Earlier this week we had a very interesting sale for art fans – a letter from the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo for $3,750. Written in August 1947, the letter to Arturo Sidon concerns the purchase of five watercolours and states that reproduction rights are not to be included. A rather mundane letter but letters from Kahlo are particularly hard to locate.

Kahlo is famous for her use of bright colours and was heavily influenced by European realism and surrealism. Her self-portraits, often painful in their themes, are particularly sought-after. She was married to Mexican artist Diego Rivera but had a turbulent marriage. Her lovers included Leon Trotsky. Salma Hayek portrayed her in the 2002 movie, Frida.

The letter might have gone this week but you could still pick up a handwritten invitation from Kahlo to the opening of her first solo exhibit in Mexico. She famously attended the exhibit after being carried to the event on her bed because she was very ill from gangrene in her right leg. The invitation is written as a poem. It is available for $7,500 and you’d also receive an illustration by Rivera created for the first anniversary of his wife’s death – it reads “Para la Niña de mis ojos (that translates as the girl of my eyes), Fisita mia el 13 de Julio de 1955.”

When I sitting here reading about people like Frida Kahlo, I can’t help but think that I lead a very dull life.