FRIDA

~I am sure most of you know about Frida, the Mexican painter of the mid-twentieth century. I came to know of her after the movie ‘Frida’ and was instantly touched by her life beyond what words can express. Here is tribute to a great painter and a great woman.~

THE SOUL BEHIND THE ART

Her Birth…

Frida Kahlo wad born on July 6, 1907, although she claimed to be born in 1910, the year of the outbreak of the Mexican revolution, as that was a moment that changed Kahlo's life. Frida was the product of an unhappy marriage, though she was very close to her father for the most of her life. The young Frida suffered a bout of polio at the age six. Still, with her father's encouragement and with her feisty, tom-boyish and brash personality that she kept throughout her life, she overcame her disability.

The Accident…

In 1925, a trolley car collided with a bus Kahlo was riding in; she suffered a broken spinal column, a broken collarbone, broken ribs, a broken pelvis, 11 fractures in her right leg, a crushed and dislocated right foot, and a dislocated shoulder. Also, an iron handrail had impaled her abdomen, piercing through her uterus. All this happened at the age of 18. Because of the injuries to her pelvis and uterus, she was unable to carry a child to full-term without serious risks, a fact that she never could fully come to terms with. She survived her injuries and eventually regained her ability to walk, but she would have relapses of extreme pain which would plague her for life, often leaving her hospitalized and/or in bed for months at a time, agonized and miserable. Frida would undergo as many as 35 operations in her life.

After the accident, Kahlo turned her attention to a full time painting career. A carpenter made an easel that could be attached to her bed, and a mirror was placed in the canopy above, allowing her to embark on the series of self-portraits that would become central to her work. Fifty-five of her 143 paintings are self-portraits, often incorporating symbolic portrayal of her physical and psychological wounds. "I paint self portraits because I am the person I know best", she used to say.

Love and Storm...

Her paintings attracted the attention of fellow artist Diego Rivera, whom she later married in 1929. They were often referred to as "The Elephant and the Dove" due to their difference in size. Their marriage was a loving but stormy one, largely due to Diego's weakness for extramarital flings. Their notoriously fiery temperaments also played a part in the storminess. His affairs with women would drive Frida to have her own affairs with both men and women. Frida did not hide from Diego the fact that she was bisexual. Diego tolerated her relationships with women, (among them was actress Josephine Baker) because it turned him on. But her relationships with men made him fiercely jealous. However, Diego's affair with her sister Cristina was the ultimate betrayal. The couple divorced, but remarried in 1940. This remarriage was as turbulent as the first.

Politics and Passion..

Active Communist sympathizers, Kahlo and Rivera befriended Leon Trotsky as he sought political asylum from Joseph Stalin´s regime in The Soviet Union. Initially, Trotsky lived with Rivera and then at Frida's home where he and Frida allegedly had an affair. Trotsky and his wife then moved to another house in Coyoacán where Trotsky was later assassinated. Sometime after Trotsky's death, Frida denounced her former friend and praised the Soviet Union under Stalin. She spoke favorably of Mao, calling China "the new socialist hope".

The End..

Frida Kahlo died on July 13, 1954 at the age of 47. Doctors reported a pulmonary embolism, suggesting that she may have committed suicide. The last entry in her diary read, 'I hope the exit is joyful - and I hope never to come back - Frida.'

She..

She was a heavy smoker, drank liquor in excess, was openly bisexual, sang off-color songs, and told equally ribald jokes to the guests of the wild parties that she hosted. Kahlo was noted for her unconventional appearance, declining to remove her facial hair (she had a small mustache and unibrow which she exaggerated in self portraits).

Lots of her works were painted lying in the bed, drawing on her personal experiences (her troubled marriage, her painful miscarriages, her numerous operations). A local critic wrote: 'It is impossible to separate the life and work of this extraordinary person. Her paintings are her biography.'

She captures the desire and despair of her life in each stroke of paint. Diego Rivera once said about her, 'The only artist in the history of art who tore open her chest and heart to reveal the biological truth of her feelings.'

~Her paintings are the outcry of pain portrayed like a poem on canvas.~

THE POEMS ON CANVAS

Self-Portrait

Henry Ford Hospital (1932)

On July 4th, 1932, Frida suffered a miscarriage in the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. In this disturbing work, Kahlo paints herself lying on her back in a hospital bed after a miscarriage. The figure in the painting is unclothed, the sheets beneath her are bloody, and a large tear falls from her left eye. The bed and its sad inhabitant float in an abstract space circled by six images relating to the miscarriage. All of the images are tied to blood-red filaments that she holds against her stomach as if they were umbilical cords. The main image is a perfectly formed male fetus, little "Dieguito", she had longed to have. The orchid was a gift from Diego. The snail she said, alludes to the slow paced miscarriage. The salmon pink plaster female torso she said was her "idea of explaining the insides of a woman". The cruel looking machine she invented "to explain the mechanical part of the whole business". Finally, in the lower right corner is her fractured pelvis that made it impossible for her to have children.

A Few Small Nips (1935)

Broken-hearted over her husband's affair with her younger sister Cristina, Frida recreated her sorrow and anger in this painting. Her own pain being too great to depict, she projected it onto another woman's misfortune. A newspaper report about a woman murdered in an act of jealousy provided the artist with the subject matter for this work. The murderer defended his actions before the judge by saying: "But it was just a few small nips!" The violent deed makes symbolic reference to Frida's own mental state and her own emotional injuries. The banner held by love doves, of all things, bears the painting's title. One dove is black, the other white, alluding perhaps to the light and dark sides of love.

The Two Fridas (1939)

Shortly after her divorce from Diego Rivera, Frida completed this self-portrait of two different personalities. Frida's diary says this painting had its origin in her memory of an imaginary childhood friend. Later she admitted it records the emotions surrounding her separation and martial crisis. On the right, the part of her person which was respected and loved by Diego, is the Mexican Frida in Tehuana costume. In her hand she holds an amulet bearing the portrait of Diego as a child. On the left, a more rather European Frida in a lacy white dress, the Frida that Diego no longer loved. The hearts of the two women lie exposed, a device Frida often used to express her pain. The unloved Frida's heart is broken while the other Frida's heart is whole. From the amulet that Frida is holding springs a vein that travels through both women's hearts and is finally cut off by the surgical pincers held in the lap of the rejected Frida. In despair, Frida tries to stop the flow of blood from Diego but it keeps dripping…she is in danger of bleeding to death. The stormy sky filled with agitated clouds may reflect Frida's inner turmoil. Holding her own hand, she is her only companion.

Self-Portrait with Necklace of Thorns (1940)

Frida has unraveled Christ's crown of thorns and wears it as a necklace, presenting herself as a Christian martyr. The thorns digging into her neck are symbolic of the pain she still feels over her divorce from Diego. Hanging from the thorny necklace is a dead hummingbird whose outstretched wings echo Frida's joined eyebrows. In Mexican folk tradition, dead hummingbirds were used as charms to bring luck in love. Over her left shoulder the black cat, a symbol of bad luck and death, waits to pounce on the hummingbird. Over her right shoulder the symbol of the devil, her pet monkey…a gift from Diego. Around her hair, butterflies represent the Resurrection.

Roots (1943)

In this self-portrait, Frida is fusing with a plant, becoming a part of the Earth. A childless woman's dream of fertility in which her torso opens up like a window that gives birth to a vine. Frida's blood courses through the vine and into red vesicles that extend beyond the vine to feed the parched earth. With her elbow propped on a pillow, she sees herself as a tree of life. ``Roots,'' sold for $5.62 million, setting a record as the most expensive Latin American work ever purchased at an auction.

Broken Column (1944)

Frida stands all alone crying on a vast baron plain beneath a stormy sky. Perhaps it's her way of saying that she must deal with her physical and emotional pain on her own. In 1944 when Frida painted this self-portrait, her health had deteriorated to the point where she had to wear a steel corset. The straps of the corset seem to be all that is holding the artist's broken body together and upright. An Ionic column, broken in several places, symbolizes her damaged spine. The yawning cleft in her body is repeated in the furrows of the bleak fissured landscape. An even more powerful symbol of her pain is the nails piercing her face and body. The nails represent the physical pain she has endured since her accident. The larger nail piercing her heart represents the emotional pain caused by Diego.

Without Hope (1945)

A lack of appetite resulting from her many surgeries and numerous illnesses, left Frida very thin. Her doctor, Dr Eloesser, prescribed complete bed rest and a fattening diet. In this painting, the artist portrays what she considered to be a "forced feeding" diet. The wooden structure that once held her canvases for painting now holds a funnel that continuously feeds her. Her arms seem to be pinned beneath the blankets and she is unable to control the situation….the situation seems to be "Without Hope". In her diary, Frida wrote the following entry about this painting:
"I would not wish to harbor the slightest hope. Everything moves to the beat of what's enclosed in the belly."

"I am not sick. I am broken.But I am happy as long as I can paint."

~For the entire collection of Frida's pintings visit http://www.fridakahlofans.com/mainmenu.html~