A Few Small Nips

A Few Small Nips (Unos cuantos piquetitos) is a 1935 oil-on-metal painting by the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, held by the Museo Dolores Olmedo in Mexico City; the image measures 29.5 by 39.5 cm inside a wooden frame that Kahlo herself spattered with red, making the frame part of the work.

Kahlo based the scene on a newspaper report of a man who had stabbed his wife to death and told the court that he had only given her 'a few small nips' — unos cuantos piquetitos. She painted it while living apart from Diego Rivera after discovering his affair with her own sister Cristina, and commentators have long read the murdered woman as a projection of Kahlo herself, her emotional wound translated into a literal crime scene.

The composition is a horizontal interior after the murder: the naked, blood-covered body of the woman sprawls across a bed while the killer stands beside it in a hat, knife in hand, already tucking a handkerchief into his pocket. Two doves carry a ribbon overhead bearing the phrase that gives the work its title, an ironic echo of the murderer's own defense. Blood is everywhere — on the floor, the walls, the corpse and, famously, on the frame itself, so that the horror appears to spill out of the picture into the viewer's space.

By placing the scene before us, Kahlo turns the viewer into a witness to a femicide. The painting belongs to the Museo Dolores Olmedo at Xochimilco, which is noted for its holdings of works by Kahlo and Rivera.