More Than an Icon
In November 1930, a diminutive 23-year-old woman from the village of Coyoacán, just outside Mexico City, arrived in San Francisco with her new husband, a celebrated artist 20 years her senior. It was her inaugural visit abroad. “San Francisco is very beautiful,” she wrote in an effusive letter, “from everywhere you can see the sea.” Her trip was filled with new experiences, from first witnessing the ocean—“I loved it!”—to her initial encounter with the world of Gringolandia, as she dubbed the United States.
Though as yet unheralded, young Frida Kahlo made an immediate impression on the city. According to photographer Edward Weston, “dressed in native costume even to huaraches, she causes much excitement on the streets of San Francisco. People stop in their tracks to look in wonder.” Kahlo herself observed the stares. She wrote to her mother in Mexico: “The gringas really like me a lot and take notice of all the dresses and rebozos that I brought with me, their jaws drop at the
