Frida Kahlo de Rivera (born Magdalena Carmen Frieda Kahlo y Calderón; July 6, 1907 – July 13, 1954)[2][4] was a Mexican painter, born in Coyoacán,[5] who is best known for her self-portraits.[6]

Kahlo's life began and ended in Mexico City, in her home known as the Blue House. She gave her birth date as July 7, 1910, but her birth certificate shows July 6, 1907. Kahlo had allegedly wanted the year of her birth to coincide with the year of the beginning of the Mexican revolution so that her life would begin with the birth of modern Mexico. Her work has been celebrated in Mexico as emblematic of national and indigenous tradition, and by feminists for its uncompromising depiction of the female experience and form.[7]

Mexican culture and Amerindian cultural tradition are important in her work, which has been sometimes characterized as Naïve art or folk art.[8] Her work has also been described as surrealist, and in 1938 André Breton, principal initiator of the surrealist movement, described Kahlo's art as a ribbon around a bomb.[7]

Kahlo had a volatile marriage with the famous Mexican artist Diego Rivera. She suffered lifelong health problems. Many of her health problems were the result of a traffic accident she survived as a teenager. Recovering from her injuries isolated her from other people and this isolation influenced her works, many of which are self-portraits of one sort or another. Kahlo suggested, I paint myself because I am so often alone and because I am the subject I know best.[9] She also stated, I was born a bitch. I was born a painter.[10]

Frida Kahlo was born on July 6, 1907, in the house of her parents, known as La Casa Azul (The Blue House), in Coyoacán. At the time, Coyoacán was a small town on the outskirts of Mexico City.

Kahlo's father, Guillermo Kahlo (1871–1941), was born Carl Wilhelm Kahlo in 1872, in Pforzheim, Germany, the son of Jakob Heinrich Kahlo and Henriette Kaufmann, who were Jewish. Carl Wilhelm Kahlo traveled to Mexico during 1891, at the age of nineteen, and upon his arrival, changed his German forename, Wilhelm, to its Spanish equivalent, Guillermo.[11][12]

Frida's mother, MatildeCalderón y González, was a devout Roman Catholic of mixed Amerindian and Spanish ancestry.[13] Frida's parents were married soon after the death of Guillermo's first wife, which occurred during the birth of her second child. Although their marriage was quite unhappy, Guillermo and Matilde had four daughters, with Frida being the third. She had two older half sisters who were raised in the same household. Frida remarked that she grew up in a world surrounded by females. However, during most of her life, Frida remained amicable with her father.

The Mexican Revolution began during 1910, when Kahlo was three years old. Kahlo later claimed that she was born in 1910, allegedly so that people would associate her with the revolution. In her writings, she recalled that her mother would usher her and her sisters inside the house as gunfire echoed in the streets of her hometown.

Kahlo contracted polio at age six, which left her right leg thinner than the left, which she disguised later in life by wearing long, colorful skirts. It has been conjectured that she was born with spina bifida, a congenital condition that could have affected both spinal and leg development.[14] She participated in boxing and other sports. In 1922, Kahlo was enrolled in the Preparatoria, one of Mexico's premier schools, where she was one of only thirty-five girls. Kahlo joined a clique at the school and became enamored of the strongest personality of it, Alejandro Gómez Arias. During this period, Kahlo also witnessed violent armed struggles in the streets of Mexico City as the Mexican Revolution continued.

On September 17, 1925, Kahlo was riding in a bus that collided with a trolley car. She suffered serious injuries as a result of the accident, including a broken spinal column, a broken collarbone, broken ribs, a broken pelvis, eleven fractures in her right leg, a crushed and dislocated right foot, and a dislocated shoulder. Also, an iron handrail pierced her abdomen and her uterus, compromising her reproductive capacity.

The accident left her in a great deal of pain while she spent three months recovering in a full body cast. Although she recovered from her injuries and eventually regained her ability to walk, she had relapses of extreme pain for the remainder of her life. The pain was intense and often left her confined to a hospital or bedridden for months at a time. She had as many as thirty-five operations as a result of the accident, mainly on her back, her right leg, and her right foot. The injuries also prevented Kahlo from having a child because of the medical complications and permanent damage. Though she conceived three times, all her pregnancies had to be terminated.[15]

Career as painter

Frida Kahlo with Diego Rivera in 1932, in a photograph by Carl Van Vechten
After the accident, Kahlo abandoned the study of medicine to begin a painting career. She painted to occupy her time during her temporary immobilization. Her self-portraits were a dominant part of her life when she was immobile for three months after her accident. Kahlo once said, I paint myself because I am so often alone and because I am the subject I know best.[9]

Her mother had a special easel made for her so she could paint in bed, and her father lent her his box of oil paints and some brushes.

Drawn from personal experiences, including her marriage, her miscarriages, and her numerous operations, Kahlo's works are often characterized by their suggestions of pain.

Of her 143 paintings, 55 are self-portraits which often incorporate symbolic portrayals of physical and psychological wounds. She insisted, I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality.

Diego Rivera had a great influence on Frida's painting style. Frida had always admired Diego and his work. She first approached Diego in the Public Ministry of Education, where he had been working on a mural in 1927. She showed him four of her paintings, and asked whether he considered her gifted. Diego was impressed and said, You got talent. After that, he became a frequent welcomed guest at Frida's house. He gave her many insights about her artwork while still leaving her space to explore herself. There is no doubt that the positive and encouraging comments made by Diego strengthened Frida's wish to pursue a career as an artist.[17]

Kahlo was also influenced by indigenous Mexican culture, which is apparent in her use of bright colors, dramatic symbolism and primitive style. She frequently included the symbolic monkey. In Mexican mythology, monkeys are symbols of lust, but Kahlo portrayed them as tender and protective symbols. Christian and Jewish themes are often depicted in her work.[18]

She combined elements of the classic religious Mexican tradition with surrealist renderings. Kahlo created a few drawings of portraits, but unlike her paintings, they were more abstract. She did one of her husband, Diego Rivera,[19] and of herself.[20] At the invitation of André Breton, she went to France during 1939 and was featured at an exhibition of her paintings in Paris. The Louvre bought one of her paintings, The Frame, which was displayed at the exhibit. This was the first work by a twentieth-century Mexican artist to be purchased by the renowned museum.

Marriage

Malú Block (left), Frida Kahlo (center), and Diego Rivera were photographed in Manhattan by Carl Van Vechten in 1932 while Rivera was working on a commissioned mural in Rockefeller Center

As a young artist, Kahlo communicated with the Mexican painter, Diego Rivera, whose work she admired, asking him for advice about pursuing art as a career. He recognized her talent.[21] He encouraged her artistic development and they began an intimate relationship. They were married in 1929, despite the disapproval of Frida's mother.

Their marriage was often troubled. Kahlo and Rivera both had irritable temperaments and numerous extramarital affairs. The bisexual Kahlo had affairs with both men and women, including Isamu Noguchi and Josephine Baker;[4] Rivera knew of and tolerated her relationships with women, but her relationships with men made him jealous. For her part, Kahlo was furious when she learned that Rivera had an affair with her younger sister, Cristina. The couple divorced in November 1939, but remarried in December 1940. Their second marriage was as troubled as the first. Their living quarters were often separate, although sometimes adjacent.[22]

Later years and death

Natalia Sedova, Kahlo, and Leon Trotsky
Active communists, Kahlo and Rivera befriended Leon Trotsky after he received political asylum in Mexico from Joseph Stalin's regime in the Soviet Union during the late 1930s. During 1937, Trotsky lived initially with Rivera and then at Kahlo's home (where he and Kahlo had an affair).[4] Trotsky and his wife then relocated to another house in Coyoacán where, in 1940, he was assassinated.

Frida Kahlo died on July 13, 1954, soon after turning 47. A few days before her death, she wrote in her diary I hope the exit is joyful — and I hope never to return — Frida.[4] The official cause of death was given as a pulmonary embolism, although some suspected that she died from an overdose that may or may not have been accidental.[4] An autopsy was never performed. She had been very ill throughout the previous year and her right leg had been amputated at the knee, owing to gangrene. She had a bout of bronchopneumonia about that time, which had left her quite frail.[4]

In his autobiography, Diego Rivera would write that the day Kahlo died was the most tragic day of his life, adding that, too late, he had realized that the most wonderful part of his life had been his love for her.[4]

A pre-Columbian urn holding her ashes is on display in her former home, La Casa Azul (The Blue House), in Coyoacán, which since 1958 has been maintained as a museum housing a number of her works of art and numerous mementos and artifacts from her personal life