A black and white photographic portrait in an interior setting showing Diego Rivera seated hold…

Frida and Diego with Hat

Artist Nickolas Muray (American, 1892 - 1965)

Sitter Frida Kahlo (Mexican, 1907 - 1954)

Sitter Diego Rivera (Mexican, 1886 - 1957)

Date1941

Mediumgelatin silver print

DimensionsImage: 12 3/8 × 12 1/2 inches (31.4 × 31.8 cm)
Sheet: 14 3/8 × 14 3/8 inches (36.5 × 36.5 cm)
Matted: 21 1/16 × 20 1/16 inches (53.5 × 51 cm)

Credit LineGift of Mimi Muray Levitt.

Object number2018.10

On View

Not on view

Copyright© Nickolas Muray Photo Archives. The images and text contained on this page are owned by Telfair Museums or used by the Museum with permission from the owners. Unauthorized reproduction, transmission or display of these materials is prohibited with the exception of items deemed “fair use” as defined by U.S. and international copyright laws.Label TextNickolas Muray was born as Miklós Murai in Zsged, Hungary, in 1892. He became an artist’s apprentice at the age of twelve and went on to spend much of his youth studying lithography, photoengraving and photography at art schools in Budapest, Munich, and Berlin. He left Europe for America in 1913, where he converted his Hungarian birth name to a more Americanized form upon his arrival at Ellis Island. Muray soon found work as an engraver and color separator for Stockinger Printing Co. in Brooklyn. By 1920, he had opened his own photographic portrait studio in his Greenwich Village home at 129 MacDougal Street. It was in this studio that he would photograph presidents; theater, dance and film artists; literary stars; and Hollywood luminaries. His work began appearing in the New York Tribune, where it caught the attention of Harper’s Bazaar editor Henry B. Sell. Muray’s photographs were soon featured regularly in Harper’s Bazaar, as well as other prominent magazines, including Vanity Fair, McCall’s and the Ladies Home Journal. Nickolas Muray met and befriended the Mexican artist Miguel Covarrubias in 1923. Covarrubias had come to New York on a six-month grant from the government of Mexico, and his caricatures and illustrations were widely published in many of the magazines that regularly featured Muray’s photographs. Covarrubias had a wide and glamorous circle of friends, which included his former instructor Diego Rivera and Rivera’s wife, Frida Kahlo. When Muray traveled to Mexico to vacation with Covarrubias and his wife, Rosa, in 1931, he would meet the charismatic Kahlo for the first time. From that meeting sprang a love affair that spanned ten years and a deep friendship that would endure for the rest of their lives. Muray made thousands of portraits between 1920 and his death in 1965. Among Muray’s most remarkable images are his collection of portraits of the iconic Frida Kahlo, whom he met when she was known simply as the wife of artist Diego Rivera, not yet as an artist in her own right. Consistently invigorated by the colors and patterns of Kahlo’s Tehuana costume, these dynamic photographs present this iconic artist, best known for her self portraits, as she was viewed by another.

Collections