Kahlo’s work, in particular, became a flash point for the Surrealists. When Breton first visited her studio, she was in the process of completing Lo que el agua me ha dado (1938), a canvas depicting a bathtub in which a series of influential symbols from her life (a traditional Tehuana dress, her parents, a volcano spewing the Empire State Building) bob around her toes. Breton immediately invited her to exhibit in Paris, where her appearance “left everyone breathless, like a bunch of silkworms watching as a locomotive passes at full speed,” as Lamba wrote to Rivera in 1939.

Kahlo resisted strict categorization within the movement: “I never knew I was a Surrealist until André Breton came to Mexico and told me I was one,” she told her dealer Julien Levy in 1938. “I myself still do not know what I am.” Even so, she gave her work to numerous Surrealist exhibitions, one of which became a significant milestone in Kahlo’s career and a watershed moment for Surrealism in Mexico.