vanity Fair sent Muray to London, Paris, and Berlin to photograph celebrities, and in 1929 hired him to photograph movie stars in Hollywood. He also did fashion and advertising work. Muray's images were published in many other publications, including Vogue, Ladies' Home Journal, and The New York Times.
Between 1920 and 1940, Nickolas Muray made over 10,000 portraits. His 1938's portrait of Frida Kaho, made while Kahlo sojourned in New York, attending her exhibit at the Julien Levy Gallery, became the best known and loved portrait made by Muray. 

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Muray and Kahlo were at the height of a ten-year love affair in 1939 when the portrait was made. Their affair had started in 1931, after Muray was divorced from his second wife and shortly after Kahlo's marriage to Mexican muralist painter Diego Rivera. 

It outlived Muray's third marriage and Kahlo's divorce and remarriage to Rivera by one year, ending in 1941. Muray wanted to marry, but when it became apparent that Kahlo wanted Muray as a lover, not a husband, Muray took his leave for good and married his fourth wife, Peggy Muray. 

He and Kahlo remained good friends until her death, in 1954.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickolas_Muray
Photo: Nickolas Muray, 16 May 1933, Carl Van Vechten - Public Domain - Carl Van Vechten photograph collection (Library of Congress), http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/van.5a52472

Nickolas Muray, 16 May 1933, Carl Van Vechten