An exhibition of artwork, personal letters, photos, toys, and other effects belonging to Mexican art icons Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera opened to the public in Mexico City, at the couple's former home-turned-museum on Friday.

This undated photo released by the Frida Kahlo Museum shows a painted lipstick kiss on a photo of Kahlo's husband, artist Diego Rivera.
(Frida Kahlo Museum/Associated Press)

"The Treasures of the Blue House, Frida and Diego" is now on display at Casa Azul, Kahlo's former family home, where she lived with her muralist husband. 

The new exhibit sheds new light on Kahlo and Rivera's stormy and troubled relationship as well as a different, more playful side of Kahlo, who had built up her own image as that of a strong, defiant feminist.

"This discovery has raised a lot of doubts and reshaped many things," curator Ricardo Perez, one of the experts overseeing the findings, told media this week.

"Concerning Frida, there are a lot of surprises."

Curators have carefully handpicked a selection of items for the exhibit from the thousands of notes, keepsakes, clothing and other items discovered locked away in hidden trunks and boxes in 2004.

Puppets apparently made by artist Frida Kahlo sit on display during a preview tour of the new exhibition, "Treasures of the Blue House, Frida and Diego," at the Casa Azul Museum in Mexico City.
(Gregory Bull/Associated Press)

When they opened the up the boxes, they came across many surprises, including a puppet theatre that Kahlo had apparently spent hours playing with and photos of bikini-clad woman and beefy chisel-faced sailors.

The experts also discovered letters in which Kahlo admitted to being jealous of her philandering husband's mistresses, whom she called "hags," as well as missives that detail her own infidelities.

Hidden for 50 years

Under wraps for nearly 50 years, the collection was discovered locked away in cabinets and behind walls inside Casa Azul just a few years ago, after the death of longtime Rivera patron Dolores Olmedo.

Kahlo died in 1954 and Rivera followed three years later. However, before his death, the artist had asked Olmedo not to open the boxes for another 15 years.

Fearing the trunks might contain highly personal information that could endanger the highly regarded couple's image, she kept the collection under wraps for the remainder of her own life, said her son Carlos Phllips Olmedo, who now runs Casa Azul and several other museums.

Perez and the team of experts said it will take years to fully sift through, investigate and analyze the thousands of items found. The more than 100 items in the new exhibit showcases "only the tip of the iceberg," he said.

The Treasures of the Blue House, Frida and Diego will remain on display until September 30.

The exhibit joins a vast retrospective of Kahlo's art, on display at Mexico City's Palacio des Bellas Artes, and other events marking the centenary of the artist's birth this summer.

A survivor of childhood polio and severely disabled in a bus accident in her teens, Kahlo created self-portraits that explored the physical pain she suffered throughout her life. An active communist sympathizer, she drew further inspiration from her tempestuous marriage to the equally politically minded Rivera, the miscarriages she suffered and her many operations. She died at the age of 47.

With files from the Associated Press