Legendary artist and one of Mexico's greatest artists, was born. Magdalena Carmen Frieda Kahlo y Calderón on July 6, 1907, in Coyoacán, Mexico City,Mexico. Her work included themes of feminism, colonialism and Indigenous resistance: "
I’m more and more convinced it’s only through communism that we can become human"
Frida
grew up at a time when Mexico was in the throes of a revolution,
seeking to find its own identity. Frida always claimed to be born on
1910, the year of the outbreak of the
Mexican revolution, so that people could directly associate her with
the modern Mexico.The political revolution against the dictatorship of
Porfirio Diaz
was the spark that set in motion a deeper social revolution, in
particular a peasant uprising under the leadership of Emiliano Zapata
and a popular rebellion in the north led by Pancho Villa. In Baja
California, the anarchist Flores Magon brothers attempted to drive
forward a militant workers struggle.
The rebels in part rejected a
European-style cultural template as the
ideal, in favour of promoting indigenous Mexican culture. The political
fervour and reclaiming of a more authentic national identity not only
informed and inspired Kahlo´s own political perspective but, in turn,
would have a
major influence on her later artworks, After nine and a half years of
conflict, the revolution resulted in a
dramatic shift in Mexican politics and culture. The ousting of the
ruling elite paved the way for a new constitution, which in turn
resulted in radical land reforms, equal pay laws for women, and the
introduction of socialist currents to the country’s political landscape
and by the time the turmoil ended, the Mexican people embraced a
heritage of
mixed cultures – European, Indian and Spanish, to name just a few.
Kahlo's
Jewish father, Wilhelm (also called Guillermo), was a German photographer who
had immigrated to Mexico where he met and married her mother Matilde ( of Spanish and indigenous P’urhépecha descent ).
She had two older sisters, Matilde and Adriana, and her younger sister,
Cristina, was born the year after Kahlo.
At the agee of six, Kahlo suffered from polio, leaving her with a withered right leg and a lifelong limp.
In 1922, a 14 year old Kahlo enrolled at the
prestigious Escuela Nacional Preparatoria (National Preparatory School)
in Mexico City, an elite high school. Of 2,000 enrolled students, Frida
was only one of 35 young women admitted, a testament to her talent. She
studied biology with hopes of becoming a doctor and became trilingual in
Spanish, English and German, and also became known for her jovial spirit and her love of colorful, traditional
clothes and jewelry. .
Frida became a
member of “Los Cachuchas”, a campus-based radical group named after the
style of caps they wore in rebellion against the dress code of the
period. The group voraciously read Lenin, Marx, Hegel, Kant, Russian
literature and Mexican fiction. Frida, who considered herself a
“daughter of the [Mexican] Revolution” (1910-1920) had profound and
heated debates with her peers who came from the most elite families in
the country.
Frida was a lifelong socialist and Marxist-Leninist.
By the age of
16, she had joined the youth group of the Mexican Communist Party (PCM).
In 1928, in her early 20s, Frida joined the PCM even though it had
become outlawed (1925-1935). Frida was an active organizer in the
party. She wrote and gave speeches, attended meetings and led union
rallies.
After being expelled in 1929 for politically supporting the Left
Opposition within the Soviet Communist Party, Frida would rejoin the PCM
in 1948. She campaigned for peace against the U.S.-initiated Cold War,
which had begun with the nuclear incineration of Japanese civilians, and
aimed at opposing the Soviet Union, the worldwide communist movement
and all colonized peoples struggling for independence. As a member of the party Frida collected signatures for the Stockholm
Appeal, a 1950 peace initiative anchored by the Soviet Union promoting
nuclear disarmament and opposing the first-strike “nuclear diplomacy” of
the United States.Some 273,470,566 signatures were gathered worldwide.
On September 17, 1925, Kahlo and Alejandro Gómez Arias, a school
friend with whom she was romantically involved, were traveling together
on a bus when the vehicle collided with a streetcar.
As a result of the collision, Kahlo was impaled by a steel handrail,
which went into her hip and came out the other side. She suffered
several serious injuries as a result, including fractures in her spine
and pelvis. After staying at the Red Cross Hospital in Mexico City
for several weeks, Kahlo returned home to recuperate further. She began
painting during her recovery and finished her first self-portrait the
following year, which she gave to Gómez Arias.
Kahlo took a progressive approach to gender and sexuality, rejecting the
social norms of the time concerning romantic and sexual relationships as well as
gender expression and identity.She took part in wrestling and boxing, activities
which were considered to be unsuitable for girls at the time. She
embraced her Mexican identity and natural beauty; celebrating her upper
lip hair and her marvellous unibrow – which became a symbol of her
identity through her self-portraits. She once wrote in her diary:
“Of my face, I like my eyebrows and eyes”. Clearly, such an image does not conform to a patriarchal society’s image
of a woman who has perfectly shaped eyebrows and definitely no
moustache.
Another particularly artistic element of
Frida’s personal life was her distinctive and extravagant clothing,very different from the Mexican women of
that time whose attire consisted of pearls, suits, and hats. Frida’s
fashion consisted of gay, Mexican tradition clothes, she adorned
herself with clips, bows, ribbons, jewellery, scarves and costumes, and
such dressing became an entrenched part of her identity. She sometimes
also painted her dresses herself. Hence, she never bowed down to the
required attire for “cultured” women in Mexico at that point of time.
She challenged patriarchy in her own way, and in wrapping herself
in traditional Tehuana clothing, an homage to her mother’s birthplace,
thus Frida’s figure became a reference to her indigenous roots and her
quest to personify them. Women today have been conditioned in a manner whereby they project
themselves in the manner demanded from them by society. Frida, even
then, refused to do so. She set her own standards. She valued and
celebrated characteristics that patriarchal society has labelled
unfeminine and ugly. And so, she was a feminist.
Frida Kahlo also took a liberated approach to love and was openly
bisexual. She had affairs with both men and women throughout her life
and during her long and complex marriage to fellow artist, and famed
Mexican muralist Diego Rivera.They first met in 1922 when he went to
work on a project at her high school. Kahlo often watched as Rivera
created a mural called
The Creation in the school’s lecture hall. According to some reports, she told a friend that she would someday have Rivera’s baby.
Kahlo
reconnected with Rivera in 1928 marrying in 1929. He encouraged her artwork, and the two
began a relationship. During their early years together, Kahlo often
followed Rivera based on where the commissions that Rivera received
were.
From 1930 to 1933, Frida lived in the United States, which she dubbed “Gringolandia.”
The experience was transformative. Frida was living in the United
States at the height of the Great Depression and Jim Crow apartheid.
In 1931, while living in San Francisco, Frida spurned racist
anti-Asian and white-supremacist social conventions, spending her free
time in Chinatown, where most of the San Francisco Chinese community
lived, and long before Chinatown became a popular tourist attraction.,
and while living in Detroit between 1931 and 1932, Frida became
indignant by
the city’s widespread poverty, hunger and blatant racism, which she
characterized as “
absolutely medieval.”
In a letter home during this time, Frida summarized what she saw,
“
High society here turns me off and I feel a bit of rage against all
these rich guys here, since I have seen thousands of people in the most
terrible misery, without anything to eat and with no place to sleep,
that is what most impressed me here, it is terrifying to see the rich
having parties day and night while thousands and thousands of people are
dying of hunger.”
By 1933, Frida and her husband Diego Rivera were in New York City. In
another letter home she wrote about Fifth Avenue, where the “filthy
rich” reside: “
There is so much misery at the same time, that it seems
incredible that people can endure such class differences, and accept
such a form of life, since thousands and thousands of people are
starving of hunger while on the other hand, millionaires throw away
millions on stupidities.”
Kahlo and Rivera’s time in New York City
in 1933 was surrounded by controversy. Commissioned by Neson
Rockerfeller, Rivera created a mural entitled
Man at the Crossroads in
the RCA Building at Rockefeller Center. Rockefeller halted the work on
the project after Rivera included a portrait of communist leader
Vladimir Lenin in the mural, which was later painted over. Months after
this incident, the couple returned to Mexico and went to live in San
Angel, Mexico.
Her
“Self-Portrait on the Borderline Between Mexico and the United States” (1932). The painting vividly represents the psychological cultural
crossroad upon which Frida Kahlo viewed herself during her first years
living abroad in the United States with Diego Rivera after being
recently married. The artist portrays herself at the borderline between
the industrial, prosperous, yet mechanical and polluted cityscape of the
United States. The America cityscape is contrasted with the
agricultural and historic richness of the Mexican landscape, yet
stricken with poverty. Kahlo stands in the middle of the two landscapes
wearing a modern dress while holding a Mexican flag in her hand. It is
noteworthy that the American flag is different in scale to the Mexican
one, arguably symbolizing the prosperity of the United States in
comparison to that of her homeland. Nevertheless, the Mexican flag
though smaller in proportion is depicted as being personally held by the
artist. The scene represents her never-ending love for her homeland.
Frida Kahlo, Self-portrait on the Borderline Between Mexico and the United States, 1932,
Never
a traditional union,Kahlo and Rivera kept separate, but adjoining
homes and studios in San Angel.
It is well known that while she
professed a deep love and affection for Diego, Frida also accepted
Diego’s love on his terms, even when it was deeply painful for her
(which it often was). She was saddened by his many
infidelities, including an affair with her sister Cristina. In response
to this familial betrayal, Kahlo cut off most of her trademark long dark
hair. Desperately wanting to have a child, she again experienced
heartbreak when she miscarried in 1934. W
hile her artworks focused on her inner
experiences, in her relationship with Diego, Frida ceased to be the
subject of love and instead became its object, thus reproducing the
patriarchal captivity of women. Added to this romantic captivity was the
restriction her disabilities placed on her physical freedom.
During the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), Frida played a vital role in fighting for the rights of Spanish Republican refugees seeking asylum in Mexico. In 1936, Frida, along with other socialist organizers, founded a solidarity committee that fundraised money for the Spanish Republicans fighting against fascism. In this committee, Frida was responsible for helping refugees find places to stay and ensuring that they were able to secure employment.
Kahlo and Rivera went through periods of separation,
but they joined together to help exiled Soviet communist Leon Trotsky
and his wife Natalia in 1937. They managed to persuade the leftist
government of President
Lázaro Cárdenas to grant Trotsky and his wife, asylum in
Mexico and invited the couple to stay with them in La Casa Azul.,Frida
Kahlo’s family home. Nonetheless, Rivera’s discovery that Trotsky
and Kahlo were having an affair, one of many infidelities that marked
the couple’s troubled marriage, forced Trotsky to seek refuge elsewhere.
Upon moving out of Casa Azul, at the request of his wife, Trotsky
left behind a self-portrait that Kahlo had painted for his fifty-eighth
birthday. In the painting, Kahlo presents herself in a stately and
seductive manner, holding a paper that reads “To Leon Trotsky, with all
my love, I dedicate this painting on the 7
th of November 1937. Frida Kahlo in San Ángel, Mexico.” The Russian couple eventually managed to find a
residence not far from Casa Azul, but in May 1940 a failed attempt on Trotsky’s
life was carried out by the Soviet agent Iosif Grigulevich and the
muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros, who remained loyal to the Mexican
Communist Party after Rivera’s departure. Nonetheless, the second
attempt, this time executed by the Spanish agent Ramón Mercader in
August of the same year, was successful. Leon Trotsky died in Mexico
City on August 21
st, 1940. Despite
the death of Trotsky and the ever-widening schism in the international
communist movement, Kahlo remained dedicated to her revolutionary ideals
for the rest of her life.
Kahlo
divorced Rivera in 1939, but they did not stay divorced for long, remarrying
in 1940. The couple continued to lead largely separate lives,both
becoming involved with other people over the years.
While she never
considered herself a surrealist, Kahlo befriended one of
the primary figures in that artistic and literary movement, Andre
Breton, in 1938..
https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2016/09/andre-breton-1921896-28966.html That same year, she had a major exhibition at a New
York City gallery, selling about half of the 25 paintings shown there.
Kahlo also received two commissions, including one from famed magazine
editor Clare Boothe Luce, as a result of the show.
In 1939, Kahlo went to live in Paris for a time. There she exhibited
some of her paintings and developed significeent friendships with such artists as
Marcel Duchamp, Marc Chagall, Piet Mondrian and Pablo Picasso..
Kahlo
received a commission from the Mexican government for five portraits of
important Mexican women in 1941, but she was unable to finish the
project. She lost her beloved father that year and continued to suffer
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.
Lots of her works were painted laying in the bed. Drawing on personal
experiences, her miscarriages, and her numerous operations, Kahlo's
works are often characterized by portrayals of pain that she otherwise hid from the world.Of her 143
paintings, 55 are self-portraits which often incorporate symbolic
portrayals of physical and psychological wounds.
The Two Frida's 1939
Frida also used her body as a canvas,
endlessly rewriting her experiences of illness and recovery, repeatedly
translating her feelings, emotions, suffering and ideals into color and art. The
chronic pain she experienced was part of life just like any other
feeling and emotion. “Pain, pleasure and death are no more than a
process for existence. The revolutionary struggle in this process is a
doorway open to intelligence,” she once wrote in a diary. There are of course many more themes in
her work. Motherhood, political participation, bisexuality and gender
representation also feature heavily in her practice,a patchwork of
experiences that, woven together, make up the woman and extraordinary
life of Frida Kahlo.
The Broken Column 1944
Kahlo’s
health issues became nearly all-consuming in 1950. After being
diagnosed with gangrene in her right foot, Kahlo spent nine months in hospital and had several operations during this time. She continued
to paint and support political causes despite having limited mobility.
In 1953, part of Kahlo’s right leg was amputated to stop the spread of
gangrene.
n 1953, Kahlo received her first solo exhibition in Mexico. While bedridden at the time, Kahlo did not miss out on the exhibition’s opening. Arriving by ambulance, Kahlo spent the evening talking and celebrating with the event’s attendees from the comfort of a four-poster bed set up in the gallery just for her.
Deeply depressed, Kahlo was hospitalized again in April
1954 because of poor health. She returned to the hospital two months later with bronchial
pneumonia. No matter her physical condition, Kahlo did not let that
stand in the way of her political activism. Eleven days before her death, Frida participated, in a wheelchair
and against her doctor’s orders – in a July 2 protest against the United
States’ intervention in Guatemala. Over 10,000 people in Mexico took to
the streets to denounce the CIA-led coup of Guatemala’s democratically
elected President Jacobo Arbenz, whom the United States had decided was a
communist and therefore must go.
The centerpiece of Arbenz’s program was land reform that distributed
uncultivated land to landless farmers. This, as well as his unwelcome
attitude toward multinational corporations, the expansion of social and
labor rights and his “tolerance of communists” made him a marked man.
The United States installed a new government headed by Gen. Castillo
Armas who celebrated by torturing and killing thousands of suspected
communists, and overseeing decades of bloody repression.These events
would radicalize a young doctor from Argentina, Ernesto Guevara, who was
in Guatemala at the time of the CIA coup.Both Ernesto “Che” Guevara and Frida Kahlo share the struggle of having
their intellectual ideologies subdued to popular culture.
In her final days, Kahlo painted her last political work,
Marxism Will Give Health to the Sick.
Suffering from constant pain, declining health, and the impediments of
heavy medications, Kahlo depicts Marx as a god-like being who is about
to take her to heaven while at the same time punish the unjust forces of
capitalism and imperialism. Knowing that she is about to die, Kahlo
strips her top to reveal the leather corset that had been supporting her
broken back since the bus accident and drops her crutches to grasp not a
Bible but a little red book—the Communist Manifesto. Serving to remind
us that long before Kahlo became a global commodity, she was a
communist.
Marxism Will Give Health to the Sick.
Frida died on July 13, 1954 at her beloved Blue House.The official cause of death was given as pulmonary embolism, although
some suspected that she died from overdose that may or may not have been
accidental.
The last words in her diary read '
I hope exit is joyful and I hope never to come back.'Hundreds escorted her coffin draped with the flag of the Mexican Communist Party to the ceremony where a rousing chorus of
the International was.sang.
Kahlo
a woman who defied the confines of gender under capitalist society, as a
Mexican, as a survivor of great personal trauma and disability, knew
only too well the meaning of the struggle to be free, and live her life
on her own unrestricted terms, an ideal she saw
as embodied in Marxism. Her political beliefs, in addition to her art,
her country and her lifelong endurance, defined the artist. Over 50
years after her death, this enigmatic trail-blazing artists approach to
life, love and art,, characterized by a deep sense of independence,
rebellion, sensuality and passion. has inspired
generations around the world because of the revolutionary way in which she
lived. Reproductions of her artwork can be found on mouse
pads, furniture and clocks. In 2001, the U.S. Postal Service placed her
image on a 34-cent stamp, making her the first Hispanic woman to
receive such an honor. Kahlo’s life has been featured throughout multiple documentaries, Hollywood movies, prints,
postcards,and other memorabilia. and she was the subject of a 2002 film entitled
Frida, starring Salma Havek
as the artist and Alfred Molina as Rivera. Directed by Julie Taymor,
the film was nominated for six Academy Awards and won for Best Makeup
and Original Score. Among her numerous biographies I would suggest "FRIDA. A Biography of Frida Kahlo" by Hayden Herrera.
The family home
where Kahlo was born and grew up, later referred to as the Blue House or
Casa Azul, was opened as a museum in 1958. Located in Coyoacán, Mexico
City,
Happy birthday to one of the most quintessential Latin American artists
whose revolutionary assertions in favor of feminism, nationalism and
cultural identity resonate with us today. Lets remember her as a revolutionary politically committed artist and standard-bearer for women's inner strength and for courage in the face
of adversity who was above all true to her convictions, beyond her great art, hated fascism and wanted to overthrow capitalism, whose work continues to show that we cannot avoid pain, but can mold it into something more beautiful.
