Diego and I

"Diego y yo" was the last self-portrait bust Frida Kahlo painted. In her face, on the glabella, there is the shape of a third eye where Diego Rivera’s image comes out, and from it, another third eye appears. The couple had met in 1922; by 1928 their romance began, and married the following year. In this work, the fusion of both figures and the tears rolling down Frida’s cheekbones refer to the turbulent and passionate relationship they had for many decades. Dualism, a frequent theme in her production linked to her personal experiences and human and universal dialectic—body and mind, sun and moon, life and death—emerges here in the contrast between Frida and Diego’s image, which alludes to the feminine and masculine. Same motives were unfolded in another oil painting produced the same year, "El abrazo de amor del universo, la tierra (México), yo, Diego y el señor Xolotl" [The Love Embrace of the Universe, the Earth (Mexico), Me, Diego and Senor Xolotl], where Rivera is portrayed as a baby in Frida’s arms, both protected by an anthropomorphic figure in a scenery which, in turn, connects them to the Earth and the cosmos.