Art

Casa Kahlo: Frida Kahlo's Family Home and Sanctuary

The first publication of Casa Kahlo, Frida Kahlo’s private Mexico City family home and personal sanctuary, and its collections of her art, clothing, jewelry, and treasured keepsakes, the house has been opened to visitors for the first time in nearly 100 years.

Casa Kahlo offers an intimate new portrait of Frida Kahlo through the lens of the Kahlo family home that stayed in the family’s hands for nearly 100 years. Drawn from the memories, stories, and private archives of Frida’s great nieces, the book reveals what Casa Kahlo meant to the now world-famous artist and cultural heroine. The Kahlo family home was the artist’s safe haven away from her volatile marriage, where the people who anchored her—her parents, favorite sister, and beloved niece—lived. It’s where she brought friends and lovers away from the public life she lived in Casa Azul, where she taught legions of students in the home’s lush courtyard, and where the artist herself lived for several years in the late 1940s. Rich with family anecdotes, early artwork, unpublished letters, documents, and vivid details of daily life in Coyoacán, this is not another retelling of the Frida myth, but a rare insider account from Frida’s own family.

Readers encounter Frida not only as an artist and icon, but as a daughter, mentor, teacher, political thinker, and fiercely loyal family member whose creative life was inseparable from the homes and people around her. With its blend of personal testimony, cultural history, and never-before-shared family perspectives, Casa Kahlo reintroduces Frida Kahlo in a way that feels revelatory and profoundly human.

Highlights include:

  • Previously unpublished letters and postcards exchanged with Kahlo’s sisters, parents, and extended family
  • The restored interior of Casa Kahlo, including a mural believed to have been painted by Kahlo herself
  • Never-before-seen stills from a vivid family film shot just a few years before her death
  • Personal belongings, jewelry, drawings, and select artworks, including Kahlo’s signature Indigenous clothing and handmade accessories
  • Her extensive collection of ex-votos, dolls, and pre-Hispanic figurines which connected her to Mexico’s rich ancestral heritage
  • Rare exhibition pamphlets and ephemera from Kahlo’s earliest shows in Mexico and the United States

About The Author

Mara Romeo Kahlo, Mara de Anda Romeo, and Frida Hentschel Romeo are the great-nieces of Frida Kahlo. They live in Mexico City, not far from Museo Casa Kahlo.

  • Publish Date: April 21, 2026
  • Format: Hardcover
  • Category: Art - Individual Artists - Monographs
  • Publisher: Rizzoli Electa
  • Trim Size: 9 x 11
  • Pages: 256
  • US Price: $55.00
  • CDN Price: $75.00
  • ISBN: 978-0-8478-7557-3

Reviews

"For decades, the great 20th-century Mexican painter Frida Kahlo has captured the collective imagination, her work and persona becoming a symbol of strength and perseverance while her face seemed to enter the public domain, co-opted by merch culture and emblazoned on T-shirts and tote bags, tea towels and key rings. There’s not much that has not already been revealed or written about Kahlo: From illustrated children’s books and dense biographies to diaries and catalogues raisonnés, hundreds of titles explore her life and art with varying degrees of accuracy and grace. The Kahlo canon, if you will, is well-stocked, perhaps oversaturated, but a new book, “Casa Kahlo: Frida Kahlo’s Home and Sanctuary,” out this spring from Rizzoli Electa, proffers something novel: an attempt to protect and reclaim a more personal and private side of Kahlo’s story, all in the name of family." — SOTHEBY'S MAGAZINE

"Last year, a museum honoring the family life of Frida Kahlo opened in Mexico City. Museo Casa Kahlo, as it was baptized, depicts a rather obscure facet of the Mexican painter’s life. There, she isn’t a world-class painter with a unique vision, or a trailblazing fashion icon. Instead, she is remembered first and foremost as a beloved sister, daughter, aunt, and member of the community. A new book, titled Casa Kahlo: Frida Kahlo’s Home and Sanctuary and published by Rizzoli New York, offers a glimpse inside this space and its vast art and photography collection." — MY MODERN MET