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Frida Kahlo

Frida Kahlo:Frida Kahlo, Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird - 1940
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Frida Kahlo, Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird - 1940

Frida Kahlo (July 61907 – July 13, 1954) was a Mexican painter who depicted the indigenous culture of her country in a style combining Realism, Symbolism and Surrealism. An active communist supporter, she was the wife of Mexican muralist and cubist painter Diego Rivera.

Kahlo was noted for her unconventional appearance, declining to remove her facial hair (she had a small mustache and unibrow which she exaggerated in self portraits) and donning flamboyantly-styled clothing inspired by traditional Mexican dress.


Contents

Childhood and family

Frida Kahlo was born Magdalena Carmen Frieda Kahlo y Calderón in her parents' house in Coyoacán, which at the time was a small town on the outskirts of Mexico City. Her father, Guillermo Kahlo (1872-1941), was born Carl Wilhelm Kahlo in Pforzheim, Germany. Guillermo's father, the jeweler and goldsmith Jakob Heinrich Kahlo and his mother, Henriette née Kaufmann, were both born in Germany.[1]). Wilhelm Kahlo sailed to Mexico in 1891 at the age of 19 and, upon his arrival, changed his German forename Wilhelm to its Spanish equivalent, Guillermo. Frida's mother, Matilde Calderón y Gonzalez, was of primarily indigenous descent mixed with Spanish. A very devout Catholic, Matilde frowned upon the wild games Frida and her younger sister Cristina played. Frida's parents were married shortly after the death of Guillermo's first wife during childbirth. Their marriage was largely unhappy and throughout most of her life, Kahlo was closer to her father than to her mother.

Frida suffered polio at age six, which left her right leg looking thinner than the other (a deformity Kahlo hid by wearing long skirts). Nevertheless, Frida's feisty personality as well as her father's encouragement led to her participation in boxing and other "manly" sports, which helped her overcome her disability. In 1922, Kahlo was enrolled in the Preparatoria, one of Mexico's premier schools, where she was one of only thirty-five girls. Kahlo joined a gang at the school and fell passionately in love with the leader, Alejandro Gomez Arias; this was her first real love affair but certainly not her last. During this period, Kahlo also witnessed violent armed struggles in the streets of Mexico City as the Mexican Revolution.

The Mexican Revolution began in 1910 when Frida was an impressionable three years old. This political struggle made an undeniable impact on her identity and artwork. In her writings, Frida recalled that her mother would usher her and her sisters inside as gunfire echoed in the streets of her hometown. Men would occasionally leap over the walls into her backyard and her mother would sometimes prepare a meal for the hungry revolutionaries. Later, Kahlo would claim that she was born in 1910 so people would directly associate her with the revolution.

In 1925, Kahlo was riding in a bus when the vehicle collided with a trolley car. She suffered serious injuries in the accident, including a broken spinal column, a broken collarbone, broken ribs, a broken pelvis, eleven fractures in her right leg, a crushed and dislocated right foot, and a dislocated shoulder. Additionally, an iron handrail impaled her abdomen, piercing her uterus, which seriously damaged her reproductive ability. This was perhaps the most psychologically damaging component of the accident and a reality she never fully came to terms with. Though Frida recovered from her injuries and eventually regained her ability to walk, she was plagued by relapses of extreme pain for the remainder of her life. The pain was intense and often left her confined to a hospital or bedridden for months at a time. Frida would undergo as many as thirty-five operations in her life as a result of the accident, mainly on her back and her right leg and foot.

Frida's troubled childhood and the injuries she sustained in the bus accident were integral themes of her artistic career.

Career as painter

Frida Kahlo:Frida Kahlo with Diego Rivera in 1932
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Frida Kahlo with Diego Rivera in 1932

After the accident, Kahlo turned her attention away from the study of medicine to begin a full-time painting career. Drawing on personal experiences including her troubled marriage, her painful miscarriages, and her numerous operations, Kahlo's works are often characterized by their stark--and sometimes shocking--portrayals of pain. Fifty-five of her 143 paintings are self-portraits, which frequently incorporate symbolic portrayals of her physical and psychological wounds. Kahlo was deeply influenced by indigenous Mexican culture, which is apparent in her paintings' bright colors, dramatic symbolism and unapologetically harsh and gory content.

Kahlo's work is sometimes classified as surrealist. Though she did exhibit several times with European surrealists, she never considered herself one. "I paint my own reality." she once said. Her preoccupation with female themes and the figurative candor with which she expressed them made her something of a feminist cult figure in the last decades of the 20th century.

Stormy marriage

Frida Kahlo:Frida Kahlo (center) and Diego Rivera photographed by Carl Van Vechten in 1932
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Frida Kahlo (center) and Diego Rivera photographed by Carl Van Vechten in 1932

Frida's paintings attracted the attention of fellow Mexican artist Diego Rivera, whom she later married. They were often referred to as "The Elephant and the Dove" due to their difference in size (Frida's mother, who did not like Diego, came up with this description of them). When they first married, he was 42, 6 ft 1 in. (1.86 m) tall, and 300 pounds (136 kg); she was 22, 5 ft 3 in. (1.6 m) and 98 pounds (44.5 kg).[citation needed]

Their marriage, though loving, was often tumultuous. Both Frida and Diego possessed notoriously fiery temperaments and both had numerous extramarital affairs. Frida did not hide the fact that she was bisexual[citation needed] from Diego, and her husband tolerated her relationships with women (among them actress Josephine Baker[citation needed]) because it aroused him. In contrast, her relationships with men made Diego jealous. For her part, Frida was outraged when she learned that Diego had an affair with her younger sister, Cristina Kahlo. The couple eventually divorced but remarried in 1940; their second marriage was as turbulent as the first.

Late years

Frida Kahlo:La Casa Azul
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La Casa Azul

Active communist sympathizers, Kahlo and Rivera befriended Leon Trotsky as he sought political sanctuary from Joseph Stalin´s regime in The Soviet Union. Initially, Trotsky lived with Rivera and then at Frida's home where he and Frida allegedly had an affair. Trotsky and his wife then moved to another house in Coyoacán where Trotsky was later assassinated. Sometime after Trotsky's death, Frida denounced her former friend and praised the Soviet Union under Stalin. She spoke favorably of Mao, calling China "the new socialist hope" [citation needed].

Kahlo died on July 13, 1954, supposedly of a pulmonary embolism. She had been ill throughout the previous year and had a leg amputated owing to gangrene. However, an autopsy was never performed and some are convinced she committed suicide. A few days before her death she had written in her diary: "I hope the exit is joyful; and I hope never to return."

The pre-Columbian urn holding her ashes is on display in her former home La Casa Azul in Coyoacán, today a museum housing a number of her works of art.

Character

Despite her life of suffering and pain, Frida Kahlo was a vibrant, loose extroverted character whose everyday speech was filled with profanities. She had been a tomboy in her youth and carried her fervor throughout her life. She was a heavy smoker, drank liquor (especially tequila) in excess, was openly bisexual, sang off-color songs, and told equally ribald jokes to the guests of the wild parties that she hosted.

Films

In 2005, director Amy Stechler released a comprehensive documentary on Frida's life "The Life and Times of Frida Kahlo" containing photographs, archival footage and interviews. The film was shown nationally on PBS and nominated for an Emmy award.

Cultural References

References

For a complete bio, photos, paintings, chronology, books and films visit:

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Articles with unsourced statements | Articles with weasel words | Bisexual artists | Mexican communists | Mexican painters | Modern painters | People from Mexico City | People with disabilities | German-Mexicans | Spanish Mexicans | 1907 births | 1954 deaths | LGBT people from Mexico | Trotskyists

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