WILMINGTON, DE.-The Delaware Art Museum presents Frida Kahlo: Through the Lens of Nickolas Muray, an exhibition of nearly 50 photographs of Frida Kahlo, on view in the Brock J. Vinton Galleries February 2, 2008 - March 30, 2008. Known for the rich colors and deeply personal meanings of her paintings, Frida Kahlo was often her own subject as well as a subject for other artists. The photographs in this exhibition, taken by Nickolas Muray, date from 1937 to 1941.

Born in Hungary, Nickolas Muray (1892-1965) became a successful New York fashion and commercial photographer known for his portraits of celebrities. Having experimented with color in his work from early on, he found his most colorful model in Frida Kahlo (1907-1954), whom he met in Mexico in 1931. Muray photographed Kahlo more than any of his other subjects. His photographs of Kahlo celebrate her deep interest in her Mexican heritage, her life, and the people significant to her.

Muray and Kahlo engaged in a decade-long affair, and he hoped to eventually marry her. In 1940, Kahlo's husband, Mexican mural painter Diego Rivera, initiated a divorce, but the two soon remarried. Nevertheless, Muray and Kahlo and remained close friends until her death in 1954.

Nickolas Muray's portraits of Frida Kahlo are in the permanent collection of the Frida Kahlo Museum, The George Eastman House, The National Portrait Gallery/Smithsonian, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The Delaware Art Museum's display of Frida Kahlo: Through the Lens of Nickolas Muray, courtesy of the collection of the Nickolas Muray Archives, is part of a national tour over a two-and-a-half year period. The tour was developed and managed by Smith Kramer Fine Art Services, an exhibition tour development company in Kansas City, Missouri.

Sponsors - In Delaware, this exhibition is made possible, in part, by grants from the Delaware Division of the Arts, a state agency dedicated to nurturing and supporting the arts in Delaware, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts.