In the manner of Frida Kahlo
Mexican, 1907–1954
Self-Portrait with Rescue Dog, 2026
Oil on masonite
50 × 40 cm
Never painted.
Commissioned for the collection, 2026.
PAB 2026.21.3
A woman with long loose red hair and a white flower behind one ear sits at a table with her hands folded, looking straight at us. Beside her, on the table, a small scruffy terrier looks straight at us too. Bougainvillea fills the wall behind. Kahlo painted herself with her monkeys, parrots and hairless dogs as family. The rescue dog is family. You can tell because he is on the table.
The brief
A frontal portrait of a woman with long loose red hair and flowers tucked behind one ear, an invented person who resembles no real painter, a small scruffy terrier sitting on the table beside her, a bougainvillea wall behind. Mid-century Mexican folk-modernist oil painting, a frontal figure with an unflinching direct gaze against dense tropical foliage, flat saturated greens, reds and golds, small symbolic animals and objects, naive precise detail, a votive ex-voto stillness, matte paint on board. Museum photograph of the oil painting on board, flat even lighting, no frame, no text, no wall, no floor, cropped to the canvas edge.
Written to the house rules. The painter's name does not appear.
Take it home
The painting on this room's wall, at its own proportions, nothing written on it.
