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