6th July: Frida Kahlo

On this date in 1907, Frida Kahlo, the Mexican painter, was born. Here are some facts about her life.

1. She was born on 6 July 1907 in Coyoacán, then a village on the outskirts of Mexico City. Her parents named her Magdalena Carmen Frieda Kahlo y Calderón, but she was later to change both her name and date of birth. Her father was German and the name Frieda comes from the German word Friede, which means Peace. She spelled her name Frieda until the late 1930s when she dropped the "e" to make her name less German. She did not wish to be associated with Germany during Hitler's rule. She was fiercely patriotic and would say her date of birth was July 7, 1910, the same date that modern Mexico came into being.
2. Her whole life was dogged by health problems, beginning with contracting polio at the age of six. This left her with one leg shorter and thinner than the other. She wore long, colourful skirts to hide this. It also had an effect on her personality as she was off school for months and was bullied when she returned. It also made her her father's favourite as he, too, knew what it was like to be ill, as he suffered from epilepsy. While she was recovering, He taught her about literature, nature, and philosophy, and encouraged her to exercise and take up sports like bicycling, roller skating, swimming, boxing, and wrestling, even though some of these sports were seen as being for boys only.
3. Despite being expelled from school twice for disobedience, she was accepted to the elite National Preparatory School, where she did well and was planning to study medicine. However, fate had other ideas. Travelling home from school on September 17, 1925 with her then boyfriend, Alejandro Gómez Arias, their Bus collided with a streetcar. Frida narrowly escaped death as an iron handrail impaled her through her pelvis and she suffered several fractures. It had been a severe accident - several people were killed and Arias described the bus as "burst(ing) into a thousand pieces". He also described how the collision had ripped off all Frida's clothes, so she ended up naked, while at the same time, someone else on the bus had been carrying a package of powdered Gold which broke and the contents fell over Frida, so people thought she must have been a dancer. She was bedridden for months after this and it ended her dream of studying to be a doctor.
4. Instead, it started her on the road to becoming an artist. At first, her idea was to become a medical illustrator. During her recovery, she occupied herself by painting on an easel propped up on her bed with a mirror above it so she could paint herself. She was known for painting herself - of her 143 paintings, 55 are self-portraits. She said, “I paint myself because I am so often alone and because I am the subject I know best.”
5. She was the first Mexican artist to be exhibited in The Louvre when the gallery bought her painting, The Frame. Another of her paintings, Roots, holds the auction record for a Latin American piece of art. It sold for US$ 5.6 million in 2006.
6. Her love life was as colourful as her paintings. She was once taken out of school for having an affair with a teacher. She met her husband, the successful artist Diego Rivera, at a party in 1928. She asked him to critique her work. They then began a relationship, although he was 20 years older than she was. He insisted that she only wore Mexican dress. They married in August 1921. Her mother disapproved but her father was pleased she was marrying someone successful as she was still suffering the aftermath of the accident, and her rich husband could afford to pay her medical bills. The couple were referred to as "an elephant and a dove" because he was much bigger than she was. Both of them had numerous affairs. Frida had affairs with both men and women, with her most famous lover being Leon Trotsky. He had an affair with Frida's sister. The affairs took their toll on the marriage eventually and the couple divorced, only to marry each other again a year later.
7. She had lots of pets. She had several Dogs - Mexican hairless Xoloitzcuintli, an old Aztec breed; two spider monkeys called Fulang Chang and Caimito de Guayabal, which appeared in her painting Self Portrait with Monkeys; an Amazon parrot called Bonito, who'd do tricks for a pat of Butter; a fawn named Granizo; and an eagle who rejoiced in the name Gertrudis Caca Blanca (Gertrude White Shit).
8. Following the bus accident, her health was never good. She wore twenty-eight separate supportive corsets because of her injured spine, and suffered pain in her legs and back. Surgery to correct the problem wasn't successful. She suffered from chronic infections in her hand and eventually, had to have a foot amputated because of gangrene. She was also treated for syphilis. She was often depressed. The accident also meant she couldn't have children, although she got pregnant more than once, the pregnancies always ended in abortion or miscarriage. She wasn't always kind to herself - she wouldn't rest after surgery and once re-opened her wounds in a fit of anger. She drank too much and attempted suicide by overdose.
9. For most of her life, she was known mostly as Diego's wife, and didn't get a solo exhibition until 1953. At the time, he doctor had ordered complete bed rest, which meant she wouldn't be able to attend the opening. However, where there's a will, there's a way. She had a four poster bed moved into the gallery and turned up in an ambulance. She was carried to the bed on a stretcher and so attended the opening of her exhibition without getting out of bed.
10. She died at the age of 47, in the same house in which she was born. The official cause of death was pulmonary embolism, but her nurse claimed Frida had taken an overdose - eleven painkillers when the maximum dose was seven. She had been talking about her own death for days and filled her diary with drawings of skeletons and Angels. Her last drawing was a Black angel, possibly the Angel of Death. Next to it were the last words she ever wrote, "I joyfully await the exit — and I hope never to return — Frida". She had also given Diego an anniversary present the night before she died - a month early.