Rating:   4 illuminating stars

Let me first state that I am a big Frida Kahlo fan.   I have read several biographies about her.   I have even been to her ‘Blue House’ (family home) museum in the Coyoacan neighborhood of Mexico City.   While in Mexico City, I also visited Museum of Modern art, which displays many of her paintings.  I am not an art historian, but I do enjoy art, and art history.

This book helped deepen my appreciation for Frida Kahlo’s work, and her tumultuous life.  Its primary focus is the three years that she and her new husband, the muralist, Diego Rivera spent in the United States.   During that time, they visited San Francisco, Detroit, and New York.  I appreciated the way that the author interwove Kahlo’s life events of that visit with artwork she created.   It gave me a deeper understanding of the underlying meaning of some of Kahlo’s paintings.  

Kahlo was a woman of many layers and moods.  She strove to stretch herself personally and artistically.  Celia Stahr’s book helped me better understand more of the layers that drove Kahlo to become the artist that the world knows today.   This was an interesting and extensive biography of a short period in Frida Kahlo’s’ life.  It included the people and events who shaped that life.  I found it entertaining and educational.

‘Thank-You’ to NetGalley; the publisher, St. Martin’s Press; and the author, Celia Stahr, for providing a free e-ARC copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This was a fantastic read!! Just the simple fact of reading about Frida is such an honor and privilege!!! I will never get enough!! Thank you for E-ARC!!

This is a substantial biography of one of most iconic 20th century artists and a genuine feminist icon. Celia, after all, is an author who knows her stuff, given that she is a Professor on modern American and contemporary art at the University of San Francisco. 

Ostensibly, the book focuses on Frida’s visit to the United States where, across three years, she not only established herself as a figure of fascination for the media and those in artistic circles, but during which time she also emerged from the vast shadow cast by her on her own terms as an artist – but also this was a period where the marital strains between these two icons and egos became too much to bear.

“Frida and Diego’s relationship was also buckling, but it wasn’t due to a lack of money or creature comforts. The emotional constraints of living in a foreign country where all eyes were focused on Diego and where Frida had to minor her behaviour and words had taken a toll.”

However, this 450-page biography is so much more as, after all, what is studying Frida without focusing on her formative years and her artistic output as well as her personal life? And Celia does both justice with the first 100 pages dedicated to Frida’s childhood – the influence of her father, her traumatic accident, and her fascination with identity – before moving on to examine how the USA and her time there influenced both her work and her life.

There are some fantastic passages in here; I particularly loved learning more about the friendship between Frida and Georgia O’Keeffe, understanding what art Frida was drawn to – who and what influenced her – and how she found herself in conflict with the Western art world, which was so often racist, sycophantic and false.
“In San Francisco, Frida had posed for Imogen and Edward, looking regal, intelligent, engaged and beautiful, albeit with hints of the “noble savage” in the way she was portrayed by those artists.”

Frida was an undeniably complex woman and Celia captures much of that internal and external conflict here but I respected her reluctance to spend too much gossiping about Frida’s personal life, instead focusing on how any relationship impacted on her art (it’s worth noting that I read this book with a copy of Frida Kahlo: Masterpieces alongside as Celia goes into great detail on the composition of Frida’s works, explaining their messages and the context in which each painting was created and finished).

This is a book that puts Frida the artist front and centre – and it is a most welcome book for doing just that.

This monumental biography by art historian Celia Stahr is breathtaking. Extensively researched and academic in nature as a reference work, the book is also highly engaging and accessible to art lovers, in general, and especially to those who remain fascinated by the iconic character of Frida Kahlo. Stahr follows Frida's ever-evolving life and ties Kahlo's experiences, values, and beliefs into a study of her art, showing how they are completely connected. Stahr has spent a decade of her life creating this masterpiece: a superior study!

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with a free digital advanced reading copy. This is a well-written and interesting biography. If you are an art-lover I think that you might be particularly interested because, in addition to standard biographical information, the author provides analyses of Frida's paintings and information about the alchemy symbology that she incorporates into her work. He also provides insight into the psychological underpinnings of her work. I think that the title is a bit of a misnomer because he delves into Frida's childhood and background in Mexico, as well as her time in America. I will admit that I did not finish the book - it's quite long! I don't know how many pages, but the time estimate on my Kindle was over 12 hours to finish the entire book. I will continue reading it on and off in-between other books, but I wanted to make sure to provide my review in a timely fashion.

Frida in America is a biography of Frida Kahlo, during the time she lived in the United States. It’s an intricately researched and intimate look into Frida, her painting and her tumultuous life with Diego Rivera. I have always been intrigued with Frida and Diego and enjoyed the exhibitions of their work. However, I skimmed much of the middle section, as I found It laborious to read. Brava to Celia Stahr for her careful and organized gathering of information. Frida and Diego, a complex couple of genius skill, are brought to life on the pages of this biography. Thank you Netgalley and St. Martin’s Press for the opportunity to read and review this ARC.

'Frida in America' by Celia Stahr is not a book only about the life Frida lived in America, but it also has insights about her life since her birth and to her death. I've read this book with great interest as it is the first biography I read of Frida Khalo. Learning about her childhood, about how she became such a great feminist influencer, and about her events in her personal life I did not know before was a great experience for me. 
I would definitely buy a printed copy of this book and recommend it to anyone who is interested in Frida Khalo's life. Though the title suggests it is about her life in America, this book is much more than that.

I really enjoyed this, and am pleased to say that it kept my attention from beginning to end.  There is a lot to consider whilst reading this book, and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience.  I learnt a lot.

***I received a free copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

Frida is America by Celia Stahr is an intriguing look at the fascinating Frida Kahlo and her three years she spent in America.  The author does give the reader brief information about before and after the three year period but the bulk of the book is set during those three very important years in her artistic career.  Frida was only 23 when she came to America for the first time.  Diego had a commission in San Fransisco. 

The writing is very detailed when it came to describing the the paintings and Frida's clothing.  I stopped a number of times to look up a painting because I was fascinated by the descriptions.  The author is also very detailed about the symbolism that is present in Frida's art.  

This book is the culmination of 10 years of research by Celia Stahr.  She had access to numerous letters, journals, diaries, and newspaper articles.  It is very detailed in every aspect of the book.  I found the history in this book fascinating.  At times I did feel there was too much information on their friends but these friends were well known and influential people that had an impact on Frida and Diego's lives.  This was not a light read but I feel the author did an amazing job putting together such a detailed account of their three years in America.

Thank you to St. Martin's Press and Netgalley for the opportunity to read and review this book. 
Biographies & Memoirs
Release Date: March 3, 2020

Frida in America by Celia Stahr is such a complex and detailed book predominantly about Frida Kahlo’s years in America and how they molded and influenced her artwork.

The book starts mostly narrating Kahlo’s early years and the defining moments that shaped her life to come. While her younger years were mostly tragic, they were also diverse and interesting. The different events and people in her life also lead to a highly dynamic mind, spiritual viewpoint, and thought process. 

Kahlo had several interesting relationships. Many of these relationships, while with famous and influential people, were extremely unhealthy. Her family had an odd respect for her. They thought she was intelligent but unattractive. Her dad even believed she possessed a demon inside of her. Her very complex family life transfers us into her marriage to Diego. 

Her marriage to Diego was all over the place. Their union was sad and so unhealthy. It was said that Kahlo always shared her special people with others. 

There is so much detail about Frida’s art. Her art expressed her life’s story is such a unique way. Kahlo’s sexuality is a key component in this narrative and is explored in great depth. It was so influential in her artwork. The details that Stahr researched and included were fascinating. They gave me a fresh perspective on Kahlo’s artwork.

This book contains a secondary story and that is the history of the world along with the thoughts and beliefs of people at the time. The book crosses over a few majour cities and the different art and culture that were prominent at the time, in each area. There are several famous and historic people of interest who are touched on, as well. Like all of Kahlo’s other relationships, these relationships were just as unique and often tragic. 

While I enjoyed this book, it was a little much for me. I love well researched books and I really appreciate the time and effort that Stahr put into her work. My favourire component was the historical aspect and the thoughts and culture of the time, followed by the details and symbolism that Kahlo incorporated into her artwork. While, Kahlo’s life is important and the main reason anyone would want to read this, for someone newer to her life there were a lot of details to sift through. 

Frida in America is extremely well researched and very detailed account of a transformative time in Kahlo’s life. For anyone interested in her or her art this is the perfect book to start with. 

I received an electronic Advanced Reader Copy from St. Martin’s Press through Net Galley. All opinions are 100% my own.

FRIDA IN AMERICA is a deep education in to the gifted artist's work as well as her life. Her work has always fascinated me, as has her life and I was eager to learn more about her through Celia Stahr's book.   And that I did.
Kahlo is a rich and intriguing subject for a biography -- and Stahr offers her readers a lot of insight in to the sub-text of her art.  

I loved the subject matter, but found the writing dry---if there was as much passion in the text as there was within Kahlo, it would have been an even more rewarding read.

I am grateful to NetGalley for providing me a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for a candid review.

For a biography with this title, this books spends a lot of time delving into Frida's childhood and teen years, as well as with a couple of trips she took back to Mexico while largely living in the USA, but the subtitle of this volume is "The Creative Awakening of a Great Artist." That time she spent and the experiences she had, whether in the US or in Mexico, or traveling between the two, contributed immensely to the intriguing artist she became.

The bio starts out brightly with Frida and her husband, artist Diego Rivera, traveling to and arriving in San Francisco, but that all comes to a jarring halt as we travel back in time for a history of her life up to this point - which occupies fully a quarter of the narrative - before we get back to her life in the US. For me that wasn't so bad because I find the subject of this biography endlessly fascinating, but others might find themselves irritated when the title so boldly promises a US story and they get sent to Mexico for an extended period! Maybe such readers should learn to be less provincial?!

What did impress me was how well researched this is. I've read a variety of books about Frida Kahlo, but never one that was so delving and so revealing of her inner workings as this one is. It was impressive and truly engrossing for me. Regardless of what it meant before, her art takes on a whole new meaning once you're initiated into the symbolism she employed so often in her work. The story picks up back in the US with Diego's commission, his workaholic approach to his painting as well as his endless philandering and his absurd misgivings over his (at least initially) erroneous belief that his wife was as bad as he was. Far too many men project like that, and poor Frida has to deal with all of this largely by herself.

The book has a wealth of detail about their life both in Mexico and in the US, the people they met, the relationships they formed and the impact they had, as well as the experiences that moved them in return. They were very influential on each other too, each taking cues from the other's work, and expanding or amplifying them in their own art. In a way, their art was a way of talking to each other about topics they perhaps felt uncomfortable discussing face to face.

Frida's initial love-affair with the US was an uneasy one at best, and it quickly turned to disappointment and antagonism the longer she remained there. She missed her family and her homeland greatly which didn't help her state of mind, and her husband was very neglectful of her, focusing on the murals he had arrived in the US to paint, and working insane hours, leaving Frida very much to her own devices. She cultivated her own friends and relationships and worked on her art, showing increasing sophistication and steady improvement over her time in the USA. This books explains all of that and excavates, sometimes a bit too deeply for me!) the meaning, symbolism, and origins of her imagery.

If I have a complaint about this book, it's the same one I would have (and have had!) about any such book where art is discussed in detail, and that is the complete lack of any examples of her art, or any photographs of her which were taken during her travels. Fortunately, with the name 'Frida Kahlo' being so very well-known these days, it's possible to find on the Internet a lot of the pictures discussed in this biography, but it's a nuisance to have to halt reading and go searching for them.

Many images, in particular the photographs that are mentioned, I could not find, which was very frustrating. I don't know if the author's intention is to include the images in a print version and they were simply omitted from the review ebook. I wouldn't blame her for that, because Amazon's crappy Kindle format is renowned for mangling anything that's not plain vanilla text, but if the pictures could have been included in a PDF version of the book made available for review, that would have been truly awesome! It made it rather tedious at times to read a long and detailed description of the art or a photograph without being able to readily view it, or in some cases without being able to see it at all.

That aside, I really enjoyed this book and commend it as a worthy read. But then I'm heavily biased when it comes to Frida Kahlo. She probably the first person I'd visit if I ever managed to get my hands on a time machine! I commend this book as a worthy read for fans of art or of Kahlo.

Frida in America is a very thorough account of Frida’s life in America. 

What I enjoyed most was that it didn’t just cover her day-to-date. It also delved into what was happening in the background of Mexico and the United States. It was interesting to learn about the different cultural and political aspects of the world in which she grew up and visited when she was traveling with Diego. Rom the clothes that she wore to the popular art of the time, it was great to have a full picture of the times. 



Something else I loved was how Frida carried Mexico with her wherever she went. She had such a strong connection to the country and her family, and this book does a great job of expressing that. 


An annoying thing about this book is the constant italicizing of Spanish words, followed by what they are in English. While possibly helpful for non-Spanish speakers, it felt as if they were just throwing random words in for really no reason. It doesn’t feel authentic.

I found the story of Frida Kahlo’s years in the US to be fascinating, but the book seemed weighted down by a lot of backstory that could have been summed up in fewer pages. It’s a very meticulously researched book and one that can be used for reference.

This book helped humanize Frida for me.  She is so iconic that is was refreshing to read snippets of her letters and get a look at who she was as a person in addition to who she was as an artist.  It was wonderful to see how America and what she saw and learned their shaped her art.  This book was a little dense, so I don't know if it would be an ideal read for a general patron.  However, art lovers and Frida Khalo enthusiasts will enjoy.

Frida Kahlo is one of my favorite artists ever. I've read fictional accounts of her life, biographies, I've purchased books that are just photos of her art... I REALLY like her. 
When I saw this book was available on Netgalley, I really hoped to get it because Frida's life in America is not something that I've read a lot about. It was only a few years so it's generally a few paragraphs if mentioned at all. I have no idea why because her 3 years in the US were formative years in her career. She experienced the racial tension, poverty, and anti-semitism of the time. But it was not all terrible, she also experienced the beauty in the US, the sights across the country, the food.
It was vividly written and almost felt like a novel rather than a biography. I enjoyed it and have already been telling my art loving friends to look out for it. 
Thanks Netgalley for giving me the chance to enjoy this book!

I want to give it 2.5 stars. Frida Kahlo is one of those faces you're always familiar with but know nothing about. At least to me, she is that artist. I've always been interested to learn more about her, have seen some of her work in MoMA. Thanks for NetGalley & St. Martins Press for giving me the opportunity to read this  e-ARC. I have learned so many interesting facts not only about Frida Kahlo but also some in depth analysis of her artworks. I love paintings but could never look at a painting and analyze the use of specific lines, symbols, colors, etc to mean so so so much more than what I see. I loved reading specifically about Frida Kahlo! But this biography made me feel like I was reading two different books at times. One about Frida and her art, and one about everyone Frida has ever interacted with and endless details about their personal life. Sometimes I have to sift through pages to get back to Frida Kahlo. The never ending footnotes/cited quotations was also a bit distracting. Also I think adding the actual paintings/photographs talked about and described endlessly will add more life to the  novel. I had to keep looking it up to actually see what the author means, when it comes to analyzation of her art.

Frida in America explores the life of famed artist Frido Kahlo, concentrating on her visit to America which was a profound experience for her.  I enjoyed the detailed descriptions and symbolism the author used on her paintings which often reflected the physical agony the young artist endured from her injuries sustained in a horrific bus accident. This near death experience changed the trajectory of her life from the medical field to becoming an artist as she never fully recovered from the severity of the bus crash. 
Photos of her work would have really added an important dimension to this book. The story read more like a college text book than a biography and the abundance of footnotes I found distracting.
This story does give amazing insight to Frida's strong and independent personality and how events shaped her to become a tortured and brilliant artist. It was just a very slow read and I did find myself skimming through parts. .If you do mind a technical and very thorough view on Frida I feel you will enjoy this book.

This book marks Frida Calo's life in America. It is a bookmarked with antidotes and in-depth analysis of the painting and social structures. As an art history major, I appreciated its attempt to tie in the historical themes of the time and differed art styles, This is the book's strength, but in the same breath, it made its visual assumptions in a way that was assuming of the mental state of Frida, This may be a matter of ARC, but not having easy access to the drawings, painting, and photographs took away from the experience. The writing style was not only choppy but it slowed down the plot. I found myself skimming through the latter half.

As always, thank you, Net Galley, thank you for early access to this book in exchange for this honest review.

An amazing insight into the life of Frida Khalo.
Frida in America is the type of book you read and walk away feeling inspired. This wonderful artist has always appealed to me. Her determination, her struggles, her achievements; they made her an inspirational woman. 
I feel privileged to be able to read this book before publication and thank the author for her amazing skills in telling the life of Frida and her husband Diego