Kahlo was not a prolific painter. As a young woman, she was involved in an automobile accident that damaged her spine and pelvis. This was the cause of health issues that would plague her for the rest of her life, leaving her bedridden in her final years. While she was not without ambition, she faced a number of barriers to full agency in the art world of the early 20th century.
Frida Kahlo wrote that her lush landscapes and sometimes arcane imagery were both expressions of her inner life and of national pride. American critics were sometimes dismissive, seeing her meditative compositions through the rather paternalistic filter of sexism coupled with an assumption of naive exoticism. Her marriage to activist/muralist Diego Rivera, whose work was as intensely declarative of his ideals as hers was private, often brought unfair comparisons.
The administering body of culture and arts in Mexico, known as CONACULTA, has strict rules in place when it comes to the sale of works by artists who are considered influential voices of the Mexican people and who have created works that are arguably canonical in the body of the country's artistic heritage. Few, if any, of Kahlo's paintings have been sold outside of Mexico since the creation of the agency. The works that have gone on the block were usually sold or given by Frida Kahlo to friends and admirers and thus kept by family members and curators of private collections.
Dos Mujeres is significant for more than just its rarity. It was the first work Kahlo sold. The artist was only 21 when the portrait of two women, most likely domestics in the Kahlo-Rivera household, was purchased by Jackson Cole Phillips, a manufacturing tycoon who was also an active patron of the arts. Phillips was a family friend who encouraged art dealers in the United States to raise the profile of the young artist, making her work attractive to his fellow collectors.
