The Accident
On a rainy day in September 1925, Frida Kahlo and her boyfriend
Alejandro Gómez Arias were in Mexico City waiting for a bus
that would take them to her home in Coyocán, Mexico. The bus
came, and they climbed on. As Frida and Alejandro chattered
about her plans for medical school, the driver approached a
risky intersection and decided to take his chances. Seconds
later, an electric trolley rammed into the bus, destroying it and
launching 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 Kahlo’s
short life. Only two things would offer solace: painting and
muralist Diego Rivera.
Her Childhood
Frida Kahlo was born in 1907 to two Jewish immigrants. A
poster child for Freud’s theories, she adored her father and
resented her mother. The family home in Coyocán, Mexico was
painted cobalt blue outside, and for this reason it became known
as the Blue House. Frida had three sisters, and though her
status as daddy’s favorite set her apart from the others, her
affliction with polio beginning in 1913 would forever mark her as
different. After she healed, Frida was left with a withered right
leg that she covered with pants and long skirts. During her
recuperation, her father lavished attention on his favorite child,
who had once been an energetic tomboy. He helped Frida
exercise and, in an attempt to find ways of entertaining her, he
gave his daughter some paints.
Her Ideals
Guillermo Kahlo preferred Frida to his other children because
she was the most intelligent. And in 1922, Frida made Guillermo
even prouder when she became one of 35 women from a student
body of 2,000 to be admitted to the prestigious National
Preparatory School, or El Prepo, in Mexico City. She wanted to
study medicine, but upon arriving to the vibrant intellectual
center of her country, she discovered political activists, artists,
communists, and other people who dared to dream and
question. Lopping off her hair and switching to overalls from the
drab outfits of a good Catholic girl, Frida fell in with the Cachets,
a group of pranksters led by Alejandro Gómez. One of the
Cachets’ victims of trickery was a tall and fat muralist, Diego
Rivera, who was commissioned by the school to paint its
auditorium. Spunky Frida stopped at nothing to annoy Rivera, 20
years her senior. She and the Cachets soaped the stairs so
Diego would slip and fall, stole his lunch, and popped water
balloons over his head. Only years later would her taunting and
teasing of Diego evolve into a love affair.
The Artist
Art grows out of sacrifice, and Kahlo’s works were no exception.
Rivera once called her art "agonized poetry," and Kahlo’s
physical suffering and emotional loneliness indeed provided
material for her primitivistic, Surrealist paintings. At the core of
this agonized poetry were Kahlo’s unhappiness with and
adoration of Rivera. When Kahlo and Rivera ultimately divorced
in 1940, the periods before and after their separation were
among Kahlo’s most difficult and most productive. Turning to
religious symbolism and themes of death, Kahlo solidified her
position among the Surrealists with continued support from
Breton, though she allegedly denied any affiliation with the
Surrealists. Whatever her official artistic designation, Kahlo was
at last cherished as a respected artist and no longer simply
considered Rivera’s girlish wife.
Diego
In 1925, Kahlo suffered the bus crash and turned to art during
her recovery. During this period, Alejandro never returned her
letters. After one frustrating year of prolific painting and painful
progress, she encountered Diego again when he was working on
a mural in Mexico City. Summoning him impetuously from his
spot high near the roof, she asked his honest, unflattering
opinion of her work. Rivera inspected her canvas and told her,
"Keep it up, little girl." Then he asked if she had any more, and
Kahlo seized the opportunity to invite him to the Blue House to
show off the rest of her work. Critics have often said that the two
artists had a lot in common, with their love of iconoclasm and
Mexico being among the strongest bonds. In 1929, when Kahlo
was 22 and Rivera 42, the two were married in the Coyocán
courthouse, though Kahlo’s mother did not attend the wedding
because she hoped her daughter could find a more attractive,
conventional match. Kahlo officially retained her own name, and
the newlyweds moved into a stylish house in Mexico City shared
by some other communists. Later that same year, Kahlo became
pregnant, though she had an abortion because her damaged
body could not handle the pregnancy without putting her own
life at risk. Her repeated inability to have children was a source
of pain for Kahlo, who expressed this frustration in her paintings
through the major themes of childbirth, blood and fertility.
America
In 1930, Kahlo went with her husband to America. During this
time, and for much of her conjugal life with Rivera, Kahlo did not
receive recognition as an artist in her own right. "Wife of the
master mural painter gleefully dabbles in works of art," read one
headline when the couple visited Detroit. Rivera was used to
being the center of attention, and he often neglected Kahlo for
his art — not to mention for numerous extramarital trysts (one of
the cruelest affairs Rivera had was with his wife’s own sister,
Cristina). When Kahlo saw that she was second in line, she
abandoned her own artistic aspirations and became a good
housewife, bringing lunch to Rivera’s workplace and devotedly
hanging around him. Unfortunately, these years proved to be
some of Kahlo’s loneliest and unhappiest. Though she was good
at keeping up appearances, always witty and charming in public,
Kahlo intensely hated America, with its extremes of poverty and
wealth. In addition, her withered right leg also made it difficult
for her to keep up with Diego, as he rushed about from
commission to commission. Nonetheless, Kahlo produced some
great works during this period, specifically her first fantasy or
symbolist paintings, including Self-Portrait on the Border Line.
Her Own Career
The couple returned to Mexico in 1933, though not exactly in a
state of marital bliss. Both Kahlo and Rivera had many
extramarital affairs during this time. Among Kahlo’s many lovers
— both male and female — was Leon Trotsky. Exiled from
Russia by Stalin, Troktsy and his wife Natalia Sedova came to
stay with Kahlo and Rivera at the Blue House in 1937 after the
Mexican couple had moved back home. While Sedova and
Rivera were in the hospital for various ailments, friendship,
flirtation and ultimately romance grew between the spunky
Kahlo and the older, gallant Trotsky. This romance inspired
Kahlo to paint again, and she dedicated one of her numerous
self-portraits to Trotsky. In 1938, Kahlo met André Breton, who
helped arrange for some exhibits of her work. After a few minor
exhibitions as well as one major solo exhibit at the Julian Levy
Gallery of New York City, word about Kahlo’s art started to
spread. Nickolas Muray, a photographer and future lover, set up
the New York show for her, where she exhibited 25 paintings.
She sold a number of them and returned to Mexico with
jubilance. At 31, she was finally financially independent and
established in her own career.
Her Final Success
In the last decade of her life, Kahlo enjoyed a more peaceful
existence, teaching for a while at the renowned Mexican art
institute, La Esmeralda. Assailed by new health problems, this
time with her spinal cord, Kahlo turned to her art as an outlet for
her pain. Easel propped up, she painted directly from the
hospital bed. In 1950, she returned to the Blue House, and a year
later she and Rivera remarried. In 1953, Kahlo and her four
poster bed were transported to Mexico City’s National Institute
of Fine Arts for the first solo exhibit of her work in her
homeland.
While Diego Rivera had greatly influenced her life, Kahlo’s
distinct style eliminated any doubts that he might have
influenced her art. Fragile and sensitive, Kahlo developed her
own themes, her own form of fierce nationalism, and her own
social consciousness. When she died in 1957, hundreds of
admirers came to see the diminutive woman of great importance
asleep in her coffin, flowers woven into her hair.