Diego & Frida-- A Print Collection of Photographs

Bernard G. Silberstein

Bernard Silberstein took these photos of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo while he was on assignment in Mexico City in the late 1930s and early 1940s. He would become known especially for his portraits of Kahlo, whose own artwork, style, and persona he captured just as she and Rivera finalized their divorce. Among these photos is Kahlo with her famous - and now famously missing - painting, "The Wounded Table" (1940), seen by scholars as symbolic of her grief at the end of her marriage but also as a turning point in her developement as an artist. It went missing after an exhibition in Warsaw 1955; this is one of only three photos taken of the work before its disappearance.

Cincinnati-based Silberstein started out as an engineer, turning to photography as a hobby before pursuing it as a career. He would eventually do work for Time, Life, National Geographic, Collier's, and Esquire magazines.

The portfolio contains 8 lithographic reproductions of Silberstein's photos, four of Kahlo, three of Rivera, and one of the both of them. It was printed by Tea Lautrec printing in San Francisco, California 1n 1998, one year before the death of Silberstein at age 94.