On
a rainy day in September 1925, Frida Kahlo and her boyfriend Alejandro
Gómez Arias were in Mexico City waiting for a bus that would take them
to her home in Coyocán, Mexico. The bus came, and they climbed on. As
Frida and Alejandro chattered about her plans for medical school, the
driver approached a risky intersection and decided to take his chances.
Seconds later, an electric trolley rammed into the bus, destroying it
and launching bodies everywhere. 18 year-old Frida disappeared in this
confusion, and Alejandro, also injured, discovered her with a metal pole
protruding from her abdomen. After someone pulled the pole out, an
ambulance rushed her to the hospital, where doctors treated a fractured
pelvis, a dislocated shoulder, two broken ribs, and shattered bones in
the right leg and foot. This accident was the beginning of an
unbearably painful series of physical ailments that would persist for
the rest of Kahlo’s short life. Only two things would offer solace:
painting and muralist Diego Rivera.
Frida Kahlo was born in 1907 to two Jewish immigrants. A poster
child for Freud’s theories, she adored her father and resented her
mother. The family home in Coyocán, Mexico was painted cobalt blue
outside, and for this reason it became known as the Blue House. Frida
had three sisters, and though her status as daddy’s favorite set her
apart from the others, her affliction with polio beginning in 1913 would
forever mark her as different. After she healed, Frida was left with a
withered right leg that she covered with pants and long skirts. During
her recuperation, her father lavished attention on his favorite child,
who had once been an energetic tomboy. He helped Frida exercise and, in
an attempt to find ways of entertaining her, he gave his daughter some
paints.
Guillermo Kahlo preferred Frida to his other children because she
was the most intelligent. And in 1922, Frida made Guillermo even
prouder when she became one of 35 women from a student body of 2,000 to
be admitted to the prestigious National Preparatory School, or El Prepo,
in Mexico City. She wanted to study medicine, but upon arriving to the
vibrant intellectual center of her country, she discovered political
activists, artists, communists, and other people who dared to dream and
question. Lopping off her hair and switching to overalls from the drab
outfits of a good Catholic girl, Frida fell in with the Cachets, a group
of pranksters led by Alejandro Gómez. One of the Cachets’ victims of
trickery was a tall and fat muralist, Diego Rivera, who was commissioned
by the school to paint its auditorium. Spunky Frida stopped at nothing
to annoy Rivera, 20 years her senior. She and the Cachets soaped the
stairs so Diego would slip and fall, stole his lunch, and popped water
balloons over his head. Only years later would her taunting and teasing
of Diego evolve into a love affair.
In 1925, Kahlo suffered the bus crash and turned to art during her
recovery. During this period, Alejandro never returned her letters.
After one frustrating year of prolific painting and painful progress,
she encountered Diego again when he was working on a mural in Mexico
City. Summoning him impetuously from his spot high near the roof, she
asked his honest, unflattering opinion of her work. Rivera inspected
her canvas and told her, "Keep it up, little girl." Then he asked if
she had any more, and Kahlo seized the opportunity to invite him to the
Blue House to show off the rest of her work. Critics have often said
that the two artists had a lot in common, with their love of iconoclasm
and Mexico being among the strongest bonds. In 1929, when Kahlo was 22
and Rivera 42, the two were married in the Coyocán courthouse, though
Kahlo’s mother did not attend the wedding because she hoped her daughter
could find a more attractive, conventional match. Kahlo officially
retained her own name, and the newlyweds moved into a stylish house in
Mexico City shared by some other communists. Later that same year,
Kahlo became pregnant, though she had an abortion because her damaged
body could not handle the pregnancy without putting her own life at
risk. Her repeated inability to have children was a source of pain for
Kahlo, who expressed this frustration in her paintings through the major
themes of childbirth, blood and fertility.
In 1930, Kahlo went with her husband to America. During this time,
and for much of her conjugal life with Rivera, Kahlo did not receive
recognition as an artist in her own right. "Wife of the master mural
painter gleefully dabbles in works of art," read one headline when the
couple visited Detroit. Rivera was used to being the center of
attention, and he often neglected Kahlo for his art — not to mention for
numerous extramarital trysts (one of the cruelest affairs Rivera had
was with his wife’s own sister, Cristina). When Kahlo saw that she was
second in line, she abandoned her own artistic aspirations and became a
good housewife, bringing lunch to Rivera’s workplace and devotedly
hanging around him. Unfortunately, these years proved to be some of
Kahlo’s loneliest and unhappiest. Though she was good at keeping up
appearances, always witty and charming in public, Kahlo intensely hated
America, with its extremes of poverty and wealth. In addition, her
withered right leg also made it difficult for her to keep up with Diego,
as he rushed about from commission to commission. Nonetheless, Kahlo
produced some great works during this period, specifically her first
fantasy or symbolist paintings, including Self-Portrait on the Border Line.
The couple returned to Mexico in 1933, though not exactly in a state
of marital bliss. Both Kahlo and Rivera had many extramarital affairs
during this time. Among Kahlo’s many lovers — both male and female —
was Leon Trotsky. Exiled from Russia by Stalin, Troktsy and his wife
Natalia Sedova came to stay with Kahlo and Rivera at the Blue House in
1937 after the Mexican couple had moved back home. While Sedova and
Rivera were in the hospital for various ailments, friendship, flirtation
and ultimately romance grew between the spunky Kahlo and the older,
gallant Trotsky. This romance inspired Kahlo to paint again, and she
dedicated one of her numerous self-portraits to Trotsky. In 1938, Kahlo
met André Breton, who helped arrange for some exhibits of her work.
After a few minor exhibitions as well as one major solo exhibit at the
Julian Levy Gallery of New York City, word about Kahlo’s art started to
spread. Nickolas Muray, a photographer and future lover, set up the New
York show for her, where she exhibited 25 paintings. She sold a number
of them and returned to Mexico with jubilance. At 31, she was finally
financially independent and established in her own career.
Art grows out of sacrifice, and Kahlo’s works were no exception.
Rivera once called her art "agonized poetry," and Kahlo’s physical
suffering and emotional loneliness indeed provided material for her
primitivistic, Surrealist paintings. At the core of this agonized
poetry were Kahlo’s unhappiness with and adoration of Rivera. When
Kahlo and Rivera ultimately divorced in 1940, the periods before and
after their separation were among Kahlo’s most difficult and most
productive. Turning to religious symbolism and themes of death, Kahlo
solidified her position among the Surrealists with continued support
from Breton, though she allegedly denied any affiliation with the
Surrealists. Whatever her official artistic designation, Kahlo was at
last cherished as a respected artist and no longer simply considered
Rivera’s girlish wife.
In the last decade of her life, Kahlo enjoyed a more peaceful
existence, teaching for a while at the renowned Mexican art institute,
La Esmeralda. Assailed by new health problems, this time with her
spinal cord, Kahlo turned to her art as an outlet for her pain. Easel
propped up, she painted directly from the hospital bed. In 1950, she
returned to the Blue House, and a year later she and Rivera remarried.
In 1953, Kahlo and her four poster bed were transported to Mexico City’s
National Institute of Fine Arts for the first solo exhibit of her work
in her homeland.
While Diego Rivera had greatly influenced her life, Kahlo’s distinct
style eliminated any doubts that he might have influenced her art.
Fragile and sensitive, Kahlo developed her own themes, her own form of
fierce nationalism, and her own social consciousness. When she died in
1957, hundreds of admirers came to see the diminutive woman of great
importance asleep in her coffin, flowers woven into her hair.
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