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Frida Kahlo
(Jul. 6, 1907 - Jul. 13, 1954 Coyoacan, MX.) Mexican Oil Painting Artist Biography.
Frida Kahlo was the daughter of a Jewish immigrant and a mestizo Mexican. At the age of 6, Frida contracted polio, which left her right foot crippled. Kahlo was very sensitive about this deformity and this would lead her to wear, at first, trousers and later, exotic long skirts that would become one of her trademarks.
The event that would transform her life and launch her artistic career took place in September, 1925. On a rainy day, Frida Kahlo and her boyfriend were in Mexico City waiting for a bus that would take them to her home, the bus came and they climbed on. As they talked about her plans for medical school, an electric trolley rammed into the bus, destroying it and throwing 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 her life. Kahlo was confined to a bed for many months. It was during this period that she took up the oil painting to distract herself from the pain and boredom of her condition. Her parents provided her with a mirror, so that she could serve as her own model and this is how Kahlo began painting the self-portraits that would dominate her artwork.
By 1928, she had recovered sufficiently to lead a mostly normal life and she resumed contact with her friends. It was through them that she got to know Diego Rivera, twenty one years her senior. When Kahlo showed Rivera her work, he was greatly enthused and encouraged her to pursue painting professionally. The two would marry the following year. In 1930, they moved to the United States and stayed 4 years, traveling and staying in San Francisco, New York and Detroit as Rivera received commissions for murals. Kahlo became pregnant, her accident made it impossible for her to give birth and she was forced to have an abortion. In 1932, she conceived again. but could not have a child.
In 1934 Kahlo and Diego Rivera went back to Mexico. In 1935, Frida discovered that her husband, who had never been too faithful to her, was having an affair with her sister. She left, they got back together at the end of 1935, but their relationship would not be the same. Rivera did not change his ways and Kahlo started having her own extramarital affairs, both with men and women. In 1937, Leon Trotsky and his wife moved in with the couple, staying two years. Trotsky and Kahlo had a brief affair. It was through Trotsky that Kahlo was introduced to the notable French Surrealist Andre Breton. Breton helped Frida arrange her first exhibition outside of Mexico.
Her first exhibition of 1938 was a great success. At the time, there were very few art galleries in the United States and only a handful were dedicated to avant-garde art, so the exhibition received a great deal of attention and press coverage. Out of the 25 oil paintings exhibited, half were sold, and Kahlo received several commissions from it.
In 1939, Frida went to Paris, at the invitation of Breton, who had promised to arrange another exhibition for her. However, Breton had taken no steps towards this goal, it was only with the help of Marcel Duchamp another surrealist oil painter, that the exhibition was organized at all. Kahlo left France immediately after the exhibition and returned to Mexico, where she moved away from her increasingly estranged husband, returning to the home of her parents. The couple officially divorced later that year, mostly at Rivera's insistence.
Kahlo portrayed her despair at the separation in her oil painting The Two Fridas (1939). However, she was also determined to fend for herself. The divorce did not last long and the couple re-married at the end of 1940. Meanwhile, her health was declining, due to the accident she had suffered 20 years earlier. The pain in her back confined her to her home, from where she continued to teach and she was forced to wear a steel corset, she underwent several more operations.
This time of suffering is documented lavishly in her works, which include The Broken Column (1944) and The Little Deer (1946). During the 1950s, Kahlo's health deteriorated steadily. She went through a series of operations on her spine, to no avail. Eventually, she was confined to a wheel chair, then permanently confined to a bed. She was forced to take painkillers constantly and the technical execution of her work deteriorated visibly. A year before her death, too weak to stand for more than ten minutes, she sat daily at her easel, declaring: "I am happy to be alive as long as I can paint." During the summer of 1954, Kahlo contracted pneumonia. She died in the same home she was born in. Freda was a feast for the senses, full of life and exploding emotions, who became the greatest female artist of the 20th century and becoming one of the worlds artists.
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Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo
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The Two Fridas
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The Little Deer
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The Broken Column
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