The UK journalist Nick Trend uses Frida's self-portrait in his last book's cover
14 March 2025
In "What Art Can Tell Us About Love" Nick Trend focuses on the relationships that artists experience with one another in a variety of contexts from serial lovers like Pablo Picasso to the enduring affection of couples like Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz, Marc and Bella Chagall, and the love triangle ofNiki de Saint Phalle, Harry Mathews and Jean Tinguely.
The vibrant pink cover of the book features details from a photograph of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, and within, in "Mind Games," there is a double portrait of Kahlo and her Mexican husband, muralist painter Diego Rivera. Two years after their marriage, in 1931, Kahlo designed it. "Here you see us, me Frida Kahlo, together with my beloved husband Diego Rivera," she wrote alongside a painted dove in this piece. Was it a relationship for life? Not precisely. Their love was turbulent.
Diego is shown as a miniature portrait on her forehead in the 1943 cover image, Self-Portrait as a Tehuana (or Diego on My Mind). Trend uses intriguing and obviously thorough research to explain the ramifications in this extremely Freudian portrayal.
What Art Can Tell Us About Love, Nick Trend, Laurence King Publishing, 208pp
