A collection of love letters from the painter Frida Kahlo are to be offered at Doyle New York on April 15 with an $80,000-120,000 estimate.

Frida Kahlo was a renowned Mexican artist

The auction house explains: "This group of twenty-five letters that the Mexican painter, Frida Kahlo wrote to a Spanish refugee named Jose Bartoli between August 1946, when she had just turned thirty-nine, and November 1949, show that she knew how to write love letters that flow with poetry and passion.

"Kahlo's letters are steamy with unbridled sensuality and they are, like Kahlo's paintings, extraordinarily direct and personal.

"They cry out with a heart-breaking loneliness and with the misery of physical pain, for they were written while Kahlo was recuperating at home in Mexico City from a spinal fusion performed in June, 1946 at New York's Hospital for Special Surgery."

In one example she writes: "My Bartoli…I don't know how to write love letters. But I wanted to tell you that my whole being opened for you. Since I fell in love with you everything is transformed and is full of beauty….

"Love is like an aroma, like a current, like rain. You know, my sky, you rain on me and I, like the earth, receive you. Mara".

Kahlo was both a great painter and a hugely charismatic figure. She was a celebrity in her own lifetime and both her work and memorabilia remain in strong demand.  

Please sign up to our free newsletter to receive exciting news about autographs auctions.