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She was born in Coyoacán, Mexico— her mother was part Indian, a mestiza, her father a Hungarian from Germany. Their house was bright blue: La Casa Azul. Frida Kahlo adored her father, a photographer who appreciated music and art. He encouraged her to be a free thinker. In fact, he treated her like a boy and she often acted like one; brave, confident and bold. Frida would help her father with his photos and accompany him on trips because he suffered from epilepsy. Although her father had money problems in addition to his illness, he maintained a stoic outward appearance; a trait that Frida would also employ throughout her life.
Short, dark and slender; at age thirteen Frida contracted polio which withered her right leg and made it shorter. Callus children called her “peg leg” and in later years she would wear long, full skirts to hide her misshapen limb. In spite of or maybe because of her bout with illness, young Frida was athletic. She ran, boxed, swam and wrestled. She was also highly intelligent and read Nikolai Gogol, Leo Tolstoy and Immanuel Kant. She truly believed in Socialism and fought for it her whole life. She thought all people should be treated fairly.
When Frida was fifteen, the famous Mexican painter Diego Rivera painted a mural at her school. She and her friends watched him paint, mesmerized. Although Frida apprenticed with a print-maker, she didn’t consider herself a capable artist. Art was a fun pastime, but she pictured herself traveling and possibly becoming a doctor. But she was gifted in art, and learned to draw and paint by copying other artists.
On September 17,1925 something happened that would change the course of Kahlo’s life forever. She and her boyfriend were on a bus that was crushed by a streetcar in a horrific accident. It was a strange crash—“not violent, but dull and slow.” Everyone was injured, but Frida most seriously. A hand rail lanced her body like a sword, going through her hip and coming out of her vagina. A man yanked the rail out of her body and she was borne away to a pool hall to await the Red Cross.
She spent three months in the hospital, her foot crushed and leg broken in many places. She also had fractures in her spine and hip. She was plagued her whole life not only by the injuries themselves, but also by her doctor’s inability to correctly treat them. They were not sure in the beginning if she would even recover, but little by little she did. For the rest of her life she would endure constant pain and other difficulties, like poor digestion from lack of exercise.
A few years after seeing him paint the mural at her school, Frida met Diego Rivera again because they had many of the same friends. She showed him her art, which he admired, and he began visiting her every Sunday. Her mother wasn’t too pleased about the much older man courting her daughter, but her father encouraged the union. Diego was wealthy and successful. Frida’s father did warn Diego that his daughter would always have bad health, but that didn’t stop Diego from eventually marrying her. He was forty-two and she was twenty-two. She was tiny, pretty, and elegant. He was fat and ugly. But his looks were not the attraction—Frida admired his mind and talent. Later she would write: “Covered with thorns he protects his tender insides. He lives with his strong sap in a ferocious environment. He shines alone like a sun avenging the gray color of rocks. His roots go beyond the anguish of solitude and sadness and of all frailties that do dominate other beings. He stands up with amazing power, then blossoms and bears fruit like no other plant.”
Kahlo went with her husband to the US where he was hired to paint various murals. While he worked, she began making her own art. Painting went from being a pastime to being a need. Bed ridden at times, easily tired and often in pain; sitting (or laying) and painting was something Kahlo could do and which helped keep her mind off the pain. Her work began as portraits of family and friends, but eventually it became an emotional outlet and expression of her most personal feelings and ideas. She confronted herself in many self portraits, her image in turn confronting the viewer. Beautiful, but stoic, she never smiles. Surrounded by her beloved pets— beautiful plants and flowers frame her. She even painted herself as a deer studded with arrows. She also painted exquisite still lives of bizarre fruit, flowers and fungi as well as surreal and symbolic masterpieces. The work is painstakingly painted, with fierce intelligence and insight.
Frida and Diego lived in a house he designed. It had two separate sides, his and hers, joined in the middle by a footbridge. This symbolic separation extended into their real lives as well. Diego often had affairs and Frida did, too. She would probably have preferred loyalty, but those were the terms of their marriage. At one point they divorced for a year when Diego had an affair with Frida’s beloved sister Christina, but they got remarried after hammering out better terms and conditions.
In spite of her pain and health problems, Frida found energy not only to paint, but teach art and raise numerous pets (a surrogate for the children she wanted, but was unable to have). She raised monkeys, deer, hairless dogs and many birds. She was funny and crude, caring, bold and bawdy. She didn’t care what people thought of her and she did as she pleased. She enjoyed taking care of Diego like he was a child and even painted herself holding a naked Diego, as if he were her baby.
In the end, all her determination and love of life could not keep the momentum of her poor health at bay. She had worn twenty-eight different corsets to try to help her spine over a ten year period. She had endured numerous surgeries with little success and, in the end, lost her right leg below the knee. Pain had driven her to become dependent on a bottle of brandy each day and numerous narcotics. She did have one solo show in Mexico before she died, but had to be wheeled to it in her bed which she could not get out of. She died on July 13,1954 at the age of forty-seven. It’s not certain whether she induced her own death with narcotics. Most of her life had been lived enduring constant pain, and if she decided that it was no longer time for heroics, it is understandable. She was practical, stoic and resolved in all things—why not in death? In the end it was clear that Diego was truly devoted to his wife. In photos of him at her funeral he is clearly devastated. He lived only three years beyond her death.
She wrote: “My paintings are well-painted, not nimbly, but patiently. My painting contains in it the message of pain. I think that at least a few people are interested in it. It’s not revolutionary, why keep wishing for it to be belligerent? I can’t. Painting completed my life. I lost three children and a series of other things that would have fulfilled my horrible life. My paintings took the place of all this. I think work is the best.”
©2016 Alice Dubois
For More Information See:
- "Frida Kahlo: Beneath The Mirror" By Gerry Souter, Parkstone Press International 2010
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