Frida Kahlo in Isolation - Tree of Hope, Remain Strong, 1946

In June 1946, Frida travelled from Mexico to New York for another one of numerous operations on her spine. It was pretty gruesome - a bone, extracted from her pelvis and a 15 cm metal rod, were used to fuse four of her vertebrae together.

She was subsequently stuck in a kind of lockdown, convalescing for eight months, bedridden and forced to wear a steel corset.

This is what she wrote to her friend and patron Eduardo Morillo Safa about how she spent her time in isolation:

"Now I really cannot tell you any gossip from these parts, because I spend my life cloistered in this stupid mansion of forgetfulness, dedicated supposedly to recuperating and to painting, in my leisure moments, I see no class or raza neither high nor proletariat, nor do I go to my “literary-musical” reunions. At most I listen to the odious radio, that is a punishment worse than being purged, I read the dailies, which are just as bad. I am reading a fat book by Tolstoy that is called War and Peace that I think is terrific. Novels of love and counter-love don’t give me any pleasure, and only from time to time do detective stories fall into my hands. Each day I like more the poems of Carlos Pellicer, and of one or another poet like Walt Whitman. Outside of that, I don’t get involved with literature."

She painted Tree of Hope, Remain Strong, 1946 for Morillo Safa during this time.