Frida Kahlo's biography

Frida Kahlo's biography

Frida Kahlo, rare sight of 20th century art

At the beginning of the 21st century, the name and image of Frida Kahlo have become so popular and iconic that there is practically no one who does not know who she is. Yet far fewer are aware of the tormented life she lived, the deep aesthetic exploration in her art, and the iconic place that she occupies in the twentieth century, as one of the most original and inimitable creators of Mexico and West.

Frida Kahlo was born on July 6, 1907, in her parents' house in Coyoacán, Mexico City. She was baptized Magdalena Carmen Frida Krahlo Calderón, third daughter (of four) of Guillermo Kahlo, a German immigrant, and the Mexican Matilde Calderón. Her childhood was marked by the effects of poliomyelitis, a disease that kept her in bed for nine months and left her one leg thinner than the other, so she later needed rehabilitation.

For this reason, her father enrolled her in unusual sports for a Mexican girl of the time, such as soccer or boxing. However, the physical limitations that her illness left him prevented him from leading a childish life. normal, and many of these early sufferings appeared years later as themes in her pictures.

In 1922 Frida entered the National Preparatory School of Mexico City, one of the most prestigious national institutions of the time, interested in learning medicine. She there she engaged friendship with future Mexican intellectuals and artists of the stature of Salvador Novo, Agustín Lira, Alfonso Villa, among others. Shortly thereafter she began working in the print and print shop of a friend of her father's, where she learned to draw by copying Anders Zorn engravings, even though she had never before exhibited gifts or interest in the arts plastic.

Her beginnings in painting

In 1925 a tragic event took place in Frida's life: the bus in which she was traveling was hit by a tram and left her tremendously damaged: the column vertebral fractured in three parts, two broken ribs, fractured pelvis and clavicle, right leg broken in eleven parts and right foot dislocated. It was a miracle that she survived.

The medicine of the time tormented Frida for years with multiple and continuous operations. It is estimated that they were around 32. In addition, she was put on plaster corsets and other orthopedic devices that, although they gradually managed to bring her back to her lifespan, they immobilized and isolated her for entire periods. And so, she forced to remain still to allow the correct welding of her bones, Frida began to paint.

In 1926 she finished her first oil self-portrait, which she dedicated to her boyfriend of that time, and from then on she began to aspire to more with her painting. She was initially engaged in portraits of her friends and family, which she filled with symbolic elements and objects that alluded to her names. And as her body healed, Frida was able to resume her social life and become interested in politics. Through her friend Germán de Campo, a student leader, she met communist militants such as the Cuban Julio Antonio Mella, and the latter introduced her with whom she was her love in her life: the Mexican muralist painter Diego Rivera.

Life with Diego

Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera got married in August 1929, in what many mockingly called "the union of an elephant and a dove", since he was fat and rough, and she was tiny and timid. Their relationship was stormy, bold, and full of complexities. They shared the creative bond: Diego was a great admirer of Frida's paintings and she was the greatest critic of his murals.

However, in her most intimate aspects, her life was full of frustrations. Frida's first pregnancy, which lasted just three months before having to be terminated, left very clear that she could not be her mother because of the polio injuries and her terrible accident. This is something that took her many years to accept. Diego, on her part, was continually unfaithful and even had affairs with Cristina, Frida's own sister, and with many other women. Frida was quick to pay him in the same coin.

In the eye of the hurricane 

Between 1931 and 1933 Diego and Frida lived together in the United States, a country where Rivera's fame had grown immensely, which brought with it numerous jobs; quite the opposite of the revolutionary Mexico of Plutarco Elías Calles. The Detroit Museum and Rockefeller Center were just some of her most important works of the day. Frida, on the other hand, sporadically painted works that contained important criticisms of the American way of life.

At that time she became pregnant again and although she tried to lead a life of absolute rest, in July 1932 she had a second abortion, something that she tried to reflect in her painting "Henry Ford Hospital", one of the best known of her from her trajectory. Desolate by these events, she Frida insisted that they return to Mexico and they did so the following year.

Once at home, she Frida dedicated herself to painting her. Many of her great works emerged in that period, in which her relationship with Diego de ella took a resounding turn, after she discovered the painter's love affair with Cristina, Frida's sister. And although the couple managed to leave these dilemmas behind, from then on Frida also cultivated numerous lovers, men and women.

In the years to come, her work gained prominence in Paris and New York, and received rave reviews from artists and intellectuals such as André Bretón. In addition, both Frida and Diego formed prominent political figures in the artistic world and even welcomed into their home the Russian communist leader León Trostki, with whom Frida had a brief affair. Soon the growing distances within the couple became very great and in 1939 they decided to divorce.

Contrary to what one would think, this did not mean the total breakdown of social, political and between the two, and in 1940, while both in San Francisco, United States, they decided to return to get marry. Only this time the sexual life would be out of the contract: everyone could be with whoever they wanted.

His last years

Frida's art did not stop gaining fame in the United States. Exhibitions at the MOMA in New York, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston and the Museum of Art in Philadelphia gave an account of this. However, Frida's health was increasingly unstable. Her new operations in the United States and in Mexico, upon her return, always kept her in a state of fragility, and in 1950 she had to be hospitalized in Mexico City for a whole year.

In 1953, Mexico City witnessed the only solo exhibition of Frida's work while she was alive, at the Galería de Arte Contemporáneo. But the artist's health was so weak that the doctors did not allow her to attend. So, defying the advice of health professionals, she Frida asked to be transferred by ambulance. she went to the gallery, and there she starred in her night on a stretcher, telling jokes and surrounded by her friends.

The following year, however, a gangrene forced doctors to amputate her leg, and the resulting depression was such that Frida attempted suicide twice. At that time she wrote some suicidal poems in her diary. Finally, on July 13, 1954, in the midst of pain and torment, Frida Kahlo breathed her last. Her remains were veiled in the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City and her coffin covered with the flag of the Mexican Communist Party, to which she belonged all her life. Her ashes are kept in the same house where she was born, renamed today as the Blue House of Coyoacán.

References:

• "Frida Kahlo" in Wikipedia.
• "Biography of Frida Kahlo" in Frida Kahlo Museum.
• "Frida Kahlo, an icon of the 20th century" in National Geographic.
• "Frida Kahlo (Mexico, 1907-1954)" in HE HAS!
• "Frida Kahlo (Mexican painter)" in The Encyclopaedia Britannica.

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