The Heart: Frida Kahlo in Paris by Marc Petitjean: book review

The Heart: Frida Kahlo in Paris (2020) is set in Paris in 1939.

Marc Petitjean is the son of Michel Petitjean, the man who briefly dated Mexican artist Frida Kahlo in Paris.

In 1939, Frida Kahlo is 31 years old. Her artist husband Diego Rivera had an affair with Frida’s sister in 1934, and now Frida has just heard that he intends to divorce her. Michel is 29 years old, an ‘ethnologist, agronomist, left-wing militant, and journalist who moved in artistic social circles.’

The Heartrefers to one of Frida’s paintings that she gave to Michel Petitjean. She also dedicated another self-portrait to him in 1939 – one of her with a spider monkey. But, in 1939, Frida Kahlo was not yet an internationally famous artist – she was the wife of the famous Diego Rivera.

So, this autobiographical novel is about the brief, but intense, romance between Frida and Michel, in which she literally gave him her heart; her wounded, betrayed, bleeding heart.

Frida is staying at the Hotel Regina near the Louvre, and has a solo exhibition from 10-25 March. She is finishing her artwork for Oscar Wilde.

Michel remembers the first night with Frida, because it was ‘the day Barcelona fell’ in the Spanish Civil War. Sharing the same passions as Frida, the author’s father gives Frida a whirlwind tour of Paris.

Frida arrived in France, at the arrangement of French artist Andre Breton, on 21 January 1939. She left on 24 March. In two months, little is actually known of the love affair between Frida and Michel, but the author attempts to piece together the events from his father’s letters to her.

Detached from her husband, her art, and her homeland, Frida is pained, internally and externally, but open to passion during her only trip to Europe. This is interesting for its historical context, and for its intimacy.

MARTINA NICOLLS

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MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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