PAINTER MEXICOThe only thing I know is that I paint because I need to.
—FRIDA KAHLO
Frida rested in a bed at the Red Cross Hospital. The pain in her body was agonizing—her spine was broken in three places, and her pelvis, right leg, and foot were shattered. It was a miracle that the eighteen-year-old girl was alive at all. The doctors hadn’t expected her to survive after a streetcar smashed into the bus she was riding. But she did survive, only to be wracked with unbearable pain, night and day. As her body healed in the hospital, Frida thought she would lose her mind. She could barely sleep, but being awake was even worse—hours and hours with nothing but the pain!
After several months, in desperation, she had a nurse bring art supplies to her bed. As Frida concentrated on putting paint on the canvas, her mind no longer focused on the misery of her body. Her brush became an outlet for the physical and emotional pain she was enduring. Still in her teens, Frida had found her life’s work, a career that would bring her fame and respect throughout the world.
Frida Kahlo was born near Mexico City on July 6, 1907. She was one of five children of a German-Jewish photographer and a Mexican woman of Indian and Spanish descent. When she was fifteen, Frida was accepted into Mexico’s prestigious National Preparatory School as one of thirty-five girls out of two thousand students. Frida was a bright girl; she studied literature and art, and she hoped to one day become a doctor.
When she was eighteen years old, Frida’s life was changed forever. She was in a horrible traffic accident, and overnight she went from a young, healthy, carefree girl to a girl who would struggle for the rest of her life with physical disabilities and pain. Fortunately, Frida found an outlet for her powerful emotions—painting.
Although she had no formal art training, Frida’s work was strikingly mature. Her paintings, most of which were self-portraits, expressed her personal experiences and her complex feelings. In 1929 she married Diego Rivera, Mexico’s most famous painter, whom she had met years before her accident while he was painting a mural at her school. Theirs was a passionate but stormy relationship. Frida’s paintings captured her conflicted feelings for Diego and the pain of being childless. (She couldn’t have children because of her injuries.) Frida’s unique style drew upon popular Mexican art as well as surrealism. Using bright colors and powerful, symbolic images, Frida bared her soul to the world.
Frida had an endless curiosity about the world around her. She was known to cram all sorts of things into her school bag, including drawings, butterflies, dried flowers, and illustrated books from her father’s library.
During the 1940s, Frida began showing her work internationally. Her raw, bold style was quite unusual and shocked most people who saw it. Despite this, her work won great critical acclaim. In 1953 she held her first major solo exhibition in Mexico. It was a huge success. Although she was very ill at the time of her first exhibition, Frida insisted on being carried to the opening on her bed.
Because her ill health forced her to stay in bed for long periods of time, Frida surrounded herself with monkeys, dogs, parrots, and even frogs to keep her company!
Several months later, Frida’s health problems worsened, and one of her legs had to be amputated. But she found a way to make the best of the situation. Instead of being embarrassed and trying to hide her disability, she wore a red velvet boot with bells on her artificial leg.
Frida’s health problems continued until her death in 1954. After she died, her home was made into the Frida Kahlo Museum. It holds not only Frida’s original paintings but also her extensive collection of Mexican folk art. In 1985 the Mexican government declared Frida’s paintings to be national treasures. The beautiful and vivid intensity of her art has earned her a place on the list of the greatest artists in Mexico’s history.
André Breton, a poet and art critic, indicates how the beauty of Frida’s art often disguises its power: “The art of Frida Kahlo is a ribbon around a bomb.”15 And Diego Rivera, Frida’s husband, observes of her work, “Frida is the unique example in the history of art of someone who tore open the breast and heart in order to speak the biological truth of what is felt within them.”16
HOW WILL YOU ROCK THE WORLD?
I will rock the world by becoming a great and famous painter. I will paint inspiring pictures with joyful colors to decorate the walls of hospitals, schools, and nursing homes. My paintings will soothe and calm people, creating atmospheres that help learning, healing, and relaxing. The world will smile with my art.
AGE 14