Frida Kahlo

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

Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón de Rivera, better known as Frida Kahlo, was born (July 6, 1907 to July 13, 1954). She was a Mexican painter of the indigenous culture of her country in a style combining Realism, Symbolism and Surrealism. She was the wife of the Mexican muralist and cubist painter Diego Rivera.

Kahlo's life was one marked by suffering, heroism, and genius. Stricken with polio as a child, then nearly crippled in a bus accident at the age of eighteen, Kahlo defied the odds, not only by learning to walk again, but by taking the world by storm with her unique artistic vision.[1]

During her life, Kahlo was recognized primarily by the intellectual elite, both in Mexico and internationally, but was not well known among ordinary Mexicans, particularly because she worked in mediums that did not lend themselves to mass distribution. [2]

A child during the Mexican Revolution, Kahlo grew up in an era of social change. In the 1920s Frida espoused a Communist, anti-capitalist, philosophy, She befriended the famed Bolshevik revolutionary and Marxist theorist, Leon Trostky, who was assassinated in her home country of Mexico.

Known for her unconventional appearance and flamboyantly styled clothing, Ms. Kahlo accomplished much in her short tragic life. She was a surrealist artist who expressed her inner self through her paintings. To the public she was a high spirited rebellious woman. Her creative style was breathtaking yet bewildering. Frida was probably the most idolized woman artist of her time. Today, she is a figure of legendary power whose work inspires excitement and awe throughout the world. [3]

Family and Childhood

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.

Heritage

Frida's father, of Hungarian Jewish descent, was born Wilhelm Kahlo in Baden-Baden, Germany, in 1872. At the age of nineteen he moved to Mexico City and began a new life by changing his name to its Spanish equivalent - Guillermo. He never returned to Germany.

In 1898 Guillermo married Matilde Calderon, a woman of Spanish and Native American descent. Frida was the third of four daughters born of their marriage. [4]

Frida later changed her birth year to 1910 in order to affiliate herself further with being a product of the Mexican Revolution, which began in 1910. [5]

Health

Kahlo's life was marked by tragedy. At the age of 7 she was stricken with polio and was left with a smaller, thinner leg. Still, with her father's encouragement and with the feisty and brash personality that she kept throughout her life, she overcame her disability.

At the age of 18 Kahlo was involved in a horrendous streetcar - bus accident. Not only was her lower body impaled on a metal rod, she broke her collarbone, her pelvis, several ribs and also her spine in three places. Her right leg had eleven fractures and her right foot was crushed and dislocated. For the second time in her life, she had to re-learn to walk.

Throughout her life she was plagued by relapses of extreme pain, often leaving her hospitalized and/or in bed for months at a time, agonized and miserable. 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 or foot.

During her life she suffered three miscarriages, thought to be caused by her prior injuries. Later in life she developed more severe complications and suffered a gangrenous leg, which was later amputated. [6]

Casa Azul

As a child, Frida romped in a cheerful home populated by pre-Columbian idols and luxuriant tropical plantings. Painted inside and out in cobalt blue with bright yellow floors, the family home provided a cheerful backdrop for a child with much physical suffering. This is the home where the Frida Kahlo was born, grew up and later lived with her husband Diego Rivera, from 1941 until her death at age 47 in 1954.

At Frida's death in 1954, Rivera gave the Casa Azul and its contents to the Mexican people, it opened as a museum four years later. Now known as the Frida Kahlo Museum, this bit of pure Mexicanista is hidden behind high cobalt blue walls in a charming southwestern suburb of Mexico City, Ms. Kahlo's birthplace. [7]

The Adult Frida

Frida Kahlo with Diego Rivera in 1932

It is impossible to study Frida Kahlo's artistry, marriage, morals and politics in separate veins. These aspects of her life were intricately intermingled, each affecting the other.

Introduction to Art

After the accident, Kahlo turned her attention from a medical career to a full-time painting career. Drawing on her personal experiences (her troubled marriage, her painful miscarriages, her numerous operations), her works are often shocking in their stark portrayal of pain. Fifty-five of her 143 paintings are self-portraits, often incorporating symbolic portrayal of her physical and psychological wounds. She was deeply influenced by indigenous Mexican culture, which surfaced in her paintings' bright colors, dramatic symbolism, and unapologetic rendering of often harsh and gory content.

Although Kahlo's work is sometimes classified as surrealist, and she did exhibit several times with European surrealists, she never considered herself a surrealist. "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.

Marriage and Morals

Despite her life of suffering and pain, Frida Kahlo was a vibrant, 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.

External links

Frida Kahlo

• The Life and Art of Frida Kahlo
• "The Frida Kahlo Museum", by Gale Randall
• Exhibition guide from Tate Modern
• Frida's House Yahoo! group
• "Frida Kahlo & contemporary thought"
• "Frida by Kahlo"
• "Frida Kahlo" at ArtCyclopedia
• Frida (2002 film) at the Internet Movie Database
• (Spanish) "Dolor y arte: Frida Kahlo" from Psikeba Magazine
• Ten Dreams Galleries
• Photos

Credits

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