Frida Kahlo - I wasn't a surrealist

Photo: Paris, March 1939, Photographer: Unknown

"They thought I was a Surrealist, but I wasn't. 
I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality." Frida Kahlo
Photo: Paris, March 1939, Surrealist exhibition „Mexique“ at the "Pierre Colle" - gallery; Photographer: Unknown

Painting: Frida Kahlo, What I Saw in the Water, 1938 by Frida Kahlo/ ©Banco de Mexico Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo Museums Trust


At the beginning of 1939 Frida Kahlo was in Paris, France for the exhibition "Mexique" which presented artworks of  Mexican artists: photographs, paintings and sculptures.
From Paris she wrote the following about the artists around her: 

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Photo:Frida Kahlo and Andre Breton, about 1938, Photographer: Unknown

"They are so damn “intellectual” and rotten that I can’t stand them anymore….I would rather sit on the floor in the market of Toluca and sell tortillas, than have anything to do with those “artistic” bitches of Paris.  They sit for hours on the “cafés” warming their precious behinds, and talk without stopping about “culture” “art” “revolution” and so on and so forth, thinking themselves the gods of the world, dreaming the most fantastic nonsense, and poisoning the air with theories and theories that never come true. Next morning they don’t have anything to eat in their house because none of them work and they live as parasites of the bunch of rich bitches who admire their “genius” of “Artists”, Shit and only shit is what they are. I never seen Diego or you wasting their time on stupid gossip and “intelectual” discussions. That is why you are real men and not lousy “artists”- Gee weez!!."

From a letter Frida Kahlo wrote to Nickolas Muray on February 16,1939.

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