Frida Kahlo is recognized as Mexico’s, if not the world’s, greatest painter. She is a Marxist, reconstructionist, disabled, bisexual painter and activist. Kahlo completely revolutionized the way we view art, gender, and society. Her art, particularly her self-portraits share a personal story of pain and suffering, but also a profound resilience. Kahlo explained,
I paint myself because I am often alone and I am the subject I know best.
A perfect representation of her pain and resilience is the 1944 painting “The Broken Column.” The painting depicts the struggle Kahlo faced when dealing with spinal surgery needed to solve on-going pain from a serious traffic accident when she was eighteen years old. Although the painting depicts the physical pain that Kahlo faced, the fact that Kahlo is looking straight forward conveys a message of spiritual triumph and calls on the audience and herself to face her situation, a common theme in Kahlo’s work.
Frida Kahlo was born on July 6, 1907 in Coyocoan, Mexico City, Mexico. She grew up in her family home, which was later referred to as Casa Azul of the Blue House. Although being born on July 6, 1907, Kahlo insisted on listing July 7, 1910 as her birth date. That date is the start of the Mexico revolution, and Kahlo intended for her life to parallel the birth of modern Mexico. Kahlo was in poor health during her childhood. At age 6, she contracted polio and was bedridden for nine months. Her disease caused her right leg to grow smaller than her left leg. She wore long skirts to cover this the rest of her life. As she limped through her recovery, her dad, a German descendant and photographer, encouraged her to play sports. She played soccer, swam, and did wrestling, which was unusual for a girl at the time.
Kahlo attended the National Preparatory School in Mexico; here, she became popular for her outspokenness, and she met the famous Mexican muralist, Diego Rivera for the first time. Kahlo knew she would marry him one day. In 1922, Kahlo joined a group of students sharing similar ideological perspectives. She fell in love with the leader, Alejandro Gomez Arias. Unfortunately, in September, she was travelling with Gomez Arias and got in a tragic accident. The bus they were on collided with a streetcar, a steel handrail impaling Kahlo in the hip. Her spine and pelvis are fractured and this accident left her in a great deal of pain, both physically and physiologically. She was injured so badly that she stayed at the Red Cross Hospital in Mexico City for several weeks. She returned home for further recovery, wearing a full body cast for 3 months.
To alleviate the pain during her recovery, Kahlo began to paint. Her parents supported her painting, building a special easel so she could paint in bed and buying paint and a box of brushes. During her recovery, she painted her first self-portrait, “Self Portrait in a Velvet Dress.”
This portrait was sent Gomez Arias after their relationship turned sour when Alejandro began to believe that Kahlo was too liberal. It worked, and they got back together, until he left for Europe in 1927 because his parents didn’t want him to be together with Kahlo.
In 1928, Kahlo reunited with Diego Rivera. Her art was further encouraged by Rivera. A year later, despite her mother’s objections, they got married.
The couple moved a lot in the first few years of marriage based on Rivera’s work. In 1930, they lived in San Francisco, California. Then they moved to New York City for Rivera’s artwork show at Museum of Modern Art. They later moved to Detroit while Diego Rivera worked for Detroit Institute of Arts. In 1933, Kahlo was living with Rivera in New York. Rivera was commissioned by Nelson Rockefeller to create a mural named as Man at the Crossroads at Rockefeller Center. Rivera attempted to include a portrait of Vladimir Lenin, a communist leader in the mural. Rockefeller stopped the work and painted over it. The couple was forced to move back to Mexico, where they lived in San Angel, Mexico.
Kahlo and Rivera’s marriage was extremely unusual. They had been living separate for many years. Both Diego and Kahlo had many affairs. Diego even cheated with Kahlo’s sister Crisitina. In Kahlo’s sadness, she cut off her long hair to express her betrayal and independence. Shortly after their divorce, Kahlo painted, “Self Portrait with Cropped Hair.”
This painting expressed her desire to be independent, as she rid the feminine qualities that Rivera held dear. She wore a black suit and only kept earrings as a symbol of her femininity. The lyrics state,
See, if I loved you, it was for your hair, now you’re bald, I don’t love you any more.
Kahlo and Rivera separated many times, but they always got back together, even with the affairs by Rivera, and Kahlo’s affairs in retaliation. Their relationship was also stressed by the fact that Kahlo was unable to bear children due to her bus accident and resulting injuries. In 1932, Kahlo painted, “Henry Ford Hospital.”
On July 4, 1932, Kahlo had a miscarriage in Detroit. Kahlo was heartbroken when she experienced her second miscarriage in 1934. The painting shows her helpless body bleeding on a huge bed. Surrounding her is a snail, a symbol of the slowness of the abortion, a male fetus, a pink cast of the pelvic zone, alluding to the fractures in Kahlo’s spine. As well, there is a machine, an orchid given to her by Rivera, and a pelvic bone.
I aborted in the blinking of an eye,
Kahlo wrote Dr. Leo Eloesser.
The scene is based on a daily paper report that recounted a murder of a women by her boyfriend. He stabbed her again and again, but exclaimed,
But I just give her a couple of little nips!
Her sadness was too extraordinary to be painted, so Kahlo used another story to express her pain. In the painting a bloodied lady lies on a bed underneath her killer. Like Kahlo’s body in “Henry Ford Hospital,” her wretchedness is increased by the way her upper and lower body turn in inverse directions. Kahlo later explains that in this moment, she was on the verge of being
killed by life.
Andre Breton is known as one of the head figures of the Surrealism movement, and in 1938, Kahlo and him became friends. Kahlo explained that she never considered herself a surrealist
until André Breton came to Mexico and told me I was one.
Kahlo also wrote,
Really I do not know whether my paintings are surrealist or not, but I do know that they are the frankest expression of myself.
Since my subjects have always been my sensations, my states of mind and the profound reactions that life has been producing in me, I have frequently objectified all this in figures of myself, which were the most sincere and real thing that I could do in order to express what I felt inside and outside of myself.
Within the same year, Kahlo had an exhibition at the New York City gallery. She sold some painting and got two commissions; one of which was Clare Boothe Luce who requested a painting of her friend Dorothy Hale who committed suicide. Kahlo depicted her tragic leap in “The Suicide of Dorothy Hale.”
On October 21, 1938, Hale jumped off from the top window of her luxury apartment suite in New York in her favourite black dress with a corsage of yellow roses. Clare Boothe Luce, the publisher of the fashion magazine “Vanity Fair”, commissioned Kahlo to paint a “recuerdo” portrait. When the painting arrived in August 1939, Clare seriously thought of destroying it. This painting is one of Frida’s most shocking and controversial painting, which depicted the details of every step of Hale’s suicide. Frida painted it in the style of an “ex-voto (retablo)”. At the bottom, blood red lettering details the tragic event:
In New York City on the 21st of October 1938, at 6:00 in the morning, Dorothy Hale committed suicide by throwing herself from a very high window in the Hampshire House. In her memory […], this retablo was executed by Frida Kahlo.
At Clare’s request, sculptor Isamu Noguchi painted out
painted at the request of Clare Boothe Luce, for the mother of Dorothy.
She also had an angel that once appeared at the top was removed. At the time of this painting, Frida was separating from Diego and having serious thoughts of suicide. This dark painting may be an expression of her compassion for women driven to despair, particularly by mean as Hale committed suicide shortly after the death of her husband.
In 1939, Kahlo was invited to Paris by Andre Breton, where she befriended artists such as Marc Chagall, Piet Mondrian, and Pablo Picasso. That year, Kahlo and Rivera got divorced, and she painted one of her most famous paintings, “The Two Fridas.”
This portrait shows Kahlo’s two polar personalities. The traditional Kahlo in Tehuana costume, with a broken heart, sitting next to an independent, modern dressed Kahlo. The traditional Tehuana costume was something Rivera admired, a sit displayed Kahlo’s femininity. Later, she admitted the painting expressed her desperation and loneliness with the separation from Diego. The stormy sky filled may be a physical expression of Frida’s inner turmoil. In 1947, this painting was acquired by the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes in Mexico City. The purchase price was 4,000 Pesos (about $1,000) and an additional 36 Pesos for the frame. That was the highest price that Frida was ever paid for a painting during her lifetime.
Soon, Kahlo and Diego Rivera remarried in 1940. The second marriage was the same as the first: living separately and having affairs. In 1941, the Mexico government commissioned her to paint five portraits of important Mexican women, but she was unable to finish the project, as she lost her father that year and suffered from chronic pain. Kahlo continued to grow in popularity however.
In 1944, Kahlo painted, “The Broken Column,” one of her most famous paintings. A naked Kahlo is split in this painting, with a literal shattered column replacing her spine. With tears on her face, nails are placed throughout her body, carefully avoiding the surgical brace. Kahlo expressed her physical challenges through her art. During this time, she sought a lot of medical treatment for her chronic pain, but nothing really worked. After a few surgeries, Kahlo wore special corsets to protect her spine.
Kahlo’s condition worsened in 1950, and she was diagnosed with gangrene in her right foot. She was bedridden for nine months, receiving several surgeries. Despite her pain, she continued to paint, and in 1953, she had a solo exhibition in Mexico. Arriving by ambulance, Kahlo with limited mobility welcomed the attendees and celebrated at the opening ceremony. A few months later, part of her right leg was amputated to stop the gangrene. During her pain, Kahlo was deeply depressed. Despite being in and out of the hospital, Kahlo was still politically active, as she has been all her life. She appeared at the U.S. backed overthrow of President Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala on July 2. This was her final pubic appearance.
Roughly one week after her 47th birthday, Frida Kahlo died in her beloved Blue House. She was reported to die of a pulmonary embolism, but there is speculation she died of suicide.
Kahlo’s fame continued to grow after her death. Her Blue House was opened as a museum in 1958. In the 1970s, her life was renewed as the feminist movement gained popularity. Kahlo served as an image of iconic female creativity and expression. In 1983, “A Biography of Frida Kahlo,” was published by Hayden Herrera, drawing more attention from the public. In 2002, the film “Frida” was released, staring Alma Hayek as Frida Kahlo and Alfred Molina as Diego Rivera. It was nominated for six Academy Awards, winning Best Makeup and Original Score.
Frida Kahlo’s Work-
Sources-
Museo Dolores Olmedo (Google Arts and Culture)
Images-
Self Portrait in a Velvet Dress
Self Portrait with Cropped Hair
Kahlo’s Work: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15
A Note from the Author:
In this extremely short biography, I decided to only use Kahlo’s own paintings as images. One thing I deeply appreciate about Kahlo’s paintings are the intimacy they express. Through her art, she shared her struggles and her profound resilience, and I believe no one can tell her story better than she can. What I truly appreciate about Frida Kahlo however, is her political activism and what her art represents for marginalized communities. Rivera and Kahlo’s association with Marxism was often problematic for them, particularly when they lived in the United States. Yet, Kahlo’s experience as a Mexican immigrant shaped her ideology, which essentially, looked for absolute equality. Not only as a woman and a Mexican immigrant, but also as a disabled bisexual, Kahlo’s success and her story serves as hope for marginalized representation. Her artwork and its success brings the struggles of immigration, love, and being disabled to the forefront of society. I think the success of her art is rooted in the fact that she is able to represent the struggles of so many diverse individuals. The fact that she was able to reach such popularity is extremely important for these disenfranchised individuals who’s experiences were able to be analyzed and talked about by everyone. Outside of her classical skill for painting, what I find most interesting about Kahlo is her personality and how it shines through her artwork. Frida Kahlo is definitely my favourite artist because not only are her painting beautiful and unique, but she stands for acceptance, absolute equality, and representation of everyone, which is why she has cemented herself has a feminist icon.
