Frida Kahlo is named one of Mexico’s greatest artists. I have always admired Frida’s demanding work and drive. The way Frida overcame her obstacles was overly inspiring. Frida had a lot of obstacles in her life such as I did so I always felt like I could relate to her. Frida has always been a great motivation of mine and has helped me continue when I felt low.
Frida Kahlo was born on July 6, 1907, in Mexico. Frida Kahlo did not shave her facial hair nor trim her eyebrows which led her to develop a unibrow, she states that “I will not restrict my self-expression in order to fit your idea of what a woman should look like.” This statement shows that she rejects stereotypes of what is and is not attractive by having a shock of dark hair. Kahlo attended the renowned National Preparatory School in Mexico City in the year of 1922.
One of Frida Kahlo’s former homes can be seen in Mexico City, it is a bright blue house that symbolizes her colorful life. In later years, it was discovered that the blue color of the house represented her admiration for Mexican indigenous people. Kahlo named this house “La Casa Azul”. This is her birthplace, childhood home, and the place of her death.
Kahlo had poor health in her childhood. She contracted polio at the age of 6 and was bedridden for nine months. This disease caused her right leg and foot to grow much thinner than her left one. She has been wearing long skirts to cover that for the rest of her life. In the year 1925 Kahlo traveled and got into a tragic bus accident with Gomez Arias. The bus collided with a streetcar and Kahlo was seriously injured, a steel handrail impaled her through the hip. Her spine and pelvis were fractured, and this accident left her in a great deal of pain, both physically and physiologically. When she returned home, she had to wear a full body cast for three months. To kill the time and alleviate the pain, she started painting and finished her first self-portrait the following year.
Frida Kahlo once said, “I paint myself because I am often alone, and I am the subject I know best”. Her parents encouraged her to paint and made a special easel made for her so she could paint in bed.
Although I never faced anything bad life threatening as Kahlo did, I still had my own challenges and knowing she got over some harder challenges helps me a lot.
Frida Kahlo was a Mexican painter best known for her uncompromising and brilliantly colored self-portraits that deal with such themes as identity, the human body, and death. Kahlo’s paintings express bold stories of her own medical struggles with poliomyelitis, a disabling condition affecting her spinal cord which could cause potential paralysis.
In 1932, Kahlo added more realistic and surrealistic components to her painting style. In the painting titled Henry Ford Hospital (1932), Frida Kahlo lied on a hospital bed naked and was surrounded with a few things floating around, which includes a fetus, a flower, a pelvis, a snail, all connected by veins. This painting was an expression of her feelings about her second miscarriage. It is as personal as her other self-portraits.
While at the National Preparatory School she first met the famous Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, after watching him work on a mural she told a friend she will marry him someday. Kahlo reconnected with Rivera in 1928. She asked him to evaluate her work and he encouraged her. They soon started a romantic relationship. Despite her mother’s concerns Frida and Diego got married the next year. During their earlier years as a married couple, Frida had to move a lot based on Diego’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,they returned and lived in San Angel, Mexico.
Kahlo and Diego’s marriage was not a usual one. They had been keeping separate homes for all those years. Diego had many affairs. Diego’s affair with her sister hurt her the most, she was so sad, and she cut off her long hair to show her desperation to the betrayal. She has always wanted children, but she is unable to have any due to the bus accident. She was heartbroken when she experienced a second miscarriage in 1934. Kahlo and Rivera have been separated a few times, but they always went back together.
In 1938, Kahlo became a friend of Andre Breton, who was one of the primary figures of the Surrealism movement. Kahlo said she never considered herself as a Surrealist “until André Breton came to Mexico and told me I was one.” She 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.”
In the same year, she had an exhibition at the New York City gallery. She sold some of her paintings, she also got two commissions.
One of the commissions was to paint her friend Dorothy Hale who committed suicide. She painted The Suicide of Dorothy Hale (1939), which tells the story of Dorothy’s tragic leap. The recipient Clare Luce was horrified and almost destroyed this painting.
In 1938, Kahlo became a friend of Andre Breton, who was one of the primary figures of the Surrealism movement. Kahlo said she never considered herself as a Surrealist “until André Breton came to Mexico and told me I was one.” She 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.”
In the same year, she had an exhibition at the New York City gallery. She sold some of her paintings, she also got two commissions.
One of the commissions was to paint her friend Dorothy Hale who committed suicide. She painted The Suicide of Dorothy Hale (1939), which tells the story of Dorothy’s tragic leap. The recipient Clare Luce was horrified and almost destroyed this painting.
The next year Kahlo was invited and went to Paris. Her work is exhibited there, and she is befriended with artists such as Marc Chagall, Piet Mondrian, and Pablo Picasso. She and Diego got divorced that year and she painted one of her most famous paintings, The Two Fridas (1939).
Kahlo and Diego soon remarried in 1940. The second marriage is the same as the first one. They still keep separate lives and homes. They both had infidelities during the marriage.
Kahlo received a commission from the Mexican government for five portraits of important Mexican women in 1941, but was unable to finish the project, due to the grief of her father and the continued suffering from chronic health problems. Despite her personal challenges, her work continued to grow in popularity and was included in numerous group shows around this time.
In the year 1944, Frida Kahlo painted one of her most famous portraits, The Broken Column. In this painting, she depicted herself naked and split down the middle. Her spine is shattered like a column. She wears a surgical brace and there are nails all through her body, which is the indication of the consistent pain she went through. In this painting, Frida expressed her physical challenges through her art. During that time, she had a few surgeries and had to wear special corsets to protect her back spine. She seeks lots of medical treatment for her chronic pain, but nothing really worked.
Her health condition continued worsening in 1950. the same year she was diagnosed with gangrene in her right foot. She was bedridden for the next nine months and had to stay in the hospital and have several surgeries. With great persistence Kahlo continued to work and paint. In the year of 1953, she had a solo exhibition in Mexico. She had limited mobility at that time, she arrived by ambulance, and welcomed the attendees and celebrated the ceremony in a bed the gallery set up for her. A few months later, she had to have another surgery and part of her right leg got amputated to stop the gangrene.
With the poor physical condition, she was also deeply depressed, however she showed up at the demonstration against US-backed overthrow of President Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala on July 2. This happened to be her last public appearance. About a week after her 47th birthday Kahlo passed away at her beloved Bule House. She was publicly reported to die of a pulmonary embolism, but there is speculation that she died of a suicide.
Frida Kahlo’s fame has been growing ever since her death. Her Blue House was opened as a museum in 1958. In the 1970s the interest in her work and life is renewed due to the feminist movement because she was viewed as an icon of female creativity. In 1983, Hayden Herrera published his book on her, A Biography of Frida Kahlo, which drew more attention from the public to this great artist. In 2002, a movie named Frida was released, starring alma Hayek as Frida Kahlo and Alfred Molina as Diego Rivera. This movie was nominated for six Academy Awards and won Best Makeup and Original Score.
