Kahlo and O'Keeffe -- the formative friendship between two artistic giants

(CNN) Frustrated, Frida Kahlo was finding that none of the letters she was writing felt quite right, and she tore them up, one by one. The young Mexican artist was penning a note to Georgia O'Keeffe -- an artistic rock star nearly twice her age, whom she'd befriended while living briefly in New York about a year before. "I can't write in English all I would like to tell, especially to you," reads the two-page letter Kahlo ultimately deemed worthy of sending. "I thought of you a lot and never forget your wonderful hands and the color of your eyes. I will see you soon."

That letter, sent on March 1, 1933, is currently housed at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University and is the sole document filed in the Alfred Stieglitz/Georgia O'Keeffe archive's Kahlo folder.

But "Frida in America" (2020), a new book about the Mexican painter's first trip to the United States -- from 1930 to 1933, accompanying her husband Diego Rivera on multiple mural commissions -- reveals more details about the friendship between a 24-year-old Kahlo, then barely known as a painter, and a venerated and successful 44-year-old O'Keeffe.

Imagining the unibrowed self-portraitist hobnobbing with the eccentric painter of abstracted flora is a fantastic and downright fun image. Understanding Kahlo's friendship with O'Keeffe also helps flesh out the impact these formative American years had on the budding artist, as she bounced between San Francisco, New York, and Detroit.

"It's important to understand more about this relationship between Frida and Georgia because it provides a fuller context, at least for Frida's creative development," said Celia Stahr, author of "Frida in America." "What did Frida see while she was in the United States, what did she experience?"

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