Frida Kahlo

Mexican artist

• Born: July 6, 1907
• Birthplace: Coyoacán, Mexico
• Died: July 13, 1954
• Place of death: Coyoacán, Mexico

Kahlo’s paintings depict the shocking reality of her lifelong, chronic emotional and physical pain. Her emotional expression combined with her flamboyant personality made her notable to artists and the general public alike. Her memory lives on in the numerous recreations of her image and in the retelling of her life story, elevating her to cult status.

Early Life

Frida Kahlo (FREE-dah KAH-loh), baptized Magdalena Carmen Frieda Kahlo y Calderón, was born to parents of mixed heritage. Her father, Guillermo Kahlo, was a Hungarian Jew who emigrated from Germany to Mexico and married Matilde Calder Calderón, a Mexican of Spanish-Indian descent and Frida’s mother. Kahlo was the third of four daughters. She began using the name Frida to dissociate it from the original German spelling “Frieda.”

Kahlo’s early life seemed normal until the age of six, when she developed polio. For nine months she underwent treatment and was often left unattended. In 1922, at the age of fifteen, she enrolled at the National Preparatory School in Mexico City with the dream of a professional career as a physician. She became one of only thirty-five girls in a school of more than two thousand students. In the early years of the twentieth century in Mexico, girls were new to schools, allowed to attend only recently. It was around this time that she first met her future husband, Diego Rivera , a famous muralist who had been commissioned to paint a mural in the school’s auditorium.

While returning home from school on September 17, 1925, Kahlo was severely injured when the bus she was riding in collided with a trolley car. This terrible accident changed her life forever. She suffered several injuries, including a broken spinal column, pelvis, collarbone, ribs, and right leg, and a dislocated right foot and left shoulder. Most tragically, she was impaled by an iron handrail from the bus. The rail penetrated her abdomen and then extended through her left hip through her vagina. She was not expected to live. One month later, after numerous surgeries and other procedures, she returned home. The remainder of her life, however, was dominated by chronic pain and emotional suffering, other medical problems, and countless surgeries. Her life was also one of artistic creativity.

During her recuperation, Kahlo was allowed to use her father’s paints. As a photographer, he had a supply of paints for touching up photographs. Her mother put together a special easel that allowed her to paint while lying in bed. Once she had recovered enough to leave her bed, and her house, Kahlo took a few of her paintings to Rivera, who took an interest in her work and began visiting her, thus beginning a lifelong relationship.

Kahlo also joined the Communist Party during the early years of her recovery. Several prominent artists were leaders in the party, including Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and José Clemente Orozco. She also formed a friendship with photographer Tina Modotti, who was one of the more outgoing and independent women of the party.

Life’s Work

Kahlo’s relationship with Rivera eventually led to marriage on August 21, 1929. Rivera was middle-aged and weighed 300 pounds, and Kahlo was a young woman of twenty-two who weighed less than 100 pounds. Their union soon was referred to as a marriage between an elephant and a dove. Kahlo’s mother was appalled by the match, but her father, who realized Rivera had the finances to pay for Kahlo’s medical needs, welcomed the marriage. Kahlo began to regularly dress and to style her hair in the fashion of the indigenous women of southwestern Mexico. This flamboyant dress, with ribbons and flowers in her hair, later became her signature, iconic image.

In 1930 the couple moved to San Francisco, California, where Rivera received commissions for two murals. They spent the next four years in the United States, as Rivera took on additional mural commissions in Detroit and New York. While in San Francisco, Kahlo became friends with Leo Eloesser, a thoracic surgeon. Throughout the rest of her life Kahlo consulted with Eloesser for medical advice. At one point she dedicated a painting to him. While in Detroit, Kahlo suffered one of many miscarriages related to the injuries she sustained from the 1925 accident. The experience led her to create the painting Henry Ford Hospital (1932). Soon after, Kahlo learned that her mother had become ill and died, and she painted My Birth (1932) in her honor. These two paintings were the first of a series of “bloody” self-portraits depicting painful incidents in her life.

A year after returning to Mexico, Rivera began an affair with Kahlo’s closest sister, Cristina. This was not his first affair, but it was the most painful, and it led to the couple’s separation. Kahlo’s health declined once again, and she endured three more operations. Kahlo eventually forgave her sister and Rivera. Once reunited, their home became a gathering place for the international intelligentsia, including Russian revolutionaries Leon Trotsky and Natalia Trotsky, who came to Mexico on January 9, 1937. While the exiled couple stayed at Kahlo’s home, Trotsky and Kahlo began an affair, one of many she had with men as well as women.

Kahlo soon began to pursue her career as a painter with a new earnestness. Rivera played the part of agent and encouraged the sale of her artwork. In 1938, he convinced Edward G. Robinson, the American film star, to buy four paintings. André Breton, the Surrealist poet and essayist who came to Mexico to visit Trotsky, invited Kahlo to take part in an exhibition in Paris in 1939. Upon Kahlo’s return, she and Rivera separated and eventually began divorce proceedings. Rivera moved to San Francisco and Kahlo’s health again began to decline. One year later, on the advice of Eloesser, Kahlo traveled to San Francisco. She and Rivera decided to remarry on December 8, 1940.

After returning to Mexico, Kahlo received a teaching position, a prize, and a fellowship. Her work had finally become recognized, in part because of her exhibitions abroad and her participation in Mexico City’s exhibition on Surrealism. With her career taking on momentum, she participated in cultural organizations, conferences, and art projects. Four years later, Kahlo’s health seriously declined. She underwent numerous procedures, including bone surgery, but her condition continued to deteriorate. In 1950 she underwent another spinal surgery, her seventh. Throughout this trying time she continued to paint.

In 1953, photographer Lola Álvarez Bravo held a solo exhibition of Kahlo’s work in her gallery, Kahlo’s first solo show in Mexico. Kahlo was in such poor health that doctors advised her to not attend the opening reception. Nothing, however, could keep her away from opening night. She ordered her bed to be delivered to the gallery while she arrived in an ambulance. She was carried into the gallery on a stretcher and placed on her bed, where she received guests.

Soon after the exhibition Kahlo’s right foot was amputated because of gangrene. She spent at least two additional times in the hospital, possibly after suicide attempts. On July 2, 1954, while still recovering from bronchial pneumonia, Kahlo took part in a demonstration to protest the United States’ intervention in Guatemala. Eleven days later, on July 13, Kahlo died. Pulmonary embolism is listed as the cause of death in the official report.

Significance

Kahlo remains one of the most idolized female artists of the twentieth century. When she died in 1954 she was known primarily as the wife of the famous muralist Rivera. Ironically, Rivera is now known as the husband of Kahlo. Feminist art historians were reviving the stories of forgotten female artists in the 1970s, bringing Kahlo’s story to light.

Kahlo is remembered as an artist who spoke her heart through her paintings, profound symbols of strength and perseverance. Popular response to her artwork has, however, been dominated by her life story and not necessarily her art. In 1984, though, the Mexican government recognized Kahlo’s significance as an artist by decreeing her art a national patrimony. Her image has become a face for Mexico. It has been on billboards, magazine covers, and even on a US postage stamp. Her paintings demanded ever-increasing prices. Indeed, one of her paintings sold at auction for more than $5 million.

It is more likely that a person has heard of Kahlo’s tragic accident, her obsession with Rivera, her flamboyant attire, her scandalous relationships, and her physical and emotional pain than to have seen her artwork. The associations evoked by her name have created the cultlike following of “Fridamania.” She has been reborn, in a way, as an image of popular culture, and this pop image, whatever its merits, is a part of her continuing legacy.

Bibliography

Grimberg, Salomon. I Will Never Forget You: Frida Kahlo to Nickolas Muray. San Francisco: Chronicle, 2006. Print.

Herrera, Hayden. Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo. New York: Harper, 1983. Print.

Herrera, Hayden. Frida Kahlo: The Paintings. New York: HarperCollins, 1991. Print.

Herrera, Hayden, Victor Zamudio-Taylor, and Elizabeth Carpenter. Frida Kahlo. Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 2007. Print.

Lowe, Sarah M. Frida Kahlo. Hong Kong: University, 1991. Print.

Zamora, Martha. Frida Kahlo: The Brush of Anguish. Trans. Marilyn Sode Smith. San Francisco: Chronicle, 1990. Print.