Frida Kahlo’s life was a long struggle between extreme physical suffering and an extraordinary hunger for life. She overcame her physical limitations and pain through sheer will to become one of Mexico’s greatest artists.
Much like the way she painted and lived her life, Frida fabricated her birth date so that it corresponded with how she perceived herself. During her life she claimed that she was born on July 7, 1910, the same year as the beginning of the Mexican Revolution. To her the fact that she was actually born on July 6, 1907, had no relevance. What mattered was how she felt in her heart. She identified with the incredible optimism and hope that the revolution brought to many Mexicans despite the suffering that war also brings. Like the revolution, Frida was full of hope in spite of pain.
At age six, Frida contracted polio. Although she recovered, her right leg never fully developed and always remained thinner than her left. But this setback did not deter her. By the time she entered high school at the prestigious National Prepatory School, she was a tomboy full of mischief. Despite being one of only thirty-five girls among two thousand boys, Frida quickly became the ringleader of a rebellious and intellectually ambitious group called the Cachuchas. They were known to play pranks on teachers at the school. In 1922, while Diego Rivera was completing his mural in the Bolívar Amphitheater at the school, Frida became infatuated with him. Legend has it that at the time she declared to her friends: “My ambition is to have a child with Diego Rivera. And I’m going to tell him someday.” Nothing came of this infatuation at the time, but she did play a few pranks on Diego, such as stealing his lunch, while he was working. So although they had not yet met, he was aware of her.
The accident that would affect the rest of her life occurred three years later, on September 17, 1925. She and a friend spent the day wandering the colorful street stalls that were set up for the Mexican National Day celebration. As evening approached, they boarded a passing bus to return to Coyoacán, the suburb of Mexico City where she lived. As the driver rushed through the city, he tried to pass in front of a turning trolley. The heavy trolley broadsided the bus. The accident left Frida Kahlo with a broken spinal column, a broken collarbone, broken ribs, a broken pelvis, and eleven fractures in her right leg. In addition, her right foot was dislocated and crushed, and her left shoulder was out of joint. For a month Frida was forced to stay flat on her back, encased in a plaster cast and enclosed in a boxlike structure. During her convalescence from the accident she began painting because she was bored. This became her lifelong profession.
To her doctor’s surprise, Frida regained her ability to walk. However, for the rest of her life she lived in tremendous pain and suffered debilitating fatigue. She was sometimes hospitalized for long periods of time or bedridden for months, and thirty-five operations were performed over the last twenty-nine years of her life. To manage the pain, she turned to alcohol, drugs, and cigarettes, none of which helped much.
It was painting that sustained her and provided entrée into the artistic scene of Mexico, where she met Diego Rivera again. She took four little paintings to Diego, who was painting on scaffolds at the Ministry of Public Education. Diego liked her work and encouraged her. Soon they became involved and were married on August 21, 1929. Over the next eleven years, their marriage was a tumultuous relationship that took them to Detroit, New York, and France, among other places. Though deeply in love, both had affairs with other people; and they fought ferociously. Their marriage has been called the union between an elephant and a dove, because Diego was huge and very fat, and Frida was small (a little more than five feet) and slender.
Despite Diego’s affairs with other women (one with Frida’s sister), he supported Frida’s art completely and was a dogged promoter of her work. He recommended that she begin wearing traditional Mexican clothing, which consisted of long, colorful dresses and exotic jewelry. These garments, along with Frida’s thick, connecting eyebrows, became the trademark of her self-portraits. Frida in turn was Diego’s most trusted critic and the love of his life.
What carried Frida through her constant pain was her indomitable spirit. She was outgoing and witty. She liked to sprinkle her conversation with vivid expletives. She loved to drink tequila and sing off-color songs to guests at the crazy parties she hosted. Men were fascinated by her, and because of this Frida had numerous, scandalous affairs. Frida was a bisexual and also had affairs with many women.
In 1937 she had an affair with the Communist leader Leon Trotsky. Both Frida and Diego were committed communists who participated in numerous protests. This was why Trotsky had come to stay at her home, along with his wife. Frida was later arrested for his murder but was released. Diego was also under suspicion. Several years after Trotsky’s death, Diego and Frida enjoyed telling people that they invited him to Mexico just to get him killed, but no one knows if they were telling the truth or not. They were fantastic storytellers.
All over the world people loved Frida. In 1938, when she went to France, she became the darling of the French surrealist movement. Pablo Picasso became so enamored of her that he made her a pair of earrings. During her visit, she even appeared on the cover of the French magazine Vogue. Her work was included in shows in the United States and in Mexico.
In 1940 Frida and Diego divorced but remarried within a year. It was during the year of the divorce, however, that Frida was able to step out from behind Diego’s shadow and find herself as an artist. Frida painted the world as she experienced it, not as it was. Her canvases recorded her emotional reality, which did not always correspond to physical reality. Using jarring colors and odd spatial relationships, she painted the anger and hurt over her stormy marriage, the painful miscarriages, and the physical suffering she underwent because of the accident. Many of her pictures include startling symbolic images and elements from Mexican history.
Even after they remarried, Frida continued living at Casa Azul, the home in which she was born; Diego would visit and occasionally spend the night. After the divorce Frida tried to be independent of Diego. Perhaps as a result, the five years after their remarriage were the most serene of their married life.
In 1943, at Diego’s suggestion, Frida began teaching at the Ministry of Public Education’s experimental new School for Painting and Sculpture. Shortly after starting to teach, Frida’s health made it impossible for her to travel to the school, so her students came to Casa Azul. Despite her failing health, Frida continued to paint. These years were her most productive.
With Frida’s health getting worse, by 1950 her doctor thought a bone graft might decrease her pain. This operation proved disastrous. The implanted bone caused a severe infection, and Frida spent the next nine months in the hospital.
Frida only had one exhibition in Mexico, and it was in the spring of 1953. Her health was very bad by this time. She had recently had her right leg amputated below the knee because of the gangrenous condition of her foot. In her diary she wrote the poignant phrase, “Pies para qué los quiero, si tengo alas pa’ volar?” (“Feet—why do I need them if I have wings to fly?”)
Her doctors advised that she not attend her solo exhibition. Minutes after guests were allowed into the gallery, sirens were heard outside. The crowd went crazy when they saw an ambulance accompanied by a motorcycle escort. Frida Kahlo had arrived. She was placed in the middle of the gallery in her bed, Frida told jokes, entertained the crowd, sang, and drank the whole evening. The exhibition was an amazing success.
Over the next few months, however, Frida’s health deteriorated quickly. On July 13, 1954, Frida died. On her death certificate her doctor wrote that the cause of death was a pulmonary embolism. Her death might have been the result of an accidental drug overdose or suicide, but no autopsy was performed. Her last words in her diary read, “Espero alegre la salida—y espero no volver jamás.” In English that means, “I hope this exit is joyful—and I hope never to return.”