Frida Kahlo 9781780429687, 1780429681

Table of contents :
Introduction
The Wild Thing
Death of Innocence
Señora Diego Rivera
Affair of the Art
“I urgently need the dough!”
“Long live joy, life, Diego...”
Conclusion
Index

Citation preview

Gerry Souter

Frida Kahlo

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Text: Gerry Souter Translator: Jorge Gonzalez Casanova (for Frida Kahlo’s Writings) Layout: Baseline Co. Ltd. 61A-63A Vo Van Tan Street 4th Floor District 3, Ho Chi Minh City Vietnam

© MMX, Confidential Concepts, worldwide, USA © MMX, Parkstone Press International, New York, USA © Banco de México Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo Museums Trust. Av. Cinco de Mayo n°2, Col. Centro, Del. Cuauhtémoc 06059, México, D.F. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or adapted without the permission of the copyright holder, throughout the world. Unless otherwise specified, copyright on the works reproduced lies with the respective photographers, artists, heirs or estates. Despite intensive research, it has not always been possible to establish copyright ownership. Where this is the case, we would appreciate notification. ISBN: 978-1-78042-968-7

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Frida Kahlo Beneath the Mirror

Gerry Souter

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Contents

Introduction

7

The Wild Thing

11

Death of Innocence

29

Señora Diego Rivera

53

Affair of the Art

97

“I urgently need the dough!”

153

“Long live joy, life, Diego…”

195

Conclusion

231

Index

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Introduction

H

er serene face encircled in a wreath of flaming hair, the broken, pinned, stitched, cleft and withered husk that once contained Frida Kahlo surrendered to the crematory’s flames. The blaze heating the iron slab that had become her final bed

replaced dead flesh with the purity of powdered ash and put a period – full stop – to the Judas body that had contained her spirit. Her incandescent image in death was no less real than her portraits in life. As the ashes smoldered and cooled, a darkness descended over her name, her paintings and her brief flirtation with fame. She became a footnote, a “promising talent” forever languishing in the shadow of her husband, the famed Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, or as art critic stated with a yawn over one of her works: “…painted by one of Rivera’s ex-wives”. Frida Kahlo should have died 30 years earlier in a horrendous bus accident, but her pierced, wrecked body held together long enough to create a legend and a collection of work that resurfaced 30 years after her death. Her paintings struck sparks in a new world prepared to recognise and embrace her gifts. Her paintings formed a visual diary, an outward manifestation of her inward dialog that was, all too often, a scream of pain. Her paintings gave shape to memories, to landscapes of the imagination, to scenes glimpsed and faces studied. Her paintings, with their symbolic palettes, kept madness (yellow) and the claustrophobic prison of plaster and steel corsets at arm's length. Her personal vocabulary of iconic imagery reveals clues as to how she devoured life, loved, hated, and perceived beauty. Her paintings, seasoned with words and diary pages and recollections of her

1. The Dream or The Bed, 1940.

contemporaries, reward us with a life lived at a fractured gallop, ended – possibly – at her

Oil on canvas, 74 x 98.5 cm.

own will, and left behind a courageous collective self-portrait, a sum of all its parts.

Collection Isidore Ducasse, France.

The painter and the person are one and inseparable and yet she wore many masks. With intimates, Frida dominated any room with her witty, brash commentary, her singular

2. Self-Portrait, 1930.

identification with the peasants of Mexico and yet her distance from them, her taunting of

Oil on canvas, 65 x 55 cm.

the Europeans and their posturing beneath banners: Impressionists, Post-Impressionists,

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

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F R I D A K A H L O – B E N E AT H T H E M I R R O R

Expressionists, Surrealists, Social Realists, etc. in search of money and rich patrons, or a seat in the academies. And yet, as her work matured, she desired recognition for herself and those paintings once given away as keepsakes. What had begun as a pastime quickly usurped her life. Frida’s conversations were peppered with street slang and vulgarisms that belied her petit stature, Catholic upbringing and conservative love of traditional Mexican customs. While strolling a New York street wearing her red-trimmed Tehuantepec dress, jewelry studded with thousand-year-old jade and with a scarlet reboso shawl across her shoulders, a small boy approached and asked, “Is the circus in town?” She was a one-person show in any company, a Dadaist collection of contradictions. Her internal life caromed between exuberance and despair as she battled almost constant pain from injuries to her spine, back, right foot, right leg, fungal diseases, many abortions, viruses and the continuing experimental ministrations of her doctors. The singular consistent joy in her life was Diego Rivera, her husband, her frog prince, a fat Communist with bulging eyes, wild hair and a reputation as a lady killer. She endured his infidelities and countered with affairs of her own on three continents consorting with both strong men and desirable women. But in the end, Diego and Frida always came back to each other like two wounded animals, ripped apart with their art and politics and volcanic temperaments and held together with the tenuous red ribbon of their love. Her paintings on metal, board and canvas with their flat muralist perspectives, hard edges and unrepentant sweeps of local colour reflected his influence. But where Diego painted what he saw on the surface, she eviscerated herself and became her subjects. As Frida’s facility with the medium and mature grasp of her expression sharpened in the 1940s, that Judas body betrayed her and took away her ability to realise all the images pouring from her exhausted psyche. Soon there was nothing left but narcotics and a quart of brandy a day. 3. Diego Rivera,

Diego stood by her at the end as did a Mexico slow to realise the value of its treasure.

Self-Portrait, 1906.

Denied singular recognition by her native land until the last years of her life, Frida Kahlo’s

Oil on canvas, 55 x 54 cm.

only one-person show in Mexico opened where her life began and acted out its brief 47-year

Collection of the Government of the State

arc. When she was gone, the eyes of that life remained behind, observing us from the frame

of Sinaloa, Mexico.

with a direct and challenging gaze.

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INTRODUCTION

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The Wild Thing

A

s a young girl, wherever she went she seemed to run as if there was so little time left to her and so much to be done. Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón was born on July 6, 1907 in Coyoacán, Mexico. By that time running, hiding, and

learning to quickly identify which army was approaching the village were everyday survival skills for Mexican civilians. Frida eventually dropped the German spelling of her name, inherited from her father, Wilhelm (changed to Guillermo), a Hungarian raised in Nuremberg. However, she used the German “Frieda” spelling in some of her intimate letters. Her mother, the former Matilde Calderón, a devout Catholic and a mestiza of mixed Indian and European lineage, held deeply conservative and religious views of a woman’s place in the world. On the other hand, Frida’s father was an artist, a photographer of some note who pushed her to think for herself. Guillermo was surrounded by daughters in La Casa Azul (the Blue House) at the corner of Londres and Allende Streets in Coyoacán. Amidst all the traditional domesticity, he fastened onto Frida as a surrogate son who would follow his steps into the creative arts. He became her very first mentor that set her aside from traditional roles accepted by the majority of Mexican women. She became his photographic assistant and began to learn the trade, though with little enthusiasm for the photographic medium. She traveled with him to be there if he suffered one of his epileptic seizures. Guillermo Kahlo was a proud, fastidious man of regular habits and many intellectual pursuits from the enjoyment of fine classical music – he played almost daily on a small German piano –

4. Pancho Villa and Adelita, c. 1927.

to his own painting and appreciation of art. His work in oil and watercolour was undistinguished,

Oil on canvas, 65 x 45 cm.

but it fascinated Frida to watch him use the small brush strokes of a photo retoucher to create

Museo del Instituto Tlaxcala de Cultura,

scenes on a bare canvas instead of just removing double chins from vain portrait customers.

Tlaxcala.

He rigidly maintained his own duality: outwardly active, but trapped with his epilepsy as he regained consciousness lying in the street, felled by a grand mal seizure with Frida kneeling

5. Diego Rivera,

at his side holding the ether bottle near his nose, making sure his camera was not stolen. He

Nude of Frida Kahlo, 1930.

played his music and read from his large library, but inside was constantly in turmoil about

Lithography, 44 x 30 cm.

money to support his family. He wore what Frida described as a “tranquil” mask. She adopted

Museo Dolores Olmedo, Mexico City.

that self-control, or at least the appearance of it, in the darkest moments of her life, never willing to display any public face that revealed what lay behind the stoic image. Frida Kahlo was spoiled, indulged and impressionable. Her father’s success landed him a

6. Diego Rivera, Nude of Frida Kahlo, 1930.

job with the government of Porfirio Díaz, photographing Mexican architecture as a sort of

Lithography, 44 x 30 cm.

advertisement to lure foreign investment. Since 1876 Díaz had enjoyed some 30 years as

Museo Dolores Olmedo, Mexico City.

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FRIDA KAHLO’S WRITINGS

Poem published by El Universal Ilustrado November 30, 1922 MEMORY I had smiled. Nothing else. But suddenly I knew In the depth of my silence He was following me. Like my shadow, blameless and light. In the night, a song sobbed... The Indians lengthened, winding, through the alleys of the town. A harp and a jarana were the music, and the smiling dark skinned girls were the happiness In the background, behind the “Z?calo” (sic), the river shined and darkened, like the moments of my life. He followed me. I ended up crying, isolated in the porch of the parish church, protected by my bolita shawl, drenched with my tears.

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FRIDA KAHLO’S WRITINGS

Letter to Alejandro Gómez Arias April 25, 1927

Yesterday I was very sick and very sad; you can’t imagine the level of desperation one can reach being this sick. I feel a dreadful discomfort that I can’t describe and sometimes I have a pain that nothing can take away. They were going to put the plaster cast on me today, but it’ll probably be Tuesday or Wednesday because my dad hasn’t had the money – and it costs sixty pesos. And it’s not the money so much, because they could easily get it. [The problem is that] nobody at home believes that I’m really sick, because I can’t even say it, since my mother, who is the only one who worries a little bit [about me], is ill. And they say it’s my fault, that I’m very imprudent. So nobody suffers, despairs, and all that, but me. I can’t write much because I can barely bend down; I can’t walk because my leg hurts terribly. I’m already tired of reading – I don’t have anything nice to read – I can’t do anything but cry, and sometimes I can’t even do that. Nothing amuses me; I don’t have a single distraction – only sorrows – and all the people that pay me a visit annoy me very much. [...] You can’t imagine how these four walls exasperate me. Everything! There’s no way I can describe to you my desperation.

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THE WILD THING

president of Mexico and adopted a Darwinian philosophy toward governing the Mexican people. This “survival of the fittest” concept meant virtually all government money and programs went to building up the rich and successful while ignoring less productive peasants. Mexico became the economic darling of international trade as countries took advantage of its mineral wealth and cheap labour. European customs and culture ruled while native Mexican and Indian traditions languished. Díaz personally selected Guillermo Kahlo to show the best side of Mexico to foreign investors, vaulting the photographer from an itinerant portraitist into the coveted middle class. Kahlo wasted no time in buying a lot in the nearby suburb of Coyoacán on the outskirts of Mexico City and building La Casa Azul, a traditional Mexican wrap-around home – painted a deep blue with red trim – with its rooms opening onto a central courtyard. In 1922, to assure her a better than average education, he also entered Frida into the free National Preparatory School in San Ildefonso. She became one of 35 girls admitted to the school’s enrollment of 2,000 students and rose to become a class character alongside other male pupils who became some of Mexico’s leading intellectuals and government leaders. She devoured her new freedom from mind-numbing domestic chores and hung out with a number of cliques within the school’s social structure. She found a real sense of belonging with the Cachuchas gang of intellectual bohemians – named after the type of hat they wore. Leading this motley elitist mob was Alejandro Gómez Arias, who reiterated in countless speeches that a new enlightenment for Mexico required “optimism, sacrifice, love, joy” and bold leadership. His good looks, confident manner and impressive intellect drew Frida to him. All her life, Frida attracted men of this stripe and, once conquered, each became enmeshed in her passionate, possessive web. But each conquest also puzzled the country girl as she pondered what these strong decisive men saw in her. She was short, dark, slender and a cripple. At age 13, Frida had been felled by a bout of polio that withered her right leg leaving it shorter than her left. Neighbourhood children taunted her with shouts of, “pata de palo” or “peg leg”. To conceal her affliction, she wore layers of stockings on her thin leg and had a half-inch added to the heel of her shoe. Considering the state of medicine in Mexico of the 1920s – hot walnut oil baths and calcium doses – she was lucky to be alive. To further compensate for her limp, she plunged into sports:

7. Portrait of Alicia Galant (detail), 1927.

running, boxing, swimming and wrestling, every strenuous activity available to girls. But her

Oil on canvas, 107 x 93.5 cm.

greatest sport was intellectual debate, and with Arias she found a true soul-mate.

Museo Dolores Olmedo, Mexico City.

By 1923 they were lovers and sharing hours at the Ibero American Library, absorbing Gogol, Tolstoy, Spengler, Hegel, Kant and other great European minds. From these sessions

8. Portrait of My Sister Cristina, 1928.

and her own reading, she gradually developed a deep-seated affinity for socialism and the

Oil on wood, 99 x 81.5 cm.

uplifting of the masses. To her in that circle of social climbing students, these two concepts

Otto Atencio Troconis Collection, Caracas.

were abstractions for lip service, but she remained a committed and vocal Communist for the rest of her life. She even substituted the 1910 date of the start of the Mexican

9. Portrait of a Lady in White, c. 1929.

Revolution for her actual birth year, 1907, as an affirmation of her commitment to

Oil on canvas, 119 x 81 cm.

revolutionary ideals.

Private collection, Germany.

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The atmosphere in Mexico City was alive with political debate and danger as volatile speakers stepped forward to challenge whatever regime claimed power only to be gunned down in the street, or absorbed into the corruption. Díaz fell to Madero who lasted 13 months until he stopped a lethal load of bullets from his general Victoriano Huerta. Populist heroes Francisco “Pancho” Villa and Emiliano Zapata split the country’s peasant population between them, hunting down anyone who disagreed with their land reform manifestos, but neither managed to build a majority and neither was equipped by temperament or education to govern. Venustiano Carranza assumed power as Huerta fled Mexico, and was no better than the lot who had preceded him. All of these politicians were products of Díaz’ Eurocentric economic policies that nurtured the rich and ignored the poor. Into this vacuum were thrust the proletariat ideals of the Communist revolution that had swept Russia following the assassination of the Tzar and his family in 1917. The socialist theories of Marx and Engels looked promising after the slaughter of the seemingly endless Mexican revolution. And yet, for all this progressive political dialectic and debate, Frida retained some of her mother’s Catholic teachings and – after a satiric flirtation with European dress and attitudes including cross-dressing as a man in a tailored suit – developed a passionate love of all things traditionally Mexican. During this time, her father gave her a set of watercolours and brushes. He often took his paints along with his camera on expeditions and assignments. She began this habit as she accompanied him. Ten years of revolution had wiped out Mexico’s economy and cost Guillermo Kahlo his job with the government. Matilde sent her servants packing and the quality of life in the Blue House dropped a peg or two as the daughters took over all household chores and Guillermo shouldered his Graflex camera in search of portrait commissions. With the general population breathing easier under the government of a pair of generals, Alvaro Obregon and Plutarco Calles, some local intellectuals and artists drifted into favour among the government ministries. “Revolutionary” land reforms were pledged. But the same old story prevailed, keeping a fire lit beneath the political debates and burgeoning movements that left the Mexican capitol in constant ferment. Frida became a casual student at the Preparatory School, enjoying the stimulation of her intellectual friends rather than the formal studies. At age 15, her intellect was sharp and she tested political and philosophical doctrines with her pals in innocent debate where telling points were not measured in death and destruction. During this period, she learned the minister of education had commissioned a large mural to be painted in the Preparatory School courtyard. It was titled Creation and covered 150 square metres of wall. The muralist was the Mexican artist, Diego Rivera, who had been working in Europe for the past 14 years. Assisted by his wife, Guadalupe (Lupe) Marín, and a team of artisans, he assembled scaffolding and

10. Diego Rivera,

the coloured wax that required blow torch heat to fuse to a resin base spread on the charcoal

Portrait of Señora Doña Evangelina Rivas

sketched wall grid. This slow encaustic process was eventually abandoned for plaster fresco,

de Lachica, 1949.

but to Frida the creation of the growing scene spreading its way across the blank wall was

Oil on canvas, 198.1 x 139.7 cm.

fascinating. She and some friends often sneaked into the auditorium to watch Rivera work.

Private collection.

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His image was far from that of a starving artist. The scaffolding creaked under his weight as he paced back and forth across the wall. Everything about him was oversized from his unruly mop of black hair to the wide belt that held up his pants which sagged in the seat and bagged at the knees. The students nicknamed him Panzón (fat belly). Eventually these intrusions ended when another group of students, representing the views of their elite ultra-conservative parents, began damaging other murals in progress by the artists David Siqueiros and Jose Clemente Orozco, claiming the murals promoted atheism and socialist ideology. Rivera’s assistants armed themselves and acted as guards when they were not mixing colours or transferring sketches to the wall. Rivera himself cultivated the image of a revolver-packing defender of creative freedom and often turned up at parties with a big Colt pistol stuffed in his belt or in his jacket pocket. From a very early age, Frida had been taught by her father to appreciate the art of painting. As part of her education he encouraged her to copy popular prints and drawings of other artists. To ease the financial situation at home, she apprenticed with the engraver, Fernando Fernandez, a friend of her father’s. Fernandez praised her work and gave her time to copy prints and drawings with pen and ink. But she painted with the same enthusiasm as she collected hand-made toys, dolls, and colourfully embroidered costumes – as a hobby, a means of personal expression, not as “art” because she had no thought of becoming a professional artist. She considered the skills of artists such as Diego Rivera far beyond her capabilities. Her earliest works were studies in colours and shapes of buildings such as Have Another One, painted in 1925. It is an aerial view of a town square and has a child’s naïve approach to its flat perspective and the donkey cart making its way across a foreground avenue. Another work, Paisaje Urbano (Urban Landscape), is a composition of architectural planes and linear smokestacks that indicates a more sophisticated structure and an appreciation of the work accomplished by subtle use of shadow and control of values. This application hints at the knowledge gained from her line art copies under Fernandez’ tutelage. It also reflects an eye for composition not unlike the photographs of Edward Weston, who had spent a year in Mexico and was in the process of creating a new way of seeing shapes, textures and their interrelationships. Though she did not consider her painting to be anything but a pleasant pastime, that didn’t stop her from conniving her way into a seat in the auditorium where she watched Rivera work – even under the jealous eye and insults of Lupe Marín. His wife regularly brought Diego his lunch in a basket. It was one way she managed to keep an eye on him, especially when he was painting from a particularly beautiful model. Lupe was his second wife and knew him very well. And then everything changed forever. In Kahlo’s words to author, Raquel Tibol: The buses in those days were absolutely flimsy; they had started to run and 11. Portrait of Miguel N. Lira, 1927.

were very successful, but the streetcars were empty. I boarded the bus with

Oil on canvas, 99.2 x 67.5 cm.

Alejandro Gómez Arias and was sitting next to him on the end next to the

Museo del Instituto Tlaxcala de Cultura,

handrail. Moments later the bus crashed into a streetcar of the Xochimilco

Tlaxcala.

Line and the streetcar crushed the bus against the street corner. It was a

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THE WILD THING

strange crash, not violent, but dull and slow, and it injured everyone, me much more seriously… I was eighteen then but looked much younger, even younger than (my sister) Cristi who was 11 months younger than I… I was an intelligent young girl but not very practical, in spite of the freedom I’d won. Maybe for that reason I didn’t size up the situation, nor did I have any inkling of the injuries I had… The collision had thrown us forward and the handrail went through me like a sword through a bull. A man saw I was having a tremendous hemorrhage and carried me to a nearby pool hall table until the Red Cross picked me up… As soon as I saw my mother I said to her: “I’m still alive and besides I have something to live for and that something is painting”. Because I had to be lying down with a plaster corset that went from the clavicle to the pelvis, my mother made a very funny contrivance that supported the easel I used to hold the sheets of paper. She was the one who thought of making a top to my bed in the Renaissance style, a canopy with a mirror I could look in to use my image as a model.1 The scene of the accident was gruesome. Somehow, the collision tore off Frida’s clothes, dumping her nude onto the shattered floor of the bus. Seated near Frida had been a painter or artisan carrying a paper packet of gold gilt powder. It burst, showering her naked body. The iron handrail had stabbed through her hip and emerged through her vagina. A gout of blood haemorrhaged from her wound, mixing with the gold gilt. In the chaos, bystanders, seeing her bizarre pierced, gilded and blood splashed body began screaming, “La Balarina! La Balarina!” One bystander insisted the hand rail be removed from her. He reached down and tore it from the wound. She screamed so loud the approaching ambulance siren could not be heard. In 1946, a German physician, Henriette Begun, composed a clinical history of Frida Kahlo. Its entry for September 17, 1925 reads: Accident causes fractures of third and fourth lumbar vertebrae, three fractures of pelvis, eleven fractures of the right foot, dislocation of the left elbow, penetrating abdominal wound caused by an iron hand rail entering the left hip, exiting through the vagina and tearing left lip. Acute peritonitis. Cystitis with catheterisation for many days. Three months bed rest in hospital. Spinal fracture not recognised by doctors until Dr. Ortiz Tirado ordered immobilisation with plaster corset for nine months… From then on has had sensation of constant fatigue and at times pain in her backbone and right leg, which now never leaves her.2 12. Portrait of Diego Rivera, 1937. Oil on canvas, 46 x 32 cm. 1

Tibol, Raquel, Frida Kahlo An Open Life, Translated by Elinor Randall, University of New Mexico Press, 1993

Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection,

2

Tibol, Raquel, op. cit., p. 13

Mexico City.

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Letter to Alejandro Gómez Arias October 20, 1925 According to Dr. Díaz Infante, who treated me at the Red Cross, I’m out of danger now and I’m going to get more or less well. [...] The right side of my pelvis is fractured and deviated, I had a foot dislocation, and a dislocation and small fracture of my left elbow and the wounds that I talked to you about in the other letter: the longest one went through my body from the hip to the crotch, so there were two of them. One has already healed and the other is about two centimetres long by one-and-ahalf centimetres deep, but I think it’ll heal soon. My right foot is covered with very deep scratches and another thing is that [...] Dr. Díaz Infante (who is very nice) didn’t want to keep treating me because he says that Coyoacán is very faraway and that he couldn’t leave a wounded person and come when they called him, so he was replaced by Pedro Calderón of Coyoacán. Do you remember him? Well, since every physician says something different about the same illness, Pedro, of course, said that he thought everything was extremely well except for the arm, and that he doubted very much that I could extend it, because the joint is fine, but the tendon is contracted and keeps me from extending my arm, and if I was able to do it, it would be very slowly and after lots of massages and hot water baths. You can’t imagine how it hurts; every time they pull me I cry a litre of tears, even though they say that you shouldn’t believe in a dog’s lameness or a woman’s tears. My leg hurts so very much, one must think that it is crushed. Besides, the whole leg throbs horribly and I feel very uncomfortable, as you might imagine, but with rest they say that the bone will soon heal and that I’ll be able to walk little by little.

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Letter to Alejandro Gómez Arias January 10, 1927 I am, as always, sick. You see how boring this is. I don’t know what else to do, as I’ve been like this for more than a year and I’m fed up. I have so many complaints, like an old woman! I don’t know what it’s going to be like when I’m thirty years old. You’ll have to wrap me up in a cotton cloth and carry me around all day; I don’t think, as I told you one day, that you could carry me in a bag, because I just won’t fit in it. [...] I need you to tell me something new because truly I was born to be a flower pot and I never leave the dining room. I’m buten buten bored!!!!!! You’ll say that I should do something useful, etc., but I don’t feel like it. I don’t feel like doing anything – you know that already, and that’s why I don’t explain it to you. I dream of this room every night, and no matter how I try, I don’t even know how to erase that image from my head (which, besides looks more like a bazaar everyday). Well! What can we do about it? Wait and wait... [...] I, who dreamed so many times of being a navigator or a traveller! Patiño would answer that it is one of the ironies of life. Ha ha ha ha! (Don’t laugh). But it’s only been seventeen years that I’ve been parked in this town. Later, I will surely be able to say, “I’m just passing through; I don’t have time to talk to you”. [Here she drew musical notes.] Well, after all, visiting China, India, and other countries comes second... Firstly, when are you coming? I don’t think I will need to send you a telegram telling you that I’m in agony, will I; [...] Hey, ask among your acquaintances whether someone knows a good way to lighten hair; don’t forget to do it.

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T

he devastation to Frida Kahlo’s body can only be imagined, but its implications were far worse once she realised she would survive. This vital vivacious young girl on the brink of any number of career possibilities had been reduced to a bed-bound invalid.

Only her youth and vitality saved her life, but what kind of life did she face? Her father’s ability to earn enough money to feed his family and pay Frida’s medical bills had diminished with the Mexican economy. This necessitated lengthening her stay in the overburdened, undermanned Red Cross hospital for a month. The Red Cross Hospital was very poor. We were kept in a kind of tremendous slave quarters, and the meals were so vile they could hardly be eaten. One lone nurse took care of 25 patients.3 After being pinned to her bed, swathed in plaster and bandages, she was eventually allowed

to go home to La Casa Azul. Being away from her friends in Mexico City, she penned a voluminous correspondence to them and especially to Alejandro Gómez Arias. Their sexual relationship ended prior to the accident and they had agreed each could see other people. When they met as “friends” however, Frida shrugged off Alejandro’s boasts of female conquests. But he became sullen when she ticked off the young men she had bedded. They were too much alike. While she was recuperating from the accident, Alejandro’s parents sent him to Europe and to study in Berlin. The long separation and worldly adventure considerably cooled what ardour remained in him for the small town Mexican girl he left behind. Frida, conversely, kept up a flurry of letters filled with pitiful longing to see him as she lay in her plaster prison. “When you come I won’t be able to offer you anything you’d want. Instead of having short hair and being a flirt, I’ll only have short hair and be useless, which is worse. All these things are a constant torment. All of life is in you, but

13. Girl in Diaper

I can’t have it… I’m very foolish and suffering much more than I should. I’m

(Portrait of Isolda Pinedo Kahlo), 1929.

quite young and it is possible for me to be healed, only I can’t believe it; I

Oil on canvas, 65.5 x 44 cm.

shouldn’t believe it, should I? You’ll surely come in November”.4

Private collection.

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14. Portrait of Eva Frederick, 1931. Oil on canvas, 63 x 46 cm. Museo Dolores Olmedo, Mexico City.

Gradually, her indomitable will asserted itself and she began to make decisions within the narrow view she commanded. By December, 1925, she regained the use of her legs. One of her first painful journeys was to Mexico City and the home of Alejandro Gómez Arias just

15. Diego Rivera,

before Christmas. She waited outside his door, but he never came out to meet her. Shortly

Delfina and Dimas.

thereafter, she was felled by shooting pains in her back and more doctors trooped into her life.

Oil on canvas, 31 x 24 cm.

Her three undiagnosed spinal fractures were discovered and she was immediately encased in

Private collection.

plaster once again.

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16. The Bus, 1929. Oil on canvas, 25.8 x 55.5 cm. Museo Dolores Olmedo, Mexico City.

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Trapped and immobilised after those brief days of freedom, she began realistically narrowing her options. At the Preparatory School she had begun studies that would lead to a career in medicine. That dream faded when she accepted her physical limitations. As days of soul searching continued, she passed the time painting scenes from Coyoacán, and portraits of relatives and her friends who came to visit. As an artist, she only visited the scene of her accident once in a pencil drawing that showed her bandaged body with the small bus and the trolley car crushed together against the corner of the market building. It was a cathartic drawing, pulled from her imagination and the testimony of others. How many times in her dreams and day dreams had she stood apart from that terrible scene before she drew it – and then left it unfinished? The praise her paintings elicited surprised her and she began deciding who would receive the painting before she started it – often writing the name of the recipient on the

17. Diego Rivera,

canvas. She gave them away as keepsakes, assigning them no value except as tokens of her

Artist’s Studio, 1954.

feelings. Of these early efforts, her best portraits succeeded in reaching beneath the skin

Oil on canvas, 179 x 150 cm.

of the sitter and stood alone and original without technical tricks, or imposed sentiment.

Collection of the Acervo Patrimonial de

Her most successful work was a self-portrait, painted specifically for Alejandro Gómez

la Secretaría de Hacienda y Crédito

Arias in yet another vain attempt to win him back. With this painting, she began a

Público, Mexico.

remarkable lifetime series of fully realised Frida Kahlo reflections, both introspective and revealing, that examined her world from behind her own eyes and from within that

18. Ex voto, c. 1943.

crumbling patchwork of a body. Officially titled Self-Portrait with Velvet Dress, her 1926

Oil on metal, 19.1 x 24.1 cm.

gift to Alejandro was named, “Your Botticeli” (sic).

Private collection.

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While on his tour of Europe, Arias had mentioned that Italian girls were “so exquisite, they look like they were painted by Botticelli”. Frida added some of the elegant mannerisms of the sixteenth century painter, Bronzino (1503-1572), a favourite of hers. In the portrait she holds her hand open to Arias, a possible desire for reconciliation. Her skin glows with an ivory cast and the blush of health in her cheeks, not the pasty face of a surrendering invalid. Her gaze is direct and challenging beneath her exaggerated single eyebrow. What she gives away with her open Bronzino hand, she takes back with the defiance of a survivor. This stoic, examining and unsmiling gaze is the pose that she adopted in real life. As if to add a period to her message, across the bottom of the canvas she wrote: “For Alex, Frida Kahlo, at the age of 17, September 1926 – Coyoacán – Heute Ist immer noch (Today is like always)”. In other words, she is saying “If you ever did love me, then today is like always and that love is still there”. Frida Kahlo consistently maintained her own demanding reality that no one, not even Diego Rivera, ever succeeded in penetrating to its steel core. Through 1927 and 1928, Frida painted portraits of those close to her. She captured the glacial beauty of her friend, Alicia Galant. Frida’s younger sister, Cristina, is rendered in shimmering pastel tints that surround a sharply executed and resolute face. Frida painted her toddler niece, Isolda Pinedo Kahlo as cotton soft with the child’s favourite doll lying ignored at her feet, but with roaming eyes looking for escape from the boredom of sitting. With each painting, Frida’s confidence grew along with her technical facility. The diminished state of her relationship with Alejandro Gómez Arias is obvious in her 1928 portrait of him. He looks like a school boy in his first grown-up suit. His expression is haunted and unsure. The boy in the painting has either missed a great opportunity and is completely unaware – or, more likely, he has dodged a passionate, all-consuming bullet and is relieved. As with almost all the men in her life, he remained a close friend, held in her orbit by the mutual fascination that first drew them together. 19. Tree of Hope, Keep Strong, 1946.

By 1928, Frida had recovered enough to set aside her orthopaedic corsets and escape the

Oil on masonite, 55.9 x 40.6 cm.

narrow world of her bed to walk out of La Casa Azul once again into the social and political

Collection Isidore Ducasse, France.

stew that was Mexico City. She began re-exploring the heady world of Mexican art and politics. She wasted no time in hooking up with her old comrades from the various cliques at

20. Portrait of Lucha Maria, a Girl from

the Preparatory School. Soon, as she drifted from one circle to another, she fell in with a

Tehuacán, (Sun and Moon), 1942.

collection of aspiring politicians, anarchists and Communists who gravitated around the

Oil on masonite, 54.6 x 43.1 cm.

American expatriate, Tina Modotti. Tina was a beautiful woman who came to Mexico in 1923

Private collection.

to study photography with her lover, the artistically ascetic American photographer Edward Weston. When he returned to California in 1924, she remained behind to begin a short storied

21. The Broken Column, 1944.

life as an excellent photographer in her own right and companion to an assortment of

Oil on canvas, mounted on masonite,

revolutionaries. During the First World War and the early 1920s, many American

40 x 30.7 cm.

intellectuals, artists, poets and writers fled the United States to Mexico and later to France in

Museo Dolores Olmedo, Mexico City.

search of cheap living and political idealism. They banded together to praise or condemn each

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Letter to Alejandro Gómez Arias May 31, 1927 I’m almost finished with Chong Lee [Miguel Lira]’s portrait; I’m going to send you a photograph of it. [...] This gets worse and worse every day. I’ll have to convince myself that it is necessary, almost for sure, to be operated on. Otherwise, time goes by and suddenly you’ve wasted a hundred pesos, given away to a pair of thieves – that’s what most doctors are. The pain continues exactly the same in my bad leg and sometimes the good one hurts too; so I’m getting worse and worse, and without the least hope of getting better, because for that I need the most important thing: money. The sciatic nerve is damaged, as well as another nerve – whose name I don’t know – that branches into the genitals. I don’t know what’s wrong with two vertebrae and there’s buten other things that I can’t explain to you because I don’t understand them myself, so I don’t know what the operation will consist of, since nobody can explain it. You can imagine, from what I am telling you, the hope I have of being, if not well, at least better, by the time you arrive. I understand that it is necessary in this case to have a lot of faith, but you can’t imagine, not even for a moment, how much I suffer with this, precisely because I don’t think I’m going to recover. A doctor with some interest in me could possibly make me feel better, at least, but all these doctors who have been treating me are meanies who don’t care about me at all and who spend their time stealing. So I don’t know what to do and to despair is useless. [...] Lupe Vélez is shooting her first movie with Douglas Fairbanks, did you know that? How are the movie theatres in Germany? What other things about painting have you learned and seen? Are you going to go to Paris? How is the Rhine; German architecture? Everything.

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Letter to Alejandro Gómez Arias July 23, 1927 My Alex: I just received your letter…You tell me that you will be taking a boat to Naples and that it is almost certain that you will go to Switzerland too. Let me ask you a favour: tell your aunt that you want to come back, that you don’t want to stay there after August under any circumstances... you can’t imagine what every day, every minute without you means to me... Cristina [her younger sister] is still very pretty, but she is very mean to me and to my mother. I did a portrait of Lira because he asked me to, but it is so bad that I don’t understand how he can tell me that he likes it. Buten horrible. I am not sending you the photograph since my dad doesn’t have all the plates in order yet because of the move; but it’s not worth it, since it has a very corny background and he looks like a cardboard figure. I only like one detail (one angel in the background), you’ll see it. My dad also took pictures of the others, of Adnana, of Alicia [Galant] with the veil (very bad), and of the one who aimed to be Ruth Quintanilla and that Salas likes. As soon as my dad makes me more copies I will send them to you. He only made one of each, but Lira took them away, because he says he is going to publish them in a magazine that is going into circulation in August (he must have already talked to you about it, hasn’t he?). It will be named Panorama, and the contributors for the first issue will be, among others, Diego, Montenegro (as a poet), and who knows how many others. I don’t think it will be anything very good. I already tore up Rios’s portrait, because you can’t imagine how it still annoyed me. Flaquer wanted to keep the backdrop (the woman and the trees) and the portrait ended its life as Joan of Arc did. Tomorrow is Cristina’s saint’s day. The boys are going to come over and so are the two children of Mr. Cabrera, the lawyer. They don’t look like him (they are very stupid) and they barely speak Spanish, because they have lived in the United States for twelve years and they only come to Mexico for vacations. The Galants will come too, la Pinocha [Esperanza Ordonez], etc... Only Chelo Navarro is not coming as she’s still in bed because of her baby girl; they say she’s very cute. This is all that is going on in my house, but none of this interests me. Tomorrow it will be a month and a half since I got the cast, and four months since I last saw you. I wish that next month life would start and I could kiss you. Will this come true? Your sister, Frieda

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22. Thinking about Death, 1943. Oil on canvas, mounted on masonite, 44.5 x 36.3 cm. Museo Dolores Olmedo, Mexico City.

23. Self-Portrait with Monkey, 1938. Oil on masonite, 40.6 x 30.5 cm. Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo.

other’s works and drafted windy manifestos while participating in one long inebriated party that lasted several years, lurching from apartment to salon to saloon and back. While most were a motley collection of exiles who skipped across the border just ahead of

24. Self-Portrait with “Bonito”, 1942. Oil on canvas, 55 x 43.5 cm. Private collection.

bankruptcy and bad debts, some genuine talents added their luster to Mexican society. John Dos Passos lived for some periods in Mexico City as did Katherine Anne Porter and poet Hart

25. Self-Portrait with Monkey and Parrot,

Crane. These expatriates fashioned a sentimental vision of the noble peasant toiling in the

1942.

fields and promoted the Mexican view of life as fiestas y siestas interrupted by the occasional

Oil on masonite, 54.6 x 43.2 cm.

bloody peasant revolt and a scattering of political assassinations.

Private collection.

5

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Into this tequila-fueled debating society stepped the formidable presence of Diego Rivera, the prodigal returned home from 14 years abroad and having been kicked out of Moscow. Despite his rude treatment at the hands of Stalinist art critics and the Russian government’s unveiled threats of harm if he did not leave, Diego embraced Communism as the world’s salvation. Soon after his return to Mexico in 1921, he sought out pro-Mexican art movements, Mexican muralists and easel painters, photographers, and writers. Within this deeply Mexicanistic society, Tina Modotti’s circle of expatriates and fellow travellers fit right in to the party circuit. Diego also went to work on another series of murals for the government ministry of education. Frida drifted into this stimulating circle. She and Tina Modotti became friends. Possessing similar incendiary personalities and sensual vitality, they drank and danced deep into the hot Mexican nights at the moveable salons. In the sweltering rooms, crowded with drunken eccentrics and oblivious hangers-on, political rhetoric or denunciations of artistic merit often took on an edge. Challenges sometimes required redress by gunplay. Gulping down a quart of tequila did not enhance marksmanship and usually, when the smoke cleared, the only casualties were the furniture, walls, streetlamps and at one particular salon, a record player. As Frida recalled her first meeting with her future husband: We got to know each other at a time when everybody was packing pistols; when they felt like it, they simply shot up the street lamps in Avenida Madero. “Diego once shot a gramophone at one of Tina’s parties. That was when I began to be interested in him although I was also afraid of him”.6 So, the small and still physically frail Frida Kahlo had a chance to see old soft Panzón in a different light, gripping a smoking Colt revolver in a crowded room suddenly fallen silent. The chubby muralist had hidden layers to him as well as a manly set of cojones. And Diego saw the same flash in the school girl who had stood eye to eye with his now ex-wife, Lupe Marín, and held her ground. This was more than a spoiled child of the bourgeoisie who smiled back at him through the cigar smoke, punctuating her intelligent vocabulary with vulgar street slang for effect. She challenged him and Diego Rivera, ever the swordsman, never refused a challenge. The actual point of their first meeting is difficult to discover since they were both elaborate story tellers who often bent the truth to fit the moment. There’s a charming tale that has Frida rising from her bed, tucking some of her work under her arm and hobbling with a cane to where Diego worked on the ministry of education murals. She calls to him high on the scaffolding: 26. Self-Portrait with Velvet Dress (detail), 1926.

“Diego, come down!” He peers into the courtyard at this young girl wearing a blue and white European school

Oil on canvas, 79.7 x 60 cm.

costume, long braids and leaning on a cane. It was his curse to be easily distracted from his

Private collection, Mexico City.

work so he lumbers down the rickety stairs.

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“But I haven’t come here to flirt”, she says, “even though you’re a notorious ladies’ man. I just want to show you my pictures. If you find them interesting, tell me; if not, tell me anyway because then I’ll find something else to do to support my family”. The big man with the shaggy head of hair and paint-smeared apron wrapped around his girth looks at each painting. He separates one from the other three and looks at it for a longer time. “First of all, I like the self-portrait. That is original. The other three pictures seem to have been influenced by things you must have seen somewhere. Now, go home and paint another picture. Next Sunday I’ll come and tell you what I think of it”. Frida finishes her tale, “He did just that and concluded that I was talented”.7 If this romantic story is to be believed, Diego Rivera concluded more than the depth of her talent. His original interest in the cheeky young girl, whose feisty attitude had charmed him, turned to a deeper respect, an appreciation of her as a fellow artist to whom he could relate on many different levels. It wasn’t long before he dusted off his brown Stetson hat, shook out his sagging jacket, polished the toes of his boots on the backs of his pant legs and began showing up at La Casa Azul every Sunday. Diego had become a courting suitor. Frida’s mother was against the match. She likened Diego to a big toad standing in the doorway. Guillermo Kahlo took Diego aside, steering him into the central courtyard. Diego may have looked like a fat toad. He may have been twenty years her senior. He was divorced – twice – and an atheist, and a Communist to boot, but he was also a famous painter who had commissions and money and the respect of both the government and the artistic community to which Guillermo Kahlo aspired. Guillermo leaned close. “Do you realise she’s a little devil?” Diego nodded, “I know”. Guillermo made a final appeal, “She is a sick person and all her life she will be sick. She is intelligent, but not pretty. Think it over if you want, and if you wish to get married, I give you my permission”. Diego nodded again, “Gracias”. Guillermo nodded. “All right, you’ve been warned”.8

3

Tibol, Raquel, op.cit., p. 43

4

Ibid., p. 60

5

Rummel, Jack, Frida Kahlo – A Spiritual Biography, The Crossroad Publishing Company, New York, 2000

6

Herrera, Hayden, Frida – A Biography of Frida Kahlo, New York, 1983, pp. 73-74

7

Ibid., p. 74

Oil on masonite, 39.5 x 29.5 cm.

8

Ibid., p. 77

Dolores Olmedo Collection, Mexico City.

27. Portrait of Engineer Eduardo Morillo.

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Letter to Alejandro Gómez Arias April 31 [1927], Sunday Labour Day My Alex, I just got your letter of the 13th, and this has been the only happy moment in all this time. Even though thinking of you always helps me to feel less sad, your letters help even more. How I wish I could explain to you, minute by minute, my suffering. Since you left, I’ve gotten worse and I cannot for a moment either console myself or forget you. Friday, they put the plaster cast on me, and since then it’s been a real martyrdom that is not comparable to anything else. I feel suffocated, my lungs and my whole back hurt terribly; I can’t even touch my leg. I can hardly walk, let alone sleep. Imagine, they hung me by just my head for two and a half hours, and then I stood on my tiptoes for more than one hour while [the cast] was dried with hot air; but when I got home, it was still completely wet. They put it on me at the Hospital de las Damas Francesas, because at the Hospital Frances it would have been necessary to stay at least a week, as they wouldn’t do it otherwise. At the other hospital they started to put it on me at 9:15 A.M. and I was able to leave at approximately 1 P.M. They didn’t let Adriana [her sister] or anybody else in, and I was suffering horribly, all by myself. I’m going to have this martyrdom for three or four months, and if I don’t get well with that, I sincerely want to die, because I can’t stand it anymore. It’s not only the physical suffering, but also that I don’t have the least entertainment. I never leave this room, I can’t do anything, I can’t walk. I’m completely desperate and, above all, you’re not here. On top of that, I only hear bad news. My mother is still very sick, she’s had seven strokes this month, and my father is the same, and broke. There’s something to be completely desperate about, don’t you think? I lose weight every day, and nothing amuses me anymore. The only thing that makes me happy is that the boys visit me; last Thursday Chong, el Güero Garay, Salas, and Goch came, and they’re going to come back on Wednesday. Nevertheless, this makes me suffer too because you’re not with us. Your little sister and your mum are doing well, but I’m sure they would give anything to have you here; do everything you can to come back soon. Don’t doubt, even for a moment, that I’ll be exactly the same person when you come back. And you – don’t forget me and write to me a lot. I look forward to getting your letters almost with anguish; they make me feel infinitely well. Never stop writing to me, at least once a week; you promised. Tell me if I can write to you at the Mexican Legation in Berlin or at the same place as always. I need you so much, Alex! [water sign as signature]

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Letter to Guillermo Kablo San Francisco, Cal. November 21, 1930 Lovely Daddy, If you knew the pleasure getting your little letter gave me, you’d write to me every day, because you can’t imagine how happy it made me. The only thing I didn’t like is that you told me that you are still quick-tempered, but since I am just like you, I understand you very well, and I know that it is very hard to control oneself. Anyway, try as hard as you can; at least do it for mum who is so nice to you. Diego laughed really hard at what you told me about the Chinese, but he says he will take care of me so they won’t kidnap me. I am well, under [a treatment of] injections by a certain Dr. Eloesser, who is of German origin but speaks Spanish better than someone from Madrid, so I can clearly explain to him everything I feel. I’m learning a little bit of English every day, and I can at least understand the essentials, shop at stores, etc., etc… Tell me in your reply how you are and how mum and everybody are doing. I miss you very much – you know how much I love you – but certainly in March we will be together again and we will talk a whole lot. Don’t fail to write me and feel free to let me know if you need some money. Diego sends his warmest wishes and says that he doesn’t write to you because he has so much to do. I send you all my affection and a thousand kisses. Your daughter who adores you, Frieducha Here is a kiss Write to me everything you do and everything that happens to you

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Señora Diego Rivera

O

n August 21, 1929, Frida Kahlo, age 22, married Diego Rivera, age 42, in a civil ceremony, joined by a few close friends at the Coyoacán City Hall. Looking on as official witnesses were a homeopathic doctor and a wig maker. The judge was a pal

of Rivera’s from his student days at the School of Fine Arts. Diego, his hair slicked back, stood up in a plain gray suit, his Stetson hat, wide belt and the Colt revolver in his waistband. Frida had borrowed a long skirt and blouse from her maid and wore a red reboso stole over her shoulders. She barely came up to his shoulder, giving the couple the appearance of a small dark china doll next to an immense porcelain pug dog. After the ceremony they posed for a photographer from La Prensa. The accompanying story read: Last Wednesday in the nearby village of Coyaocan, the controversial painter Diego Rivera was married to Miss Frida (sic) Kahlo, one of his students. The bride was dressed, as can be seen, in simple street garb, and the painter Rivera as an American without a vest. The marriage was not at all pompous, but carried out in an extremely cordial atmosphere with all modesty, without ostentation and minus ceremonious pretentiousness. The newlyweds were extensively congratulated after the marriage by some intimate friends. And then the party shifted to La Casa Azul. Matilde Kahlo still fumed, muttering that Rivera now looked like a “fat farmer” – an improvement over the “fat toad”. Lupe Marín had also been invited and after a liberal sampling of tequila thrust her hands under Frida’s dress and hauled it up. “Do you see those two canes?” Marín screeched. “That’s what Diego’s going to have to put up with and he used to have my legs!” She hoisted her own skirt, showing off her shapely gams for comparison. Frida made a grab for her. Friends restrained the two women and Frida bolted from the room in a fury. Diego, of course, was delighted to see two women he had bedded and wedded fighting over

28. Self-Portrait as a Tehuana or Diego on My Mind, 1943.

him and to celebrate the occasion headed for the bar. His gay mood continued into the wee

Oil on masonite, 76 x 61 cm.

hours whereupon he drew his trusty Colt revolver and, aiming through a boozy fog, began

Collection Jacques and Natasha Gelman,

blazing away. Guests sought cover until the pistol’s hammer clicked empty on spent cartridges.

Mexico City.

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Frida was fuming and did not spend the night with him. In fact she didn’t move into his house at 104 Paseo de la Reforma for several days.9 Though not known at the time, this wedding and its aftermath would be a microcosm of the rest of their lives together. Señora Rivera began setting up housekeeping in his house as Diego was appointed director of the San Carlos Academy, his youthful alma mater. Within a couple of weeks Diego’s reforms of the school’s curriculum met with a sour reception and he was summarily requested to leave the campus. At that time, he accepted a commission to create a series of murals in the National Palace which were to form a visual history of Mexico. The job was huge and he returned to it many times over the following years. It required five years just to complete the stairwell. The palace courtyard mural wasn’t begun until 1942. Continuing in her role as the good wife, Frida reconciled with Lupe Marín who showed her how to prepare Diego’s favourite mole, rich puddings and other dishes that kept up his energy during ten to twelve hour work days. As Lupe had done, Frida brought Rivera his lunch at the scaffolding each day. With her duties as Rivera’s doting wife claiming more of her time, she virtually stopped painting. In 1929, however, she did manage to creatively put her psychological house in order. One canvas seems to mark a step in distancing herself from the cause of her physical turmoil. She painted The Bus. There is nothing dramatic here, no re-enactment, or sentimental rehashing, or even any cursing of the fates. It is an interior view of a bus with six passengers sitting on the side bench in front of the windows: a shopping mother, a plumber in overalls, a barefoot Indita with a baby, a young boy, a fair-haired gringo in a western suit and porkpie hat, and a young Mexican girl in a western dress. They face us without seeing us, each with their own thoughts. It’s as if Frida can ride the bus again without fear; these anonymous sitters are portraits from life and Frida is getting on with her own life as well. The other Painting, on masonite, is entitled Self-Portrait “Time Flies”. In this self-portrait, she gazes at us wearing a vulnerable white top trimmed in lace with a heavy Indian jade necklace around her neck. Exceptional antique earrings dangle from each lobe. Her expression is direct, but with a hint of a smile as though waiting for a photographer to click the shutter before dissolving into laughter. A cloud of words have been written interpreting the symbolism of the climbing airplane seen through the black-draped balcony window behind her head, or the significance of the alarm clock on the wooden stand behind her left shoulder. Knowing the place she was in during 1929, the upward turn in her fortunes, a new man in her life, a feeling of confidence in her improving technique and seasoned with her natural ebullience, 29. Self-Portrait Sitting on the Bed or My Doll and I, 1937.

Frida Kahlo could just as well be enjoying a visual joke, a lightening up: time flies. In December 1930, Rivera received a commission from the United States Ambassador

Oil on metal, 40 x 31 cm.

Dwight Morrow to execute a series of murals – The History of Cuernavaca and Morelos,

Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection,

Conquest and Revolution – at the Cortes Palace in Cuernavaca, south of Mexico City. Frida

Mexico City.

accompanied Diego and established their quarters in Morrow’s weekend house. This time,

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she spent considerable time at the project watching Diego work and offering the occasional question or critique. Instead of being annoyed by this kibitzing, Diego found many of her suggestions to be helpful. Gaining more respect for her artistic eye and intellectual grasp of his work, Diego came to be influenced by her ideas throughout the rest of their relationship. By this time, the Communist Party had its fill of Diego Rivera. Though he had held office in the party and showed solidarity at their rallies, his casual acceptance of commissions from capitalists went against the grain of the conservative ideologues. In 1929, he was booted from the party and, demonstrating her loyalty to him, Frida quit too. Neither abandoned the goals of Communism and continued to espouse its anti-capitalist causes, but their support came from the sidelines. In Cuernavaca, Frida experienced a miscarriage three months into her first pregnancy. This devastating event was topped shortly thereafter when she discovered Diego had been having an affair with one of his female assistants. At this point, she uttered her most quoted remark to the effect that she had experienced two catastrophes in her life: the first being hit by a tram. The second was Diego. At the close of the 1920s, Mexico’s political climate shifted again and Diego found himself caught in the middle of an ideological battle. Not only was he persona non grata at Communist Party Headquarters, but the government had grown tired of seeing socialist themes peering back from “historic” murals popping up all over the country. Feeling the heat on the back of his neck, Rivera accepted some commissions in San Francisco, packed up his brushes and Frida and headed for the United States. The U.S. had been washing its hands of the Communist backlash following World War I in what came to be known as the “Red Scare”. Communists, anarchists and sympathisers had been rooted out all across the country and many deported back to Europe. Two Italians, Sacco and Vanzetti, had been charged with murder during a robbery. Throughout the six-year investigation, both had been linked to the “Reds”. The pair were electrocuted in August, 1927. Now one of the world’s most famous Communists, Diego Rivera came marching up to the California customs gates for a working visit. Fortunately, Albert Bender, an internationally famous art collector, prevailed in their behalf and in the name of fine art, the gates swung open. To express her thanks, Frida dedicated their wedding portrait, Frida and Diego Rivera or Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, to Bender and added a dove carrying a banderol telling the story of the dedication.10 He was so pleased he went on to become one of her early patrons. The painting shows Diego, complete with his palette and brushes as the “official” painter in the family and Frida holding his hand, dressed as a submissive Mexican wife. If this was

30. Diego Rivera,

the role she had accepted, all that changed during the eight months Diego worked on his

Modesta, 1937.

mural at the Luncheon Club of the Pacific Stock Exchange. Señora Rivera was undergoing

Oil on canvas.

a change of her own.

Private collection.

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considered to be self-involved and pretentious. Other than her shopping trips to Chinatown where she loved to observe the Chinese children – and they gawked at her Mexican costume – Frida found San Francisco unremarkable. She did not take advantage of its urban sprawl nor its scenic bay for subject matter. Adapting to another culture, thrust into an alien milieu where she was an object of curiosity, separated from her friends and relatives and language, all these influences coloured her judgments and priorities. As her loneliness forced her back to her work, she began to consider its value as public art rather than closely held keepsakes for friends. San Francisco’s cosmopolitan setting revealed new vistas and possibilities. In a letter to her friend, Isabel Campos, she wrote: I don't have girlfriends; one or two that cannot be called friends. That's why I spend my days painting. In September I'll have an exhibition (the first one) in New York. Here, I didn't have enough time and I could only sell a few paintings. But it was very good for me to come here because it was eye-opening and I saw lots of new and cool things. 13 With the completion of the mural commissions, the Riveras flew back to Mexico on June 8, 1931. With his accumulated wages Diego generously paid off Guillermo Kahlo’s mortgage on La Casa Azul in Coyoacán and planned to return to the unfinished fresco at the National Palace. He also had an idea for their mutual abode that he proposed to a painter and architect friend, Juan O’Gorman. Diego suggested two houses designed in the Bauhaus International style – minimalist and boxy – be erected in near-by San Angel. They would stand side by side, joined together by a footbridge between the two top stories. Each would have a separate entrance and serve as both living and studio spaces for the two artists, a recognition of Frida’s growing independence. Of course, the design also offered Diego privacy for his sexual peccadilloes. They had been home only a few months when Diego received an invitation from the Museum of Modern Art in New York to help create a retrospective of his work. Though she faced being torn away from her Mexican roots, this news must have brightened Frida’s prospects for a show of her own work. For that, she would once again troop back to “Gringolandia”, and hob-nob 36. Diego Rivera,

with the rich boring art and society set that fluttered around Diego like so many mouths around

Landscape with Cactus, 1931.

a jalapeño. They sailed on the cruise ship Morro Castle in mid-November to arrive in Manhattan

Oil on canvas.

on December 13, 1931 in time for the December 23 show.

Private collection.

As with San Francisco, upon arrival Diego and Frida were adopted by the rich and famous, by both old and new money and as before, Diego was the centre of the maelstrom. The gallery

37. Diego Rivera,

walls held 150 of his works and showed eight mural panels that Diego had prepared for the

The Day of the Dead, 1944.

exhibition. Art critics traveled to New York from around the country to add their two centavos

Oil on hardboard, 73.5 x 91 cm.

to the pile of newsprint the show generated as 60,000 attendees marched from room to room.

Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City.

The show was a great success.

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38. Beauty Parlour (I) or The Perm, 1932. Watercolour and pencil on paper, 26 x 22 cm. Augustín Cristóbal Collection, Galería Arvil, Mexico City.

39. Saint Nicholas, c. 1932, dated 1937. Mixed Technique, (watercolour, pencil) on paper, 23 x 27 cm. Juan Coronel Rivera Collection, Mexico.

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Letter to Isabel Campos San Francisco, May 3, 1931 Dear buddy, I received your little letter buten centuries ago, but I couldn’t respond because I wasn’t in San Francisco, but further south, and I had a lot of things to do. You can’t imagine how happy I was to receive it. You were the only friend who remembered me. I’ve been very happy, but I miss my mother very much. You can’t even imagine how wonderful this city is. I am writing little about it, so I’ll have a lot to talk to you about. I’m coming back soon to the powerful “town” – in the middle of this [month], I think – I will tell you buten things then. [We’ll have] lots of conversations — I want you to send my affectionate regards to Aunt Lolita, Uncle Panchito, and to all your brothers and sisters, especially Mary. The city and the bay are “cool”. I don’t like gringos that much; they are very dull people and they all have faces that look like uncooked bread (especially the broads). What is cool here is Chinatown; these herds of Chinese are very nice. I’ve never seen more beautiful children in all my life than Chinese children. Oh, God! They are marvelous. I would like to steal one so you could see him. As for my English, I don’t even want to talk to you about it, since I’m stuck. I bark what’s most essential, but it is very difficult to speak it well. However, I make myself understood, at least with the damn shopkeepers. I don’t have girlfriends; one or two that cannot be called friends. That’s why I spend my days painting. In September I’ll have an exhibition (the first one) in New York. Here, I didn’t have enough time and I could only sell a few paintings. But it was very good for me to come here because it was eye-opening and I saw lots of new and cool things. Since you are in touch with my mother and Kitti [Cristina Kahlo], tell me about them. I would really appreciate it. You still have time to send me a letter if you want. I ask you to do it since it would make me very happy. Is it too much to ask? Say hi to everyone when you see Dr. Coronadito, Landa, and Mr. Guillen; to all those who remember me. And you, my dear little friend, receive the usual affection from your buddy who loves you very much. Frieducha Kisses for your little mother, dad, and siblings. My address: 716 Montgomery St.

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Letter to Dr. Leo Eloesser Coyoacán, June 14, 1931 Dear Doctor, You can’t imagine how sorry we were for not seeing you before coming back here, but it was impossible. I called your office three times, but couldn’t find you, since nobody answered, so I asked for Clifford to please explain this to you. Besides, imagine, Diego worked until midnight the day before we left San Francisco. That’s why we didn’t have time to do anything, so I am writing this letter in the first place to apologise a thousand times and to tell you also that we’ve arrived safely in the country of enchiladas and refried beans. Diego is already working in the [National] Palace. He’s been having problems with his mouth and he is very tired besides. If you write to him, I would like you to tell him that it is necessary for his health that he rest a little, because if he keeps working like this, he is going to die. Don’t tell him that I told you how much he is working, but tell him that you found out and that it is absolutely necessary that he rest a little. I would really appreciate it. Diego is not happy here because he misses the kindness of the people of San Francisco and the city itself. He wants nothing else but to go back to the United States to paint. I came back well, skinny as always and fed up with everything, but I feel much better. I don’t know how to pay you back for my healing and all your kindness toward Diego and me. I know that with money would be the worst way, but the biggest gratitude I could have would never compensate for your kindness. I implore and beg you to be kind enough to let me know how much I owe you, because you can’t imagine how shameful I feel for having left without giving you something worth your kindness. When you answer me, please tell me how you are, what you are doing, everything. Also, please say hello to all our friends, especially to Ralph and Ginette. Mexico is, as always, disorganised and messed up. The only thing it has left is the great beauty of the land and of the Indians. Everyday, the ugly part of the United States steals a piece; it is a shame, but people have to eat and it is inevitable that the big fish eat the small one. Diego sends his best wishes and I send all the affection you know I feel for you. Frieda

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The petite 24-year-old Mexican girl on Diego Rivera’s arm was referred to in the outpouring of prose as “shy” and “retiring” and who, the commentators mentioned in passing, “did a bit of painting herself”. Frida was paraded from one welcoming gala to another, smiled at, toasted and had questions shouted at her slowly as if high volume and low speed made English much more understandable. Back at their hotel, she wrote Doctor Eloesser: This upper class is disgusting and I’m furious at all these rich people here, having seen thousands of people in abject squalor.14 Her quaint rejection of American urban conditions at the start of the Great Depression underscores her own naïve political rhetoric about uplifting the masses when she never really came into contact with her own poverty-stricken Mexican “masses”. But in New York, the vast gap between the chauffeured limousines sailing up and down concrete canyons and bread lines shuffling into store-front soup kitchens must have graphically reinforced Frida’s socialist sensibilities. Putting down her American hosts might also have been a side effect of being ignored as an artist in her own right yet again. Though Diego praised her painting, no show offers were forthcoming. She continued to be “Mrs. Rivera”. One good outcome to the New York exposure was Frida’s opportunity to view original modern works from a variety of contemporary masters. It’s not difficult to imagine her wandering from gallery to gallery within the Museum of Modern Art, coming to grips with Surrealists, Expressionists, Picasso, Braque, the dreamscapes of de Chirico and other deeply personal and abstract constructions. Diego had accepted a commission from Detroit, Michigan in America’s industrial heartland to paint a mural in the lobby of the Detroit Institute of Arts. He relished the idea of painting machines and assembly lines that, in his Marxist philosophy, relieved the masses of workers from the drudgery of repetitive toil, leaving them more time to begin the workers’ revolution. Detroit represented the quintessential example of American capitalism, where the machine age met the proletariat, the perfect ground zero for the overthrow of the Imperialists who were buying his work. The Rivera entourage arrived by train on April 21, 1932. Frida was far less sanguine about the smoke-shrouded factory town on the Rouge River. She wrote to Doctor Eloesser that Detroit, …seems like a shabby old village. I don’t like it at all, but I am happy because

40. Portrait of Dr. Leo Eloesser, 1931.

Diego is working very happily here, and he has found a lot of material for his

Oil on masonite, 85.1 x 59.7 cm.

frescoes that he will do in the museum. He is enchanted by the factories, the

University of California, School of

machines, etc. like a child with a new toy.15

Medicine, San Francisco.

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41. A Few Small Nips, 1935. Oil on metal, 38 x 48.5 cm with frame, 29.5 x 39.5 cm without frame. Museo Dolores Olmedo, Mexico City.

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Children were on Frida’s mind. She had scarcely unpacked when she discovered she was pregnant. The idea both pleased and terrified her. She had always loved children and had a deep maternal instinct that she had lavished on Diego. But she feared her heredity and her ability to carry the pregnancy to term. Frida confided in Eloesser, Do you think it would be more dangerous to have an abortion than to have the child?... You know better than anyone else does what kind of shape I'm in. First, because of the inheritance I carry in my blood (Guillermo's epilepsy), I don't think the child could come out healthy. Second, I'm not strong and the pregnancy would weaken me even more... Here, I don't have any relatives who could help me out during and after my pregnancy, and no matter how much poor Diego wants [to help me] he cannot, since he has all that work and a thousand more things…16 Her conflicts were very real and if she had any idea that sharing a baby would put an end to Diego’s affairs, she was probably wrong. He had already abandoned two children from a previous marriage and rarely saw the daughter born by Lupe Marín. She also consulted a doctor in Detroit who advised her that the child could be delivered by caesarean section. She decided to have the child. The Detroit doctor ordered bed rest. As usual, Frida ignored him, began driving lessons and made trips to the mural work site. She continued to trail Diego to the homes and parties of the Motor City’s smokestack barons wearing her brightly-coloured Tehuana costumes with her arms, neck and fingers layered and looped with antique jewellery. Finding the gringos easily shocked, dull of wit and wrapped up in their pursuit of celebrity, she turned loose her more outrageous personality quirks. On her way into dinner on the arm of Henry Ford – a notorious anti-Semite – more than a few jaws dropped when Frida asked him, “Mr. Ford, are you Jewish?” The Wardell Hotel in which they were staying was restricted against Jews and when Diego told the hotel’s management that he and Frida were Jewish, the restriction was immediately dropped.17 In the fourth month of her pregnancy, July 4, 1932, Frida miscarried. Lucienne Bloch, one of Diego’s assistants and Frida’s friend, discovered her early in the morning sitting in a pool of blood and screaming. She continued to haemorrhage on the way to the Henry Ford Hospital and spent much of the day disgorging clots of blood and tissue that had been her child. “I wish I was dead!” she wailed in despair. “I don’t know why I have to go on living like this!”18 Emotionally and physically drained, she fell back on her only consolation, her painting. 42. The Deceased Dimas Rosas at

She requested medical books for research pictures of embryos, and anatomy, but the doctors

the Age of Three, 1937.

refused. Diego sneaked some books to her and she began to draw. As with the Portrait of

Oil on masonite, 48 x 31.5 cm.

Luther Burbank, she turned her loneliness and depression into creative activity. Only this time,

Museo Dolores Olmedo, Mexico City.

the subjects were far more personal and she scoured her emotions to tell her sad narrative.

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43. My Birth, 1932. Oil on metal, 30.5 x 35 cm. Private collection, USA.

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Paintings and some lithographs were accomplished during her time in Detroit. When she was well enough to leave the hospital, Diego asked the New Workers School where he was working on a mural to set up a small studio for her that included lithography stones and a press. Her monochrome lithographs, Frida and the Miscarriage, resemble medical illustrations describing the steps that led to the event from sperm and eggs to zygote to foetus tied by its umbilical cord that twines around Frida’s leg. Her eyes weep tears as does her vagina ending in a pile of clotted blood at her feet. The blood fertilises some plants, recalling the Burbank portrait and the cycle of life. It is an analytical collection of images in a flat plane that are antiseptic and sting with their clean incisions. She found lithography unsatisfactory and these prints are the only examples of her work in that medium. The paintings: Window Display in a Street in Detroit, Henry Ford Hospital, Self-Portrait (Standing) along the Border between Mexico and the United States, and My Birth are quite something else. As if the miscarriage was not sufficiently crushing, Frida received news from home that her mother was dying of cancer. Still healing from her trauma, Frida had to return to Coyoacán as soon as possible. There was no flight available and the phones to Mexico were temporarily down. She elected to make the trip by train and bus, an arduous journey for someone in good health. Diego insisted Lucienne Bloch accompany her. She arrived in Mexico on September 8 and her mother died on September 15, 1932. Frida remained with her father and her family and checked on the progress of the twin houses under construction until she became anxious to return to Diego. By October 21, she and Lucienne were back in Detroit and she learned that Diego had been offered another commission, this time to create a mural in the lobby of the RCA building in New York’s Rockefeller Center. Following that, the 1933 World’s Fair being held in Chicago wanted a mural on the theme of “machinery and industry”.19 More months would be spent in “Gringolandia”. Diego worked himself to exhaustion to complete the Detroit project and had little time for her. Frida took up her brushes to restore her spirits. To combat the silence of the hotel room, Frida endured a local news hen, Florence Davies, whose column Girls of Yesteryear, featured “…visiting homes of Interesting people”. She showed up at Frida’s room at the Wardell for a chat. Hayden Herrera, Frida Kahlo’s definitive biographer, captured the scene where Frida holstered her acerbic wit and played the cheeky, but adoring wife for the newspaper’s scribe. The column is headed: Wife of Master Mural Painter Gleefully Dabbles in Works of Art. Davies wrote: Carmen Frida Kahlo Rivera… is a painter in her own right, though very few people know it. “No”, she explains, “I didn’t study with Diego. I didn’t study with anyone. I just started to paint”. Then her eyes begin to twinkle. “Of course”, she 44. Frida and the Abortion or The Abortion,

explains, “he does pretty well for a little boy, but it is I who am the big artist”.

1932.

Then the twinkles in both black eyes fairly explode into a rippling laugh… In

Lithography on paper, 29.3 x 23 cm.

Detroit she paints only because time hangs heavily on her hands during the long

Museo Dolores Olmedo, Mexico City.

hours while her husband is at work in the court…20

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45. Frida and the Caesarean Section, 1932. Oil on canvas, 73 x 62 cm. Private collection.

46. Henry Ford Hospital or The Flying Bed, 1932. Oil on metal, 30.5 x 38 cm. Museo Dolores Olmedo, Mexico City.

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47. Untitled (drawing with subject inspired by Eastern philosophy), 1946. Sepia ink on paper, 18 x 26.7 cm. Private collection.

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48. Untitled (drawing with cataclysmic theme), 1946. Sepia ink on paper, 18 x 26.7 cm. Private collection.

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Letter to Dr. Leo Eloesser May 26, 1932 I have to tell you a lot about myself, even though what we have to discuss is not very pleasant. In the first place, health-wise, I’m not well at all. I would like to talk to you about anything but that, since I understand you must already be tired of listening to everyone’s complaints about sickness and especially with sick people; but I would like to think that my case is a little different since we are friends, and Diego as well as I love you very much. You know that well. […] The most important thing and what I mainly want to consult with you about is the fact that I am two months pregnant. For that reason I saw Dr. Pratt again, who told me he knew what my general state is since he talked to you about me in New Orleans. [He said] I didn’t have to explain to him again about the accident, heredity, etc., etc… Given my health, I thought it would be better to have an abortion. I told him that and he gave me quinine and very strong castor oil for a purge. The day after I took this I had a very slight [case] of bleeding, almost nothing. I’ve had some blood during five or six days, but very little. In any event, I thought I had aborted and I went to see Dr. Pratt again. He examined me and told me that he is completely sure that I did not abort and that it would be much better to ke ep the child instead of causing an abortion through surgery. [He said] that in spite of my body’s bad shape, I could have a child through a Caesarean section without great difficulties even considering the small fracture in the pelvis, spine, etc., etc… He says he will take it upon himself to lo ok after me closely if we stay in Detroit during the next seven months of my pregnancy. I want you to tell me what you think in all honesty, since I don’t know what to do in this case. Naturally, I am willing to do whatever you think is most advisable for my health; that’s what Diego also thinks. Do you think it would be more dangerous to have an abortion than to have the child? Two years ago I had a surgical abortion in Mexico, more or less under the same circumstances as now, after a pregnancy of three months. This time it’s been only two [months] and I think it would be easier, but I don’t know why Dr. Pratt thinks it would be better to have the child. You know better than anyone else does what kind of shape I’m in. First, because of the inheritance I carry in my blood, I don’t think the child could come out healthy. Second, I’m not strong and the pregnancy would weaken me even more. Moreover, my situation is kind of difficult since I don’t know how much time Diego will need to finish the fresco. If it is in September, as I estimate, the child would be born in December and I would have to go back to Mexico three months before the birth. If Diego were to finish later, it would be better for me to wait to have the child here, and there would still be terrible problems travelling with

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a child a few days old. Here, I don’t have any relatives who could help me out during and after my pregnancy, and no matter how much poor Diego wants [to help me] he cannot, since he has all that work and a thousand more things. So I could not count on him at all. The only thing I could do in that case would be to go back to Mexico in August or September and have it there. I don’t think Diego is very interested in having a child since what he’s most concerned with is his work and he is more than right. Children would come in third or fourth place. I don’t know if it would be good for me to have a child since Diego is constantly travelling and in no way would I want to leave him by himself and stay in Mexico. That would only bring problems and hassles for both of us, don’t you think? But if you really share Dr. Pratt’s opinion that it would be much better for my health not to have an abortion and to have the child, all those difficulties can be solved in one way or another. What I want to know is your opinion, more than anyone’s, since you know best about my situation. I would thank you with all my heart if you would tell me clearly what you think would be better. In case the abortion were more advisable, I beg you to write to Dr. Pratt, since maybe he is not well aware of all the circumstances. Since performing an abortion is against the law, maybe he is scared or something, and later it would be impossible to undergo such an operation. If, on the contrary, you think that having the child could be beneficial to me, then I want you to tell me whether it would be better for me to return to Mexico in August and have it there with [the help of] my mother and sisters or whether I should have it here. […] I always feel nauseated because of this pregnancy and so I’m screwed! Everything makes me tired, since my spine hurts. My leg is also having problems because I cannot exercise and as a result my digestion is really bad! However, I always have the will to do many things and I never feel disappointed in life, as in Russian novels. I understand my situation perfectly and I’m more or less happy, first of all because I have Diego, my mother, and my father; I love them so much. I think that is enough, and I’m not asking life for a miracle or anything like that. Of my friends, you’re the one I love the most and that’s why I dare bother you with so many stupidities. Forgive me and when you answer this letter, tell me how you have been. Receive Diego’s and my affection and a hug from Frieda. If you think that I need to have surgery right away, I would appreciate your sending a discreet telegram to me, so you don’t get into trouble. Thanks a million. My best regards F.

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Even considering the gossipy nature of this “ladies’ feature”, Frida finally began emerging from “shy and retiring” to feel her wings as these few crumbs of recognition fell her way. While she shopped and had some good times with Lucienne, one by one exceptional paintings surfaced in her wake as reminders of deeper and darker feelings. One in particular, a retablo probably begun before she left for Mexico, is titled, My Birth. To more faithfully reproduce the retablos that hang in Mexican churches and on which her narrative paintings are based, Diego suggested she paint on metal. And like the metal it is painted upon, My Birth is a cold, soulless evocation depicting Frida Kahlo’s emergence into the world as her adult head is forced from her own womb, thrust out between splayed legs onto blood-soaked sheets. The mother’s face is covered as though wrapped in a burial shroud. There is no one in attendance. It is a joyless birth. My Birth returns the religious context that had been removed from Portrait of Luther Burbank, hanging a picture of the Mater Dolorosa, a weeping virgin, above the bed in place of the shrouded face. But as one element is returned, another is taken away. Frida places the message banderole across the bottom of the painting that usually describes the event and offers a prayer to the virgin. This time, the scroll is blank. Who’s to thank when one is constantly mistreated by the fates? In the work, Henry Ford Hospital, the city of Detroit clings to a distant horizon, an abstract industrial backdrop as a bed seems to levitate above a brown plain (the alternative name for this work is The Flying Bed). On the bed is a naked, weeping Frida with a sick, grey face, lying in a puddle of blood and tethered by red umbilical cords gathered in her hand at her swollen stomach to floating objects that circle her. A snail uncoils from its shell, her male foetus bobs above her like a grotesque balloon. Beneath the bed is a trodden flower and a misshapen pelvis. Around the edge of the bed is written the title, Henry Ford Hospital and the date, “July of 1932 F.K”. Self-Portrait (Standing) along the Border between Mexico and the United States is a painting on metal plate, a visual joke that is both humorous and melancholy, depicting Frida dressed

49. Diego Rivera, Portrait of Mrs Natasha Gelman, 1943. Oil on canvas. Private collection.

in a pink western confection with flounces and white gloves. She stands between depictions of the western industrial world and an ancient agrarian landscape steeped in ritual and

50. Diego Rivera,

tradition. Above the Mexican pyramids, the ancient Aztec sun and moon fight their never-

Portrait of Mrs Natasha Gelman, 1943.

ending cosmic battle.

Oil on canvas.

In one hand she holds a small Mexican flag as though waiting for a parade to pass. Her right

Private collection.

hand holds an “inappropriate” cigarette. Flowers and plants grow from roots that dig deep into the soil of Mexico while industrial dirt offers a crop consisting of an electrical generator, a light

51. Diego Rivera,

bulb and a radiant heater. An American flag rises from Ford’s smokestacks as a chorus line of

Calla Lily Vendor, 1943.

cyclopean roof-top ventilators marches past. Her conflicts are obvious in this work that owes

Oil on canvas.

much to Diego’s crowded muralist style, but she speaks with her own unique voice.

Private collection.

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A store window on a Detroit street, discovered by Frida and Lucienne on a shopping trip for sheet metal, becomes a curious slice of life as Window Display in a Street in Detroit. This funky collection of unrelated objects captured her interest as an assemblage more “real” than much of the artfully manipulated work she had seen in galleries. When she described it to him with such excitement, Diego suggested she paint it. The result is a blend of painterly technique and naïve folk art. George Washington peers at us from his picture frame festooned in red, white and blue and resting on a red, white and blue bit of carpet. He’s joined by a ceramic eagle plaque and a fuzzy lion growling at the window pane. Behind them a plaster horse is frozen en passant in mid stride. In the rear, we see the store is abandoned, ready for redecoration with paint pots, a stepladder and the painter’s gloves. The work is a captured moment of juxtaposed objects in the fashion of Edward Weston’s photographic images, a complex composition that would be damaged if one element was removed. Frida’s eye for found compositions was as keen as her wanderings through the halls of her own fertile imagination. Her bags were packed by the time Diego finished the Detroit mural commission. To his delight, no sooner had the murals been unveiled than the good burghers of the Motor City let fly their outrage in the local press. “Communistic!” “A heartless hoax!” “A travesty on the spirit of Detroit!” “Hose it off the walls!” While the protectors of American morality and “right thinking” formed up committees, groups of workers from the auto plants detailed shifts of volunteer guards to protect the murals. Debate caromed back and forth in the press. Exhausted but happy, Diego Rivera, his “dabbler” wife, and their assistants were gone within a week. The final payment check warmed Panzón’s pocket as the Pullman cars rattled behind their locomotive speeding east toward New York City.

9

Alcantara and Egnolff, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, Prestel Press, NY, 1999, p. 30

10

Ibid., p. 35

11

Weston, Edward, Daybooks, “California”, vol. 2. pp 198-199

12

Rummel, op.cit., p. 84

13

Tibol, Raquel, op.cit., pp. 62-63

14

Alcantara et Egnolff, op.cit., p. 40

15

Rummel, op.cit., pp. 91-92

16

Kahlo, Frida, Letters of Frida Kahlo, compiled by Martha Zamora, San Francisco, Chronicle Books, 1995

17

Alcantara et Egnolff, op.cit., p. 41

18

Rummel, op.cit., p. 93

Oil on masonite, 41 x 57 cm.

19

Herrera, Hayden, op.cit., p. 232

Collection Balbina Azcarrago, Mexico.

20

Ibid., p. 226

52. Magnolias, 1945.

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ew York was in the freezing grip of winter when the Riveras finally unpacked their bags in a suite high above downtown Manhattan in the Barbizon-Plaza Hotel. There was no time to waste setting up scaffolding in the RCA Building lobby and

getting his assistants started with preparation of the wall for Nelson Rockefeller’s paean to Man at the Crossroads. Chicago was waiting for the start of their World’s Fair mural all about “man and machinery” titled Forge and Foundry. Frida set up camp in a section of the lobby cordoned off for workers and assistants while the public paid money for tickets to come and watch Diego at work. She began bringing lunches as usual, but Diego had no appetite while he laboured. An annoying aspect of his work was the constant harping of the Communist Party that he was selling out himself and the Communist cause to these rich capitalists. And yet, Karl Marx and his demagogue inheritors had no more ardent spokesman than Diego Rivera – except maybe his equally impassioned wife, Frida Kahlo. However much she shook her fist, or sang verses of The Internationale, Frida did like the fruits of capitalism and while Diego dragged himself back to the hotel at the end of each session, Frida shopped and hung out with friends from their last visit. She rarely painted, but did dab away at one work that remained unfinished when they left New York for Mexico in December, 1933. The oil and collage is titled, My Dress Hangs There. Like her Self-Portrait (Standing) along the Border between Mexico and the United States, this tightly packed composition is an example of her dark humour, only this time, it is sans Frida.

She appears in absentia, represented by one of her Tehuana dresses suspended on a hanger that dangles from a blue ribbon tied between a gilded loving cup and a flush toilet with the seat up balancing atop a Greek column. From gasoline pumps to Wall Street to a church spire complete with dollar-sign stained glass window, this work chides everything American. A photo of marching military men heads toward a line of unemployed, shuffling toward a soup

53. Self-Portrait (standing) along the Border

kitchen somewhere in the concrete canyons that stare back with their rows and rows of dead-

between Mexico and the United States,

eye windows. Manhattan curves away in the distance, Lady Liberty waves her torch at a

1932.

departing cruise liner and a giant telephone sits atop a skyscraper. It is a masterful hodge-

Oil on metal, 31 x 35 cm.

podge that sums up Frida’s deep set prejudices against her “Gringolandia” host. Only her

Collection Manuel and Maria Reyero,

dress remains as if it was left in the hotel room closet when the Riveras checked out.

New York.

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54. Window Display in a Street in Detroit, 1931. Oil on metal plate, 30.3 x 38.2 cm. Private collection.

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As the RCA Building mural proceeded along and Frida amused herself enjoying Tarzan movies, dozing at classical concerts and receiving the press peering from under a bed sheet sucking lasciviously on a long piece of peppermint candy, word began to leak out that Diego’s version of Men at the Crossroads Looking with Hope and High Vision to the Choosing of a New and Better Future had a Red in it. Though the sketches had been approved, somehow the sponsors and young Nelson Rockefeller had missed a portrait among the pantheon of faces that gradually took on the likeness of every capitalist’s nightmare, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. As if gazing on that bearded and balding Medusa could cause brain fever, ticket sales were cut off, the mural was screened from public view and Rockefeller insisted that Rivera alter the portrait. Not only did Diego refuse, he declared he wanted to finish the work by May Day, the celebration of the Russian Revolution. In a conciliatory move, however, Diego did offer to balance the head of Lenin with a head of Abraham Lincoln of the same size. Shortly thereafter a squad of security guards and the building’s rental manager clattered across the lobby’s travertine floor, stopped all work on the mural, handed over the balance of money due for the completed mural and bundled Rivera and his band of revolutionaries from the sanctity of Rockefeller Center. A hew and cry went up to save the mural. Picketing and counter-picketing stopped traffic outside the RCA Building. Artists, intellectuals, political gadflies, pundits, powerful panjandrums, and newspaper editorialists jumped into the war of words. Diego, with the check in his pocket, enjoyed the flap right up until he received a phone call from Chicago cancelling the Forge and Foundry mural. The Windy City’s merchant princes and hog butchers wanted nothing to do with any hint of rabble-rousing or mutterings among the Depression-pinched working class. Diego’s grand design for establishing the muralist movement in the U.S. as a force for social change began crumbling. Very soon after work stopped on the RCA mural, the wall on which it was painted began crumbling under the bite of jackhammers and chisels, crashing to the lobby floor in jagged chunks and swirls of plaster dust. Defiant, Rivera determined to spend every cent of Rockefeller’s money slapping up free murals on the walls of the Free Worker’s School and smaller panels to decorate the Union Square offices of the New York Trotskyites. He managed to blow through the capitalist cash by the end of the year. In public, Frida spoke to the press: 55. My Dress Hangs There or New York, 1933.

The Rockefellers knew quite well the murals were to depict the revolutionary

Oil and collage on board, 46 x 50 cm.

point of view – that they were going to be revolutionary paintings… They

Bequest of Dr. Leo Eloesser.

seemed very nice and understanding about it and always very interested,

Hoover Gallery, San Francisco.

especially Mrs. Rockefeller…21

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During the summer of 1933, Frida created Self-Portrait with Necklace. This oil on metal head-and-shoulders painting is an assertive self presentation. We are looking at Frida the artist, confident and open to whatever might be in her future. Seventy years later, this picture would grace a United States thirty-seven cent commemorative stamp. In her private letters and among close friends, she condemned the “sullen” American cabrones (bastards) and their hypocritical posturing. But despite the fist-shaking over his work, Diego liked America and the American bohemians and intellectuals who championed his painting and iconoclastic spirit. He also liked what his idolatry purchased in a society that could afford him despite the crushing Depression. He didn’t want to go back to Mexico. Frida thought of nothing else. He had gone through their money and they were broke. After many rows and lack of any gainful employment in the U.S., the Riveras accepted boat tickets from their friends and departed with empty pockets on December 20, 1933 on the Oriente via Cuba to Veracruz. On returning, they moved into the dual house Diego had commissioned at the corner of Palmas and Altavista in the Mexico City suburb of San Angel. The two houses, joined by a footbridge across their second story, became an ironic portrayal of their relationship. The houses were a pair of Bauhaus cubes, his pink and larger, hers smaller and blue. While he saw the design as a bestowed recognition of her independence, she saw it as his backing away from her assertiveness. In either case, considering their relationship was in tatters, they both appreciated having their own spaces. She plunged into a spate of decorating. The ground floor was a garage while the first floor was the living space with a dining room, living room, and kitchen. A spiral staircase led up to her bedroom, bathroom and studio – a curious design choice considering her continued infirmities, often requiring her to employ crutches or a cane to get around. Through 1934, the studio went virtually unused except to finish her painting, My Dress Hangs There, begun in New York. In the big pink house, Diego must still have been feeling the disappointment of losing his American mural commissions. Prior to returning to his murals at the National Palace in Mexico City, he began making sketches of Cristina Kahlo, Frida’s younger sister by 11 months. The two sisters had always been close, especially during Frida’s confinements for months on end. Cristina was as soft, pliable, feminine and delicate as Frida was assertive and aggressive around men and her pals. Cristina had wed, but her husband had abandoned her and their two children. The two women complemented each other, but Cristina became Diego’s

56. Diego Rivera,

favourite model, her Rubenesque nude body appearing in the hall of honour in the Secretariat

Assets, 1931.

of Health as the figures “Knowledge” and “Life”. Not too long after arriving back in Mexico,

Fresco, 239 x 188 cm.

Rivera began – or possibly intensified – a destructive affair with Cristina.

Dolores Olmedo Collection, Mexico City.

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Letter to Ella Wolfe July II, 1934 Beautiful Ella, […] Just think, Diego has been very sick these last two weeks. He had a nervous fever that lasted more than ten days without going away at all. His temperature kept going up and down and I did not know what to do. Nacho Millán treated him, and since Diego really respects him as a doctor, he did everything Nacho advised and he got much better in less than two weeks. Nacho says that Diego’s problem is a very high level of stress; so now he is giving him shots and a new diet to make him better. However, Diego looks very tired and thin, his skin colour is yellowish, and above all (and this is what worries me the most), I notice that he does not feel like working, and he is always sad as if nothing interests him. At times he is desperate and he still hasn’t started painting anywhere. He already has prepared the walls of the [National] Palace and of the medical school but since he still does not feel well he has not begun to paint. This makes me sadder than I have ever been, because I can never be at ease if he is not happy. His health worries me more than my own. If it were not that I don’t want to make him feel worse, I wouldn’t keep quiet about the great pain I feel seeing him like this. However, if I said something to him he would worry even more, since right now he is so sensitive that any minor thing demoralises and worries him. I do not really know what I will do to encourage him to work happily as before, since …he thinks I am to blame for all that is happening because I made him come to Mexico. But I know that it is not just me who prompted him to come here and this thought consoles me. You cannot imagine how I suffer knowing that he thinks he came here because of me and that that is the reason for his being in this condition. Sometimes I would like to tell you so many things, but it is difficult in a letter and I get frustrated at being so far away from you guys. There is no other choice but to wait for him to understand that I never had the least intention of causing him such harm; I knew exactly what it meant for him to come to Mexico. I tried to make him aware of this several times in New York. (I do not know what is going on with this machine; it is not typing decently). You guys witnessed the fact that I was not happy at all to leave, and even though there is nothing to be done at this point, it is a consolation to me that you know at least that what I am saying is true. I do not know if Diego’s problem is a consequence of the rapid loss of weight he had in Detroit or if it is a malfunction of his glands. The thing is that he is emotionally tired to a horrible degree, and I suffer more than he does, if that is possible, from realising that there is no way to make him change his mind. Even if I gave my life to help him recover his health, that would not help either. I must say that what I am telling you is little compared to how much I have suffered here these months. Even though I don’t say anything to Diego because I don’t want to worry him, sometimes I feel truly desperate. All this,

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naturally, has an impact on Diego’s financial situation, too, because he is not working and the enormous expenses he has are still the same. I don’t know where he is going to end up if this situation keeps up. I do everything possible to animate him and arrange things in the easiest way for him, but I have not accomplished anything yet, since you cannot even imagine how differently he acts compared to how you saw him in New York. He doesn’t feel like doing anything; he doesn’t want to paint here. I think he is right because I know the reasons why he feels this way. You cannot imagine what jerks and how inconsiderate these people are. I don’t know how we can change these people without changing what needs to be changed all over the world, which is full of pricks. So the problem is not Mexico or China, or the United States, but it is what you and I and everyone know. Naturally, I’d like Diego to be interested in expressing himself in the same way he did in New York – to express himself here or anywhere in the world. Actually, I think he is interested, but what is sad is that this is a malady inside of him that doesn’t let him be the same as he was. He uses Mexico or any other outside circumstance as an excuse, don’t you think? The fact is that I am in a constant state of anguish from seeing him like this. I don’t know what the solution is, do you understand? I don’t want him to know that I m telling you this because, as I already explained to you, he is intensely bothered by any little thing that has to do with what is happening to him. I’d like you to write to him intelligently as if I had not told you anything and it will animate him. Have Bert write to him as well because he says he likes nothing anymore of what he has done. He says that his Mexico paintings and, in part, the United States ones are horrible: that he’s wasted his life miserably; that he doesn’t feel like doing anything. It’s very difficult to explain his emotional state to you in a letter, but you will be able to understand through these few lines how painful it is for me to see him like that. If there is anyone in the whole world who has worked with all his energy and with all his strength, that is Diego. All I can tell you is little compared to how sad I feel to see how tired and sick of everything he is. I don’t want to bore you telling you only painful things, but I don’t know why I feel such relief by telling you what is happening to me. Maybe it is because you love me a little and so I take advantage to unload on you a little bit of the burden I have on my shoulders. But believe me, if it were not because I am feeling truly sad right now, I wouldn’t bother you with such a long and boring letter. […] You have to write soon so I do not become a sad and unpleasant child. Good-bye, beautiful Frieda I wrote you on University paper because I ran out of the regular paper and I do not have any other. Forgive me.

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57. My Grandparents, My Parents and I, 1936. Oil and tempera on metal, 30.7 x 34.5 cm. Donation from Allan Roos, M.D. and B. Roos, The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

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Frida knew the signs that Diego was once again involved with someone else, but when the “someone” turned out to be Cristina, Frida was at first crushed and then enraged. She had been betrayed by the two people closest to her. She locked the door to her side of the foot bridge. In a fit of anger, she chopped off her long hair and shoved her Tehuana dresses, skirts and blouses into the closet. About this same time, in 1934, her health took a downward spiral. Severe pains sent her into the hospital for an appendectomy, and in the third month of yet another unwanted pregnancy, she had an abortion. Lesions opened up in her right foot and became infected. In the big pink house, Diego’s health deteriorated as well. He had dieted in Detroit and the result proved debilitating, leaving him open to a number of disorders, both real and imagined. Frida wrote to a friend: …he thinks I am to blame for all that is happening because I made him come to Mexico... and that that is the reason for his being in this condition. 22 Throughout her writings to confidants and in her diary, Frida continually defended Diego’s petulant moods, his affairs, his depressions and small cruelties to her. She rationalised them as part of his nature. How often she pictured him as a child in her arms, an infant with his soft baby face needing to be cuddled. A mother always defends her child’s shortcomings and Frida accepted her dual role as wife and mother to this man who had never developed his emotions beyond those of a young boy. 58. Self-Portrait dedicated to

To his considerable discredit, the sullen and petulant Diego did not break off the affair

Marte R. Gómez, 1946.

with Cristina once Frida discovered them. He went on to paint a rather glamorous portrait

Pencil on paper, 38.5 x 32.5 cm.

of the younger sister with her two children in the National Palace mural, partially

Private collection.

obscuring a dowdy image of Frida. All this emotional strife resulted in little creative output from the devastated Frida. But in 1935, the accumulated pain and suffering

59. Self-Portrait, 1948. Oil on masonite, 50 x 39.5 cm. Private collection, Mexico City.

produced the most horrific of her retablo-style paintings on metal. She painted a murder and called it, A Few Small Nips. A slaughtered female corpse lies on a bloody bed. Stab wounds are evident all over her contorted nude body. On one leg she wears a black shoe, a stocking and a colourful garter rucked

60. Self-Portrait with Necklace, 1933.

down to her ankle. Above her stands her smirking murderer, still holding his blood-clotted knife.

Oil on metal, 34.5 x 29.5 cm.

A banner floats above them, carried by a white and a black dove of good and evil. It reads, “A Few

Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection,

Small Nips”. This murder actually took place and was in the newspaper headlines when

Mexico City.

Frida painted this gore besotted abattoir, letting the blood wash down across the frame.

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Those were the uncaring words of the murderer, a likely stand-in for Diego Rivera. Once again, she laid bare her emotions with allegory and in doing so helped flush out some of the anguish. She seemed bent on divesting herself of her previous life, expunging her ties to Rivera, changing her appearance and continuing her painting. She packed up and moved from the Bauhaus blue house to Mexico City, setting up housekeeping at 432 Avenida Insurgentes in a small but well appointed apartment. Diego, always ready with a gesture, promptly bought her and Cristina matching chrome furniture sets trimmed in red leather. The year became devoted to establishing her new persona, hooking up with old friends and shedding all the bad feelings stored up from her long time away from Mexico. Though she spoke out often against the “gringos” and their rich society built on the backs of oppressed workers, she also remembered the artists she had seen in the galleries of major museums and in the halls of these “gringo” collectors. She had seen some of the greatest painters in the world while residing in “Gringolandia”, not pictures in a book, but seeing every brush stroke, its pigment-thick track following the artist’s direction. As with most of Frida Kahlo’s short life, she was at odds and cross-purposes with herself. In her work, she disliked the Americanos, but couldn’t wait to apply what had been made available to her in their country. In her evolving personal life, for all her posturing about the randy Rivera’s duplicity, she saw him almost every day. And he sought her out as well. Amidst all this catharsis, Frida made an impromptu dash out of town to New York with a packed bag and two friends: Anita Brenner and Mary Shapiro – who had just left her husband. They made the harrowing and exhausting journey aboard a plane, train, and an automobile. Frida took advantage of friends she had made during their previous long stay to unleash all her emotional demons. Lucienne Bloch, and Bertram and Ella Wolfe concluded that Frida still loved Diego and should reconcile with him. On July 23, 1935, following their council, Frida wrote to Diego: ...the letters, the problems with skirts, the female teachers of... English, the Gypsy models, the helpers with “good will”, the disciples interested in the “art of painting”, and the plenipotentiary women sent from faraway places are just simply jokes, and that deep inside you and I love each other a lot!

61. Self-Portrait with Monkey, 1945.

Even if we experience endless adventures, cracks in the doors, “mentions”

Oil on masonite, 60 x 42.5 cm.

from mothers, and international complaints, don't we always love each other!

Museo Dolores Olmedo, Mexico City.

23

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Letter to Ella and Bertram Wolfe Thursday, Oct. 18, 1934 Ella and Boit, […] I had never suffered so much and did not think I could take so much pain. You cannot even imagine what state I am in, and I know it is going to take me years to be able to get out of this mess that I have in my head. At the beginning, I thought there was a solution since I thought that what had happened would be something that would last a short time and would not be serious, but every day I am more and more convinced that it was just wishful thinking… First, it is a double disgrace, if I can explain it like that. You know better than anyone what Diego means to me in all senses, and on the other hand, she was the sister whom I loved the most and whom I tried to help as much as I could; that’s why the situation became horribly complicated and is getting worse every day. I’d like to tell you about everything so you could have a clear idea of what this has been for me, but I think this is going to be a boring letter, since I will not talk about anything but myself. If I gave you details about this matter, you would run away without finishing the letter […] I love you guys very much and I have enough trust in you so as not to hide [from you] the greatest pain in my life. That’s why I decided to tell you everything now. It’s clear that the thing is not just an emotional stupidity on my part, but touches on all aspects of my life and that’s why I feel lost, with nothing that can help me react in an intelligent manner. Here in Mexico I don’t have anyone […] I had trusted that Diego would change, but I can see and know that it is impossible; it’s just a whim on my part. Naturally, I should have understood from the beginning that it will not be me who will make him live in this or that way, especially when it comes to such a matter. Now that he is back to work, he is acting the same way. I had hoped that by working he would forget it all, but on the contrary, nothing can take him away from what he believes and considers to be right. Ultimately, all my attempts are ridiculous and stupid. He wants total freedom, which he always had and would have now if he had acted sincerely and honestly toward me. What makes me saddest is that we are not even friends anymore. He always lies to me and hides every detail of his life as if I was his worst enemy. We live false lives that are full of stupidity, which I cannot take anymore. First, he has his work, which protects him from many things, and then his adventures, which keep him entertained. People look for him and not me. I know that, as always, he is full of concerns and worries about his work; however, he lives a full life without the emptiness of mine. I have nothing because I don’t have him.

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I never thought he was everything to me and that, separated from him, I was like a piece of trash. I thought I was helping him to live as much as I could, and that I could solve any situation in my life alone without complications of any kind. But now I realise I don’t have any more than any other girl disappointed at being dumped by her man. I am worth nothing; I know how to do nothing; I cannot be on my own. My situation seems so ridiculous and stupid to me that you can’t imagine how I dislike and hate myself. I’ve lost my best years being supported by a man, doing nothing else but what I thought would benefit and help him. I never thought about myself, and after six years, his answer is that fidelity is a bourgeois virtue and that it exists only to exploit [people] and for economic gain. Believe me, I never thought of it from that point of view. I know I was as stupid as they come, but I was sincerely stupid. I imagine, or at least I hope, that I’ll recover little by little. I’ll try to make a new life, putting my energy into something that will help me get over this in the most intelligent way. I thought of going to New York to live with you guys, but I didn’t have the money. Now I think that the best thing for me will be to go to school and work here until I can leave Mexico. As for the money that Diego gave me to put away, I bought a house in Mexico that was quite cheap; I didn’t want to go back to San Angel, where I suffered so much you cannot even imagine. Now I’m living at Insurgentes 432 (write to this address). Sometimes Diego comes to visit, but we don’t have anything to talk about or any connection of any kind. He doesn’t tell me about the things he is doing and he’s not interested at all in what I do or think. When things have come to that point, the best thing is to cut them off at the root. I firmly believe that this is going to be the [best] solution for him, although it will mean more suffering for me, even more than what I’ve already had and have, which is indescribable. For him, though, I think it will be better because I won’t be a burden for him, as the others have been, and I will not accept simply being an economic burden. […] I assume that you are not on my or Diego’s side, but you can now understand why I’ve suffered so much. If you have a little bit of free time, you will write me, right? Your letters will be an immense consolation and I’ll feel less lonely than I feel now. I send you a thousand kisses. Please do not take me for a sentimental and stupid, obnoxious woman, since you know how much I love Diego and what it means for me to lose him. Frieda

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It appeared that Frida and Diego had to suffer this nadir of their relationship in order to clear the air once and for all concerning their agreement of “mutual independence”. There would be more crises, but with this understanding they could, at least, get on with their work. However, she used up the rest of 1935 exercising that “mutual independence” in a number of lesbian and gentlemen affairs. Diego waved off her affairs with women, but even a “mutually independent” Mexican male drew the line at sharing his wife with paramours. During the warm days of Mexican summer, Frida slipped out of her apartment for rendezvous with men of her choosing. While her love-making with famed Mexican muralist Ignacio Aguirre might have been casual, the American sculptor, Isamu Noguchi, was quite another matter. He fell in love with her. She met him while he worked in Mexico City on a Guggenheim grant. Their assignations were frequent, passionate and carried out with great discretion considering the fact that Noguchi worked alongside Rivera every day. Noguchi had become obsessed with her and she was besotted with the attentions of the handsome sculptor. She continually shifted their trysting places between Cristina’s apartment and La Casa Azul. Diego had made it plain that if he ever caught her with another man, he would shoot the cabrone. One day, Rivera showed up at the Blue House where Noguchi and Frida were en flagrante. Knowing Rivera was usually armed, Noguchi snatched up his clothes and pounded out the French doors into the central courtyard, dashed its length down a corridor of phallic organ pipe cacti and vaulted the wall at its end. Another version has him scrambling up an orange tree and vanishing across the rooftops. In either case, he left behind one sock which Frida’s dog kept as a chewy toy. Some time later, Noguchi visited Frida during one of her hospital stays and Diego entered 62. Self-Portrait with Red and Gold Dress,

the room. Panzón must have had suspicions about the young sculptor and his wife because he

1941.

drew the big Colt and quietly suggested in effect that one of the bullets in its cylinder had

Oil on canvas. Private collection.

Noguchi’s name on it. Isamu’s ardour cooled considerably. The year 1935 ended with very little painting and much soul searching. A single self-

63. Self-Portrait with Stalin or

portrait was produced showing Frida gazing at us from beneath a boyish mop of short curly

Frida and Stalin, c. 1954.

hair. Her eyes are calm and her mouth gives nothing away. Above her eyes, the trademark

Oil on hard fibre, 59 x 39 cm.

eyebrow is more shaggy and exaggerated than usual as is the moustache that darkens her

Museo Frida Kahlo, Mexico City.

upper lip. It’s not difficult to imagine her hands on her hips, ready for whatever came next. What happened next was alcoholism, still more surgery and Leon Trotsky. Frida had

64. Self-Portrait dedicated to Leon Trotsky or

always enjoyed a good party and a few “cocktailitos”, but during and after L’ affaire Diego, her

Between the Curtains, 1937.

consumption rose precipitously. Besides her drinking at social occasions, she began

Oil on canvas, 87 x 70 cm.

frequenting cantinas in Mexico City and pulquerias in near-by villages. In 1936 she moved

Donation from Clare Boothe Luce,

her belongings back into her half of the dual house at San Angel. She frequently attended

National Museum of Women in the Arts,

soirées thrown by Diego for visiting artists such as actress Dolores Del Rio, writer John Dos

Washington D.C.

Passos, Mexican photographer Manuel Alvarez Bravo and Mexican president Cardenas.24

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While her socialising was on the increase, she turned her attention to mending fences with her sister, Cristina. As she didn’t want to give up on Diego, her ties to Cristina were also too strong to cut. Frida adored her sister’s two children, Isolde and Antonio. Besides her visits to Cristina’s apartment, Frida always had time for the children at her studio in San Angel as though they were the children her wounded body denied her. Her reoccurring bad health forced Frida into the American Cowdray Hospital in Mexico City for another bout of surgery. Though it seems difficult to accept considering her active and strenuous lifestyle, but Frida Kahlo suffered from daily pain and fatigue. Doctors paraded in and out of her life offering various diagnoses and cures directly related to her 1925 accident. Most were wrong, but she listened to them all. As anyone with a chronic bad back, asthma, arthritis, migraines, or any condition that produces lingering or sudden periods of pain understands. Life becomes a distraction, an escape from the pain that is always there, an automatic function like breathing and swallowing. Frida pushed her other senses into overload and turned a stoic face to the world. Today, modern medicine has studied her symptoms, relying on notes from those doctors and in particular, Dr. Leonardio Zamudio who has her complete medical records. The latest diagnosis is she suffered: …posttraumatic fibromyalgia. This prevalent syndrome is characterised by persistent widespread pain, chronic fatigue, sleep disorders, and vegetative symptoms, and by the presence of tender points in well-defined anatomic areas. The concept of fibromyalgia as a clinical entity as we know it today was probably unknown to most physicians of the early twentieth century. This diagnosis explains her chronic, severe, widespread pain accompanied by profound fatigue. It also explains the lack of response to diverse forms of treatment. The onset of fibromyalgia after physical trauma is wellrecognised.25 Frida’s inward journey to rebuild and reshape her life found expression in her 1936 painting on metal, My Grandparents, My Parents and I. A naked five-year-old Frida stands as a giant towering in the courtyard of La Casa Azul against a brown and cloudy desert landscape. She clutches a red ribbon that connects portraits of her grandparents joining them to the central

65. Self-Portrait with Itzcuintli Dog, c. 1939.

wedding portrait of her parents. It’s a charming bit of allegorical kitsch, but Frida carries the story

Oil on canvas, 71 x 52 cm.

further back to her prenatal portrait in the womb connected by the umbilical to her mother.

Private collection, USA.

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66. The Wounded Deer (The Little Deer), 1946. Oil on masonite, 22.4 x 30 cm. Private collection, Houston (Texas).

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Letter to Diego Rivera July 23, 1935 A certain letter I happened to see, in a certain coat, belonging to a certain man, coming from a certain lady from distant and damned Germany. I think it must be the lady that Willi Valentiner sent here to have fun and with “scientific”, “ artistic”, and “archeological” purposes... made me angry and to tell you the truth, jealous... Why do I have to be so stubborn and obstinate as not to understand that the letters, the problems with skirts, the female teachers of... English, the Gypsy models, the helpers with “good will”, the disciples interested in the “art of painting”, and the plenipotentiary women sent from faraway places are just simply jokes, and that deep inside you and I love each other a lot! Even if we experience endless adventures, cracks in the doors, “mentions” from mothers, and international complaints, don’t we always love each other! I think that what is happening is that I am a little stupid and a fool because all these things have happened and have repeated themselves during the seven years that we have lived together. All this anger has simply made me understand better that I love you more than my own skin, and that even though you don’t love me as much, you love me a little anyway – don’t you? If this is not true, I’ll always be hopeful that it could be, and that’s enough for me... Love me a little I adore you Frieda

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Letter to Ella Wolfe Mexico, March I9J6 Beautiful Ella, Martin must have told you about what has happened to me these last few months, and that is why I will not bother you with all the details of the adventures, vicissitudes, and troubles of the powerful Chicua Rivera… It’s only the head that is malfunctioning and there is no remedy since I was born “cucko o” and cucko o I will die, In spite of all that, you love me, don’t you? […] As for the biography, we don’t even have to talk about it since you and everyone knows that Bert must write it [...] Diego thinks that in case Covici Friede publishes the book, Bert should get information regarding issues of price, royalties, etc. from the beginning, because Covici pulled several fast ones on Diego regarding the money with the “ Portrait of America ”. That could be avoided this time by clarifying all these things in the contract, don’t you think? This is the most important thing: Diego doesn’t think that the frescoes painted in Mexico have the same artistic interest as the ones he painted in the United States, and that the “Portrait of Mexico” should be done considering more the political and social interest that the frescoes contain, taking the analysis of these [frescoes] as an excuse to analyse Mexico’s current political situation clearly and openly, which is of most interest, thus creating a book helpful to workers and peasants, by avoiding as much as possible the exaggeration of the artistic value of the paintings and considering their political content. Naturally, this analysis would be broad and precise, and Diego would do it according to his political beliefs, especially now, after all the C.P.’s disgusting actions here in Mexico and the world over. I don’t know what Bert will think about this, since you know there are differences between them. I think it is very important for them to talk frankly about this from the beginning, since Diego would not accept putting together the book if it’s not in the way I just explained to you. That’s why I think it will be good for you to ask Bert what he thinks about this and whether he thinks he and Diego can come to an agreement. Otherwise, he can write to Diego personally with suggestions as to how the book could be done without friction between them. These things aside, I don’t think there’s anyone better than Bert to write this book and certainly Diego could not do it better with anyone else. Tell Bert these things and answer me soon so I can tell Diego what the two of you think […] You, darling, receive millions of kisses to share among yourself, Boit, your mummy and dad, brothers and sisters, etc [...] (Special ones for you from la Chicua) [Four lip prints appear at the bottom.]

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And then further still, as, to the left of the Blue House, a single sperm penetrates an egg, the moment of conception. By acknowledging the ties to her past, this flashback and consolidation of all the genetic elements that sum up her existence – and unfortunately end with her childless state – possibly serves to reinforce the new start to her life, the second birth of Frida Kahlo. She had begun to paint again, had established some equilibrium in her relationships with Diego and her sister and looked forward to a period of stability in her congenial, Bohemian lifestyle. And then a hunted fugitive, dogged by Stalinist assassins stepped off a rust bucket oil tanker in Tampico and, once more, her life was hurled into emotional chaos. Lev Davidovich Bronstein was born in the Ukraine on November 7, 1879. He was a bright lad and attracted to radical politics during his university years. His activities and oratory in Tzarist Russia ended in flight and exile in England where he changed his name to Leon Trotsky. An avowed Marxist, he aligned himself with Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and returned to Russia following the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. Lenin (“the end justifies the means”) and Trotsky, his number two, didn’t see eye to eye in their Communist dogma, but both became heroic icons in the Bolshevik movement as the government began to stabilise. Trotsky’s high position in the Kremlin halls of power plummeted after Lenin’s death and the Marxist ideologue became an obstacle to Josef Stalin’s brutish power grab. After being battered about by trumped-up charges of counter-revolutionary activities, Trotsky was kicked out of Russia in 1929. Shortly thereafter, Stalin realised he had made a mistake allowing Trotsky to remain alive and keep up a steady stream of anti-Stalin books and articles. The GPU – Russia’s Secret Police – was dispatched to silence Trotsky once and for all. With these killers hot on his trail, Leon and his wife, Natalia, began a long odyssey of globe hopping, relying on friends for their safety. Diego Rivera was a committed Trotskyite. Though he had been kicked out of the party, he joined Trotsky’s Fourth International, lending his prestige to this Trotsky organisation that stated in their 1936 Olso Convention: 67. Memory or The Heart, 1937.

The working class of the U.S.S.R. has been robbed of the last possibility of a

Oil on metal, 40 x 28 cm.

legal reformation of the state. The struggle against the bureaucracy necessarily

Private collection, New York.

becomes a revolutionary struggle. True to the traditions of Marxism, the Fourth International decisively rejects individual terror, as it does all other means of

68. Roots or The Pedregal, 1943.

political adventurism. The bureaucracy can be smashed only by means of

Oil on metal, 30.5 x 49.9 cm.

the goal-conscious movement of the masses against the usurpers, parasites

Private collection, Houston (Texas).

and oppressors.

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Aware of Trotsky’s nine years of peripatetic wanderings in search of safe haven, Diego petitioned Mexico’s President Cardenas to give sanctuary to the revolutionary on the run. Cardenas granted permission providing Trotsky didn’t interfere with the Mexican government’s internal affairs. On January 9, 1937, Trotsky watched the wooden gangplank lower onto the dock at Tampico, Mexico. At his elbow, Natalia scanned the greeting party for friendly faces. She’d grown tired of skulking around Europe just ahead of hard-eyed men with guns, knives and bombs. On the dock, looking back at her and Leon, were smiling Trotsky supporters, party functionaries – and Frida Kahlo. An eye problem coupled with Diego’s bad kidneys had kept him in the hospital and Frida represented him at the welcome. The party was quickly bundled into automobiles and then onto a train for the ride to Mexico City. To confuse possible assassins lying in wait, false welcoming parties were established while the train stopped at a small station outside the city. Eventually, the party reached Frida’s parents’ home, La Casa Azul in Coyoacán. On arrival, a makeshift group of bodyguards took up posts outside watching the rooftops and street as the Trotskys hurried inside. Guillermo Kahlo smiled politely and shook hands, not having a clue to the identity of the gray-bearded man with the dowdy wife. Trotsky and his wife lived off and on at La Casa Azul for two years as the aging revolutionary wrote a continuing stream of anti-Stalinist tracts for publication around the world. His age – a hard-lived 58 – did not interfere with his libido, nor did it keep Frida from finding his military posture, piercing eyes and dazzling intellect very attractive. His old-world 69. Self-Portrait dedicated to Dr. Eloesser,

manners, admonitions against her smoking and excess drink plus Diego’s unswerving

1940.

devotion to the man made him a perfect target for Frida’s considerable powers of seduction

Oil on masonite, 59.5 x 40 cm.

and continuing need to give Diego a few more “nips” for his affair with Cristina. She turned

Private collection, USA.

up the heat, speaking to Trotsky in English, a language unfamiliar to Trotsky’s wife. And if she made no secret of her desires in person, Frida’s paintings in 1937 reflected her new confidence

70. Self-Portrait dedicated to Sigmund Firestone, 1940.

and purpose. The volume of her work increased as did the variety of her subject matter. Continuing

Oil on masonite, 61 x 43 cm.

the examination of her childhood, she painted My Nanny and I, this time adding her roots

Private collection, USA.

to ancient Mexico. She was turned over to an Indian wet nurse when she was a baby. Having no recollection of the nurse’s actual features, she commemorates that event by depicting the

71. Me and My Parrots, 1941.

substitute with the face of a carved Indian mask. From the nurse’s breast flows the fruit of

Oil on canvas, 82 x 62.8 cm.

the soil, nurtured by rain drops pelting down from a cloud-roiled sky – “milk of the Virgin”

Private collection.

according to Frida’s mother. Frida’s adult head grows from the child’s body as in My Birth.

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But here, she’s relaxed and accepting in her virtually luminescent white gown trimmed in lace. Curiously, in the arms of the stone-faced, golem-like surrogate, the girl seems as much a sacrifice as something cherished. At the bottom of the painting is a retablo banner, but it is blank. Of this painting, Diego Rivera wrote in 1943: And Frida is the only example in the history of art of someone who tore out her breast and heart to tell the biological truth of what she feels in them of reason/imagination that is faster than light, she painted her mother and wetnurse, knowing that she really does not know their faces. The nourishing “nana’s” face is only the Indian mask of hard rock, and her glands are clusters that drip milk like the rain fertilises the earth, or like the tear that fertilises pleasure. The mother is the grieving mater with seven daggers of pain that makes possible the torn opening through which emerges the Child Frida, the only human force that has created birth by means of its own action in reality.26 She also painted her only formal portrait of Diego Rivera. The year had not been good for Diego’s mural commissions. He looks tired and undernourished, His illnesses and eye problems have taken their toll. Though his own work volume had slipped, he tirelessly devoted much of his time to propping up Frida’s confidence in her capabilities. Her rendition of his diminished presence is tender and sympathetic. On the other hand, his act of callous infidelity with her sister would never be far from Frida’s palette and brushes. She created Memory in 1937, an enigmatic trio of three Fridas: as a suspended schoolgirl costume at the time of her accident, but with only one arm, and as Frida dressed in white with her cropped hair and wearing a bolero jacket made of cowhide. A wooden lance pierces a heart-shaped, see-through hole in the jacket. No hands extend from the jacket’s cuffs, but the third Frida – a Tehuana costume on a hanger – extends an arm to the wounded and helpless Frida. As though wrenched from her chest by an ancient Aztec priest, her huge heart lies abandoned on a desert landscape pumping vast quantities of blood into the soil and the sea. Red blood vessels tie the three Frida images together – each of them incomplete and all tied to the pain of a broken heart. My Doll and I, painted in oil on metal, speaks to her childless state, not with pathos, or longing, but rather with an aloof acceptance. She wears a Tehuana skirt and blouse and sits

72. Self-Portrait with Monkeys, 1943.

next to a naked boy doll. But she’s smoking as though waiting for a bus. All her life she loved

Oil on canvas, 81.5 x 63 cm.

and collected dolls and yet this one seems abandoned and ignored seated an arm’s length away

Collection of Jacques and Natasha

on the bare cane bed.

Gelman, Mexico.

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73. My Nanny and I, 1937. Oil on metal, 30.5 x 34.7 cm. Museo Dolores Olmedo, Mexico City.

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74. Two Nudes in the Wood or The Earth or My Nanny and I, 1939. Oil on metal, 25 x 30.5 cm. Private collection.

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Letter to the Mexican composer Carlos Chávez April 29, 1936 Brother, I received your poem and I don’t need to tell you that I was very happy. You know this well. I’d like to be able to answer you with verses, but this time I’m not even in the mood since Diego and I have been at the Hospital Inglés for the last two weeks. I had surgery again with dubious results, because my paw does not want to heal. But that’s the least of my concerns. I’m so sad about Diego’s illness that you wouldn’t believe it. He has a big problem with his eye. I’ve had a few days like never before; now I’ll tell you everything in detail. Diego started having problems with his left eye about a month ago. At the beginning we thought it was not serious, since he’s had problems with his eyes many times before, as you know, but without any major consequences. But this time it’s a serious infection in his lachrymal gland (he had tests done); it turned out to be streptococcus. We have seen all the eye doctors in Mexico. They all have the same opinion; they say it is a dangerous thing and that he runs the risk of losing his eye in case of the slightest injury to the conjunctiva, a situation that could easily happen with any dust particle or external agent that could injure his eye directly, given his delicate condition. These microbes have already infiltrated in the skin and tissue of the eyelid, in the lower part of his face, and in his forehead, so he has a terrible swelling that has almost closed his eye. There was a moment when we thought everything was lost; you can imagine his situation and my anguish. I cannot even describe it with words. Three days ago the inflammation seemed to start coming down a little, so there is hope that this will not lead to more serious consequences. However, Dr. Silva says that the danger is not over yet and that the recovery is quite long. He’s in a very dark room and the poor man feels truly desperate (rightly so) and I, helpless as I am, can hardly see him since I cannot walk yet. Even if I could, I couldn’t solve anything or help him in any way. This is what has made me crazy with anguish. We’re thinking of taking him to New York if he does not get better this week, to see what the eye doctors up there can do for him. I believe that it is not exactly a local eye problem, but a general condition related to the malfunction of his thyroid. Moreover, I think that a trip in his condition would be terrible and a huge responsibility. We wouldn’t know what to do if something happened because of the trip. So here I am, desperate, like an idiot, without knowing how to solve this situation. Naturally, I am not going to fix anything with my stupidities and my desperation. I think that the most reasonable thing would be to

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wait for the injections of “ Bioformina ” and Dr. Silva’s treatment to take effect, since it would be damn foolish to expect miracles in a situation that has to take its natural course. However, what most concerns me is to see him down and to think of the danger that the infection could turn into a septicaemia, or something generalised, that he could not fight off given his condition. I don’t even want to think about it. I want you to please tell me what you think — what would be the most appropriate thing to do and whether you think that in New York it would be easier to find a good doctor, or if it is just my bias. There, there are a bunch of babbling charlatans who could screw him up even more. However, your opinion would be a consolation for me, since you don’t know how much sorrow and sadness I feel for Diego. It’s not necessary for me to explain more, since you love him well and know what this means to him. Forgive me for not speaking of anything but my pain in this letter. You can understand how I would like to talk to you about many other things, especially about how happy I am about all you have accomplished up there. Believe me, it has been a source of happiness for me. Please write to me. You will help me feel stronger to calmly await whatever may come. Hopefully Diego will be a little better by the time this letter reaches you; this is what we all want, me more than anyone. Say hi to Miguel and Rosa. Try to come back very soon, because we miss you a lot. I will be waiting for your letter. Diego sends his greetings. My best regards and a hug from, Frieda Please try to find out who is the best eye doctor there and prices of hospitals, etc. I also would appreciate it very much if you could talk to Dr. Claude and more or less tell him about Diego’s case. (I gave you his number in my last letter but if you lost it, you can always find him at the Rockefeller Institute every morning. Dr. Albert Claude.) Here is the complete name of the microbes: Streptococcus hemolyticus. They have invaded the whole left lachrymal gland and gotten into the facial tissue (left side). It would be interesting to know his opinion.

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75. Without Hope, 1945. Oil on canvas, mounted on masonite, 28 x 36 cm. Museo Dolores Olmedo, Mexico City.

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76. Fulang Chang and I, 1937. Oil on masonite, 40 x 28 cm. The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

77. Self-Portrait with Thorny Necklace, 1940. Oil on canvas, 63.5 x 49.5 cm. Humanities Research Center, University of Austin, Austin (Texas).

The opposite to this abandonment is The Deceased Dimas Rosas at the Age of Three, a painting on Masonite of a small dead child, swathed in elegant robes of Saint Joseph and crowned in gold-gilded cardboard. This image is part of a tradition of painting or

78. Diego and I, 1949.

photographing postmortem children dating back to the sixteenth century. The child is

Oil on canvas, mounted on masonite,

dressed in honour of the Patron Saint of New Spain and holds a scepter of gladiolus. Lying

29.5 x 22.4 cm.

on a woven palm mat amid a scattering of Cempasuchil flowers, this “dead angel” is

Private collection, New York.

rendered with a delicate, but realistic touch and must have given Frida some hard moments during the painting’s execution. She had lost her children before she had a

79. Self-Portrait with Hair Down, 1947. Oil on hard fibre, 61 x 45 cm. Private collection.

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chance to know them. To vent some of her maternal instincts, Frida kept a variety of small animals, mostly little hairless dogs, talking birds and monkeys. One of her favourite critters was Fulang Chang

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which means “Any Old Monkey”. In the oil on board painting, Fulang Chang and I, she surrounds herself with a world of softness: her silky hair, Chang’s fur, plant tendrils cascading down in the background. This is a seductive portrait showing the artist at her most feminine. Amidst this explosion of art, being feminine was important to Frida as she swept into her affair with Leon Trotsky. The old revolutionary succumbed to her charms as she did to his courtly attentions. They were more like giggling students, passing notes hidden in books, covertly seeking opportunities to be alone. Keeping Diego and Natalia in the dark was paramount as the two played their games. Diego never did tumble to the affair as it continued, but Natalia knew the promiscuous appetites of her husband of 35 years and didn’t have to understand English to catch on to Frida's not so subtle mooning about. Frida’s full length portrait, Between the Curtains, that she dedicated in writing to Trotsky – For Leon Trotsky with all love I dedicate this painting on the 7th of November, 1937 – leaves no doubt about her feelings. The fact that she is dressed in her finest Tehuana gown with an intricately woven salmon-coloured reboso across her shoulders, gives additional weight to the importance of this gift. At the insistence of his entourage who feared security breeches and also that the affair that might cause a scandal, Trotsky and his party left La Casa Azul on July 7, moving to a hacienda 80 miles away from Mexico City. Natalia also added to the pressure and delivered an ultimatum to her infatuated roué. The separation and all the other obstacles cooled the affair and soon it ended. Though Trotsky returned to the Blue House twenty days later, the spark was gone. The self portrait, Between the Curtains, was given to Trotsky at the end of the affair. He had her again and would have her until the end of his life. In 1940 a GPU assassin, planted in the household of Trotsky’s final bunker-like home in Mexico, killed the “father of the revolution” with an ice axe.

80. Self-Portrait with Monkey, 1940. Oil on masonite, 55.2 x 43.5 cm. Private collection, USA.

81. The Flower of Life, 1943. 21

Herrera, Hayden, op.cit., p. 167

22

Ibid., p. 181

23

Ibid., p. 186

24

Rummel, op.cit., p. 112

Oil on masonite, 27.8 x 19.5 cm. Museo Dolores Olmedo, Mexico City.

82. The Love Embrace of the Universe,

25

26

The Earth (Mexico), I, Diego and

Fibromyalgia in Frida Kahlo’s life and art, Arthritis Rheum, 2000 Mar; 43(3): 708-9, Martínez-Lavin, Manuel MD;

Señor Xólotl, 1949.

Amigo, Mary-Carmen MD; Coindreau, Javier MD; Canoso, Juan MD

Oil on canvas, 70 x 60.5 cm.

Rivera, Diego, “Frida Kahlo and Mexican Art”, Boletín del Seminario de Cultura Mexicana, Vol. 1, No. 2 October, 1943

Private collection, Mexico City.

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Letter to Lucienne Bloch (written in English) February 14, 1938 Darling Lucy, […] Now I will tell you some things about myself. I haven’t changed very much since you saw me last. Only I wear again my crazy Mexican dress, my hair has grown longer again, and I am as skinny as always. My character hasn’t changed either, I am as lazy as always, without enthusiasm for any thing, quite stupid, and damn sentimental, sometimes I think that it is because I am sick, but of course that is only a very good pretext. I could paint as long as I wish, I could read or study or do many things in spite of my bad foot an other bad things, but, there is the point, I live on the air, accepting things as they come, without the minor effort to change them, and all day long I feel sleepy, tired and dispirited. What can I do! Since I came back from New York I have painted about twelve paintings, all small and unimportant, with the same personal subjects that only appeal to myself and nobody else, I sent four of them to a gallery here in Mexico, the University gallery, which is a small and rotten place, but the only one which admits any kind of stuff, so I sent them there without any enthusiasm, four or five people told me they were swell, the rest think they are too crazy. To my surprise, Julien Levy wrote me a letter, saying that somebody talked to him about my paintings and that he was very much interested in having an exhibition in his gallery, I answered sending few photographs of my last works, and he sent another letter very enthusiastic about the photos, and asking me for an exhibition of thirty things on October of this year and he wants to have Diego’s exhibition at the same time, so I accepted, and if nothing happens in the meanwhile, I will go to New York in September. I am not quite sure that Diego will have his works ready for then, but perhaps he will come later, and after to London. Such are the projects we have, but you know Diego as well as I do, and... quien sabe lo que pase de

aqui a entonces. I must tell you, that Diego painted recently a series of landscapes. Two of them, if you trust my own taste, are the best things he ever painted in his whole life. They are simply gorgeous, I could describe them to you, they are different to any thing else he has painted before, but I tell you they are magnificent! The colour, Kid, is incredible, and the drawing, gee, its so perfect and strong, that you feel like jumping and crying of joy when you see them. One of them will be very soon at the Brooklyn Museum, so you will see it there, it is a tree on blue background, please tell me your opinion after you have seen it. Now that I know that I will have this exhibition in New York, I am working a little bit more to have the thirty damn paintings ready, but I am afraid I will not finish them. We will see. […] About Diego I am happy to tell you that he feels very well now, his eyes don’t bother him any more, he is fat but not too much, and he works as always from morning to night with the same

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enthusiasm, he still behaves sometimes as a baby, he permits me to scold him once in a while without abusing too much of that privilege naturally, in one word, he is pretty swell guy as ever was, and in spite of his weakness for “ ladies ” (must young Americans who come to Mexico for two or three weeks and to whom he is always willing to show his murals outside of Mexico City) he is as nice and fine boy as you know. Well darling, I think this letter is already a magazine for my character. I told you all I could, taking account of my bad humour in this moment having pains on my foot, etc, etc. I will send this letter today, airmail, so you will know a word about this lousy person. Please give my love to Dimi, and tonight, after you go to bed, make some nice caresses on your belly, thinking I make them myself to my future godchild. I am sure it will be a girl, a little nice beautiful girl made with the best chosen hormones from Lucy and Dimi, in case I fail, and it happens to be a boy, gee! I will be proud of him just the same, any way, boy or girl I will love it as if it were the child I was going to have in Detroit. Give my love to Ella and Boit, tell them that in spite of my silence I love them the same old way. Give a kiss to Jay Lovestone, don’t pay any attention in case he blushes, just give it in my name. To Suzy also give my love and my best congratulations for the new little mathematician she will bring to the planet. And... one favour, when ever you happen to pass near Sheridan Square, go to the thirtieth floor and give my regards to Jeanne de Lanux, and leave a little paper with one kiss painted with lipstick for Pierre. Will you do it! OK. Thanks a lot. Write to me more often. I promise to answer. What about your father! And your Mummy? Here goes my love to you dear Lucy, as soon we know the sex of the baby, I will send a present for the future citizen of the World. Your murals of which you send photos last year were swell, Diego thought so also, send us photos from the last ones. Do not forget. Thank you for your letter, thank you for remembering me and Diego and for being a nice kid wanting to have babies with such strong clean and wonderful enthusiasm. Diego sends you both his best regards and un abrazote de felicitación por el futuro niño. Frida

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I

f her search for expression as an artist traveled along many paths in 1937, Frida Kahlo’s perception of the economic value of her work began to stir over the next three years. If the truth be told, she never became a self-sustaining artist. Diego Rivera paid her

medical bills and kept the refrigerators stocked. Their actual needs were minor, but their whimsical purchases, collections of artefacts and crafts, and other non-essential expenses tallied up huge sums. Though Diego’s commissions – and they were sparse from 1937 to 1940 – kept them in funds, Frida handled most of his money. He often left large checks uncashed and buried beneath piles of litter for months. He hated going to the bank. It was “…too much trouble”. Since her childhood, Frida had never worried about money. Her father often scrambled for jobs between government changeovers by vote or by bullet, but his reputation as a photographer always kept tortillas on the table. Even before Diego came along, Guillermo managed to pay for Frida’s surgeries, treatments and hospital stays. With her considerable medical bills, love of shopping for jewellery, knick-knacks, dolls, her elaborate costumes, and art supplies, plus her growing alcoholism, Frida would be judged “high maintenance” today. The volume of work begun in 1938 and continued through the 1940s reveals her changed thinking about the paintings from “… not worth offering for sale”, to this excerpt from a letter to Emmy Lou Packard dated December 15, 1941 from a charmingly aware saleswoman: You know which one it is, right? The one where I’m with my nanny sucking pure milk! Do you remember! Hopefully, you can convince them to buy it, since you can’t even imagine how much in need of moola I am now. (Tell them it’s worth 250 dollars.) I’m sending you a photograph so you can tell them a bunch of beautiful things about it and help me trigger their interest in that “work of art” -eh, Kid. Also, tell them about the one with “the bed” that is in New York; maybe they’ll be interested in that one – it’s the one with the skull on top,

83. Basket of Flowers, 1941.

remember? That costs 300 eagles. Maybe you can give me a little push,

Oil on copper, 64.5 cm in diameter.

beautiful, since, as I said before, I urgently need the dough.

Private collection.

27

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But as the calendar ticked over into 1938, Frida still saw herself as a “talented amateur”. She had used her work as payment for medical costs to her sympathetic doctor and lifelong friend, Dr. Leo Eloesser, Many friends had her paintings, given to them as keepsakes, but the rest were still stored in her studio or hung on her walls. Frida Kahlo was no dilettante. She was extensively well read in art history and had personally examined works of great artists during her time in the United States. She had to know her work stood on its own merit and was unique in its themes and execution. But old insecurities die hard. With all the masks peeled away, she was still 13-year-old Frida, “pata de palo” (peg leg) to her peers. She was the crippled provincial girl left behind by Alejandro Gómez Arias. She was always cast as the outsider, stared at by the gringos in her Mexican costumes, patronised and condescended to by the press. In person, her shield and armour was the witty, sensuous, mildly vulgar, bisexual party girl she had created and inhabited with apparent relish. Her stoic gazes from photos and her paintings translucently concealed the many psychological hurts and slights she had endured. But if she wanted to have the last laugh, there was nothing for it but to place her inner secrets, her scars and personal mythology in front of the public inquisition and await the reading of the verdict. At a group exhibition of Mexican art held in the Social Action Department Gallery of the University of Mexico, she sent My Grandparents, My Parents and I and three other “personal” works to the “…small and rotten place”. She confessed to Lucienne Bloch, “…I send them there without any enthusiasm, four or five people said they were swell…”28 She was completely unprepared for the letter that arrived a short time after the show closed. Manhattan gallery owner Julien Levy had been approached by someone who had seen the University exhibition. Levy asked if she would consent to an exhibit of her paintings in his gallery on East 55th Street. It’s not difficult for anyone who has tentatively pushed one of their darlings out into public for judgment – whether it is a painting, a poem, or a jar of fruit jam – to appreciate the ripple of excitement that must have raced through the hand that held that letter. And yet how many good things had been snatched away? She sent him a few 84. Still Life, 1942.

photos of her paintings. Levy answered with another, even more enthusiastic letter. Could she

Oil on copper, 63 cm in diameter.

send 30 works by October? Yes, she could and began looking at her works in a new way, as

Museo Frida Kahlo, Mexico City.

her personal creations hanging on walls in a gallery in New York City.

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Letter to Emmy Lou Packard Monday, December 15, 1941 Beautiful Emmylucha, Here I am, still stuck in bed with a fucking cold that does not want to say good-bye. I have been in a very shiny condition, and that is why I have not written to you earlier, pretty one. I was very happy that you could finally have an exhibition, and the only thing I feel sorry about is not being able to lend “a watchful eye” right on the day of the opening. We would have gotten so drunk that the event would have made history even in times of war. Since you left, I’ve been down, and I don’t know exactly what the hell is going on with me, but, frankly my friend, I’m not feeling well. I feel like sleeping the whole day, and I look like a chewed piece of gum, all languid and fuc-bulous. Can you believe that “Bonito”, the parakeet, died? I gave him a little burial and all that stuff, since he was marvellous as you remember. Diego was also very, very sad. “El Caimito”, the monkey, got pneumonia, and she was close to kicking the bucket – the “Sulphamidyl” made her better. Your parakeet is doing very well; I have him here with me. How is Pandy No. 2? Listen beautiful, tell me how the painting sale is going, and what the public was like in Los Angeles – very dull, or not? Tell me how Donald is doing, and also your parents, sister, and children. Regarding what you told me about the Arensbergs, I want you to tell them that Kaufmann has the painting “The Birth”. I’d like them to buy the one “Me, Sucking” because I’d rake it in, in that case – especially now that I’m highly penniless. If you have an opportunity, work on them as if it were coming from you;

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tell them it’s a painting that I painted at the same time as “The Birth” and that you and Diego like it a bunch. You know which one it is, right? The one where I’m with my nanny sucking pure milk! Do you remember! Hopefully, you can convince them to buy it, since you can’t even imagine how much in need of moola I am now. (Tell them it’s worth 250 dollars). I’m sending you a photograph so you can tell them a bunch of beautiful things about it and help me trigger their interest in that “work of art” – eh, Kid. Also, tell them about the one with “the bed” that is in New York; maybe they’ll be interested in that one – it’s the one with the skull on top, remember? That costs 300 eagles. Maybe you can give me a little push, beautiful, since, as I said before, I urgently need the dough. Diego is working lots on Paulette and Nieves’s painting. I met Paulette, who left me with a better impression than I had anticipated. When are you coming back? In Coyoacán everybody misses you a lot. Write to me from time to time. Give Donald and your parents millions of kisses for me. Give my many regards to the Homolkas and tell them that it would be better for them to move here. Don’t forget me, beautiful, and tell me if they don’t offer you something from here. How pretty did you look at the opening? Tell me a lot of gossip. Do not forget the thing with the Arensbergs – Diego sends kisses to you, and I send you my whole heart. Yours, Frida

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As preparations moved ahead, another force for change moved into her life. The self-styled “pope” of Surrealism, André Breton sailed into Mexico, sent by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs on a lecture tour. With his beautiful wife, Jaqueline, he hooked up with the Riveras and sought out Trotsky. With Natalia in tow to look after Leon, the three couples set out to view Mexico and hold a series of great discussions on Surrealism, Communism and Mexico’s ties with its ancient past as championed by Rivera. Frida and Jaqueline fled Trotsky’s windy socio-political rants and Andre’s determination to see Surrealism behind every bush. The two women struck up a friendship of convenience to entertain each other. Breton eventually saw Frida’s paintings and immediately proclaimed her a Surrealist. He became so enamoured with her and her work – and her value as a recruit to the Surrealist movement – he gave the imprimatur of his prestige to her paintings with a flowery, rambling essay to be attached to her New York show brochure. For example: This art even contains that drop of cruelty and humor uniquely capable of blending the rare effective powers that compound together to form the philtre which is Mexico’s secret. The power of inspiration here is nourished by the strange ecstasies of puberty and the mysteries of generation, and, far from considering these to be the mind’s private preserves, as in some colder climates, then displays them proudly with a mixture of candor and insolence… His summation of her work, her blending of feminism, exploration of her psyche, and the visceral realities of sensuality and physical pain were comparable to “…a ribbon about a bomb”. Along with his grandiloquent text went an offer of a show in Paris following her New York triumph. Besides Breton’s huffing and puffing, Diego had also been busy on her behalf. The film star, Edward G. Robinson, a well-known art connoisseur and collector visited Rivera’s studio. While Frida entertained Mrs. Robinson on the roof of the twin house, Diego hustled Mr. Robinson into Frida’s studio. On seeing a line-up of her work, Edward G. Robinson purchased

85. The Circle, 1951.

four paintings for a total of $800. On hearing this, Frida’s vision of economic independence

Oil on aluminium mounted on panel,

loomed large. Despite the fact that Diego was her biggest booster, she seemed excited about

15 cm in diameter.

cutting all ties to him.

Museo Dolores Olmedo, Mexico City.

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Spurred on by the New York show’s promise, Frida’s output soared. In 1938, she painted What the Water Gave Me, Four Inhabitants of Mexico City, Girl with Death Mask and a series of still lifes. Self-portraits for that period included the wildly colourful Framed Self-Portrait “The Frame” and an almost monochromatic Self-Portrait with Itzcuintli Dog. This series of paintings demonstrates the wide range of her selected subject matter, palettes, and the storehouse of internal imagery she could call upon. What the Water Gave Me is a veritable and literal stew of symbolic images floating, or lying submerged in her bath water. Her feet appear reflected in the water’s surface, looking like two disembodied crab objects. From a New York skyscraper thrusting its way up from the caldera of an ancient Mexican volcano to portraits of her parents among the fertile plants and roots of her upbringing, she creates a panoply of life moments and impressions. Sex, love and death are all part of this composite like many exposures on a single piece of imaginary film. When Breton saw What the Water Gave Me and Four Inhabitants of Mexico City, in his mind Frida’s place in the pantheon of Surrealists was secure. In the latter work, the four characters standing before the buildings of Mexico City’s landscape have an odd Oz-like quality of whimsy: the Judas character, a little girl, the Pre-Colombian idol and a watchful skeleton. Observing them from behind is a woven straw piñata. They are a blend of old and new Mexico, of figments of the imagination and reality. Even the little girl seems puzzled by it all. A little girl figures more directly in Kahlo’s hand-size painting, Girl with Death Mask. Here, all dressed up in a pink party frock, a small and barefoot girl wears a skull mask as if waiting for a Day of the Dead celebration to begin. Next to her, against the roiled stormy sky and desert, rests a horrific ritual mask of a Pre-Columbian monster, its lips besmirched with blood and its tongue protruding between jagged teeth. The yellow flower in her hand is the 86. What the Water Gave Me, 1938.

zempazuchil, a traditional decoration for graves during Day of the Dead festivities. Dolores del

Oil on canvas, 91 x 70.5 cm.

Rio, the film actress and friend of Frida and Diego, received this painting as a gift. She said it

Collection Isidore Ducasse, France.

represented the baby Frida never had.29

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87. Girl with Death Mask, 1938. Oil on metal, 20 x 14.9 cm. Private collection.

88. Marxism Will Give Health to the Sick, c. 1954. Oil on hard fibre, 76 x 61 cm. Museo Frida Kahlo, Mexico City.

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Speech 1945 MOSES Since this is the first time in my life that I have tried to explain one of my paintings to a group of more than three people, please forgive me if I get a little confused and if I’m very nervous. About two years ago, Jose Domingo told me one day that he would like me to read Freud’s “Moses” and to paint, however I wanted, my interpretation of the book. This painting is the result of that conversation. I read the book only once and started to do the painting with the first impression it had left on me. Yesterday, after I wrote these words for you, I reread it and I must confess that I find the painting very incomplete and very different from what should be the interpretation of what Freud analyses so wonderfully in his “Moses”. But now, unfortunately, I can’t remove or add anything, so I will explain what I painted the way it is, as you can see here in the picture. Of course, the central theme is Moses, or the birth of the Hero, but I generalised, in my own way (a very confused way), the facts and images that made the strongest impressions on me while reading the book. As far as I am concerned, you can tell me whether I blew it or not. What I wanted to express more intensely and clearly was that the reason why people need to make up or imagine heroes and gods is pure fear... fear of life and fear of death. I started painting the image of the infant Moses – Moses means “he who was taken out of the waters” in Hebrew, and “boy” in Egyptian. I painted him the way the legends describe him: abandoned inside a basket and floating down a river. From the artistic point of view, I tried to make the animal skin-covered basket look as much as possible like a uterus because, according to Freud, the basket is the exposed uterus and the water is the mother’s water when she gives birth to a child. To emphasise that fact, I painted the human foetus in its last phase inside the placenta. The fallopian tubes, which resemble hands, spread out to the world. On the sides of the new born child, I placed the elements of his creation -

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the fertilised egg and the cellular division. Freud analyses in a very clear but – for my personality – complicated way, the important fact being that Moses wasn’t Jewish but Egyptian. But in the picture, I couldn’t find a way to paint him as either, so I only painted him as a boy who generally represents Moses and all those who, according to the legend, had the same beginning and became important leaders to their people – in other words, heroes (smarter than the rest; that’s why I drew the “warning eye” on him). In this case, we can find Sargon, Cyrus, Romulus, Paris, etc. The other very interesting conclusion that Freud makes is that Moses – not being Jewish – gave the people he chose to guide and save a religion that was not Jewish either, but Egyptian. [This religion was] precisely the one that Amenhotep IV or Ikhnaton revived: the religion of Aton, the sun, which has its roots in the very ancient religion of On (Heliopolis). That’s why I painted the sun as the centre of all religions, as the first god, and as creator and reproducer of life. This is the relationship between the three main figures in the centre of this painting. Like Moses, there have always been lots of high-class “ reformers of religions and human societies. It could be said that they are a kind of messenger between the people they manipulate and the gods they invent to be able to do it. Many gods of this type still exist, as you know. Naturally, I didn’t have enough space for all of them, so I placed on both sides of the sun those who, like it or not, are directly related to the sun. On the right are the Western [gods] and on the left the Oriental ones. The Assyrian winged bull, Amon, Zeus, Osiris, Horus, Jehovah, Apollo, the Moon, the Virgin Mary, the Divine Providence, the Christian Trinity, Venus, and... the Devil. To the left, thunder, lightning, and the thunder’s print, that is, Huraka, Kukulkan, and Gukamatz, Tlaloc, the magnificent Coatlicue (mother of all the gods), Quetzalcoatl, Tezcatlipoca, Centeotl, the Chinese god (dragon), and the Hindu one, Brahma. An African god is missing; I couldn’t find one, but I could make some space for him.

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89. Moses or Nucleus of Creation, 1945. Oil on hard fibre, 61 x 75.6 cm. Private collection.

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I can’t tell you something about each one of the gods because of my overwhelming ignorance about their origin, importance, etc. After painting the gods I had space for in their respective heavens, I wanted to divide the celestial world of imagination and poetry from the terrestrial world of fear of death. So I painted the human and animal skeletons that you can see here. The earth cups her hands to protect them. Between Death and the group where the heroes are there are no divisions, because heroes die too, and the generous earth picks them up without distinctions. On the same earth, but with bigger heads in order to distinguish them from the heads of the crowd, I painted the heroes (very few of them, but well chosen), the religion reformers, the religion inventors or creators, the conquerors, and the rebels... that is, the “bucktoothed” [powerful] ones. To the right – I should have made this figure look much more important than any other – you can see Amenhotep IV, who became Ikhnaton, a young pharaoh of the eighteenth dynasty (1370—1350 B.C.). He imposed on his subjects a religion contrary to their tradition, rebellious toward polytheism, strictly monotheistic with distant roots in the On cult (Heliopolis): the religion of Aton and the Mosaic, both monotheistic. I didn’t know how to transfer this whole important section of the book to the plastic arts. Next, we have Christ, Zoroaster, Alexander the Great, Caesar, Mohammed, Luther, Napoleon, and the lost child, Hitler. To the left [we can see] the wonderful Nefertiti, Ikhnaton’s wife. I suppose that, in addition to being extraordinarily beautiful, she must have been a hacha perdida and a very intelligent collaborator with her husband. Buddha, Marx, Freud, Paracelsus, Epicurus, Genghis Khan, Gandhi,

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Lenin, and Stalin. The order is wrong, but I painted them according to my historic knowledge, which is also wrong. Between them and the run-of-the-mill crowd, I painted a sea of blood with which I represent war, inevitable and fecund. And lastly, the powerful and never-sufficiently praised human mass composed of all kinds of... bugs: the warriors, the pacifists, the scientists, and the ignorant ones; the monument-makers, the rebels, the flag-carriers, the medal-bearers, the speakers, the crazy and the sane, the happy and the sad, the healthy and the ill, the poets and the fools, and all the rest of the people you’d like to have here in this fuc-bulous pile. Only the ones in the front are clearly seen; the rest, in the confusion, who knows? On the left side, in the forefront, is man, the constructor of four colours (the four races). On the right side, the mother, the creator, with her child in her arms. Behind them, the monkey. [Here we have] the two trees that form a triumphal arch, with the new life that always sprouts from the trunk of old age. In the middle, at the bottom, the thing most important to Freud and many others: love, represented by the shell and the conch, the two sexes wrapped up by eternally new and living roots. This is all I can tell you about my painting, but I’ll accept all kinds of questions and comments. I won’t get mad. Thank you very much. Frida Kahlo

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The two self-portraits: Framed Self-Portrait “The Frame” and Self-Portrait with Itzcuintli Dog, demonstrate two radically different views of the artist. In Elizabethan times, the multiple portraits painted of Queen Elizabeth I near the end of her reign used the same face template that was simply applied with different costumes in order to hide her aging. Frida’s apparently consistent stoic gaze changes in subtle ways according to her internal and external environment. In The Frame there is a watercolour-like transparency to the oils applied to metal, a liquidity on which floats her portrait against a sea-blue background. She is flanked by two tropical birds. On her head is a tiara of flowers that compliments her flushed cheeks and the jade green of her dress. The effect is that of a symmetrical postage stamp featuring a fresh, young Mexican girl. The dark portrait, Self-Portrait with Itzcuintli Dog, is a polar opposite. Here, she and one of her many lap dogs share a regal sitting on a bare stage. The texture of Frida’s Tehuana skirt matches the sheen of the dog’s coat while her costume is set off by gold brocade and a matching rope necklace. A blue ribbon at the back of her neck is the sole jarring note of colour in this rich harmony of earth tones while her omnipresent cigarette is gripped in a gold antique holder looped around her index finger. This is a command performance in her best clothes of the Señora de la Casa. Adding to this collection is the series of still life paintings. Frida frequently referred to the fruits of Mexico’s rich soil in her allegory paintings, but here she concentrates on these organic shapes. In her hands, the fruits of the soil take on a somewhat sinister appearance of reaching tendrils and prickly textures, of gashed and hacked surfaces showing blood-red pulp beneath. Mushrooms and plants become sexual organs and flower petals age and curl inward. There is an over-sweet corruption suggested, a return to the earth with the functions of life having been fulfilled. One charmingly erotic example of this 1938 collection is The Flower of Life featuring a

90. Framed Self-Portrait “The Frame”,

male phallus plunging into a female vagina while the act is portrayed as a fuzzy red blossom

c. 1938.

ejaculated from a matured plant pod. This painting was submitted along with some other

Oil on aluminium and glass, 29 x 22 cm.

floral paintings to the annual Mexico City flower show, Salon de la Flor. Imagine show

Musée national d’art moderne,

attendees discovering this gem among the petunias and sun flowers.

Centre Georges-Pompidou, Paris.

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Fortified with letters of introduction from Diego to the high and mighty of New York’s art world and an invitation list representing a powerful cross-section of the social set they had cultivated back in 1933, Frida plunged into the scene. She was an immediate sensation. Critics loaded and cocked their pens, but came away charmed and impressed. Even the Rockefellers and their kin had been included, apparently with the idea that the possibilities of commerce held sway over old grudges. Though she moved through the opening night crowd as the star of the show, it was obvious that the ghost of Diego Rivera was both a drawing card and a raison for New York to pay homage to his third wife. Regardless, she relished the attention. In particular, she enjoyed her distance from Diego and the unfettered freedom to flirt with men and women of her choice. Her exotic presence, her costumes, and even her bold, scrappy, almost mannish aggression drew companions to her. She reunited with her old flame, Isamu Noguchi and hooked up with handsome fashion photographer Nickolas Muray. In hot pursuit, however, was her sponsor, Julien Levy. He fluttered around her, ever the handsome attentive butterfly. At one point, she accompanied him for an overnight visit to one of his clients, millionaire Edgar Kaufmann, at Kaufmann’s famous Frank Lloyd Wright designed home, Fallingwater. On arrival, Levy was prepared for a night of incredible passion with his hot-blooded Mexican protégé. Instead, Frida’s charms had also ignited Kaufmann’s libido and the two men spent part of the night trying to outmanœuvre each other in a French farce of tip-toeing up and down staircases and slamming doors. In the end, Levy got his wish when Frida sneaked into his bedroom. Muray had better luck. He had met Frida in Mexico and helped her with the catalogue for her show. The socially prominent photographer was handsome and self-confident. 91. Portrait of Doña Rosita Morillo, 1944.

Their affair began in Mexico City, but without gun-toting Diego lumbering about, they

Oil on canvas, mounted on masonite,

caught fire in New York and she fell hard for him. In a letter to her “…adorable Nick”

76 x 60.5 cm.

from Mexico on February 27, 1939, she wrote concerning $400 he had sent her from a

Museo Dolores Olmedo, Mexico City.

“Mr. Smith…”:

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92. Fruits of Life, 1953. Oil on hard fibre, 47 x 62 cm. Raquel M. de Espinosa Ulloa Collection, Mexico City.

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Letter to Nickolas Muray (written in English) February 27, 1939 My beloved Nick, This morning I received your letter after so many days of waiting. I felt such happiness that I started crying even before I read it. My child, I really should not complain about anything that happens to me in life, so long as you love me and I love you. [This love] is so real and beautiful that it makes me forget all my pain and problems; it makes me forget even distance. Through your words I feel so close to you that I can feel your laughter, so clean and honest, that only you have. I'm counting the days until my return. One more month! Then we'll be together again... Darling, I must tell you that you've misbehaved. Why did you send that check for 400 dollars? Your friend “Smith" is imaginary. It was a very nice gesture, but tell him that I will keep his check untouched until I come back to New York; we'll discuss this matter then. My Nick, you're the sweetest person I've ever met. But listen, my love, I really don't need the money now. I still have a little bit from Mexico; plus I'm a very rich bitch, did you know that? I have enough to stay one more month. I already have my return ticket. Everything is under control; it's true, my love, it's not fair that you spend extra money.... In any event, you don't know how thankful I am for your willingness to help me. I don't have the words to describe how happy I am, knowing that you tried to make me happy and that you are so good and adorable….My lover, my heaven, my Nick, my life, my child, I adore you. I lost weight because of my illness. When I come back, you'll blow once, and ... up I'll fly to the fifth floor of the La Salle Hotel! Listen, my child, do you touch every day that thing for fires that hangs on the stair landing? Don't forget to do it every day. Also, don't forget to sleep on your little cushion, because I really like it. Don't kiss anyone while you read the signs and names on the street.

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Don't take anyone else to our Central Park. It belongs to Nick and Xóchitl exclusively.... Don't kiss anyone on the couch in your office. Blanche Heys is the only one who may massage your neck. You can only kiss Mam as much as you want. Don't make love to anyone, if you can help it. Do it only if you find a real F. W. [fucking wonder], but don't fall in love. Play with the electric train once in a while if you aren't to o tired after work. How is Joe Jinks? How is the man who gives you a massage twice a week? I hate him a little because he took you away from me for many hours. Have you been practicing fencing a lot; How is Georgio? Why do you say you were only half successful on your trip to Hollywood; Tell me about that. Darling, don't work so hard if you can help it, since it makes your neck and back tired. Tell Mam to take care of you and make you rest when you're tired. Tell her that I'm much more in love with you, that you ate my darling and lover, and that when I'm not around she has to love you more than ever to make you happy. Is your neck bothering you a lot; I am sending you millions of kisses for your beautiful neck, so it will feel better, and all my tenderness and all my caresses for your body, from head to toe. I kiss each inch from far away. Play the Maxine Sullivan record on the gramophone very often. I'll be there with you listening to her voice. I can imagine you lying on the blue couch with your white cape on. I see you shooting at the sculpture that stands by the fireplace; I can see how the spring jumps into the air and I hear your laughter – a child's laughter, when you get it right. Oh, my dear Nick, I adore you so much. I need you so much that my heart hurts.

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I have enough to stay one more month. I already have my return ticket. Everything is under control; it’s true, my love, it’s not fair that you spend extra money.... In any event, you don’t know how thankful I am for your willingness to help me. I don’t have the words to describe how happy I am, knowing that you tried to make me happy and that you are so good and adorable…. My lover, my heaven, my Nick, my life, my child, I adore you. 30 Art lovers purchased about half the paintings that were offered for sale – which is a good first outing – and Frida managed to snag a few commissions. Clare Booth Luce ordered a portrait of her friend Dorothy Hale who had recently committed suicide by jumping off a skyscraper. Unfortunately, Frida misunderstood the request and painted a two-part re-enactment of the death, The Suicide of Dorothy Hale shows Hale in mid-flight through swirling clouds down the side of the building and also sprawled on the bloodsoaked ground. Blood also spatters the base of the frame and the retablo banner across the bottom of the work that describes the scene is written in red. All Luce wanted was a memorial portrait to present to her friend’s mother. After her first viewing, Luce never laid eyes on the painting again and it was given to her friend Frank Crowninshield for safe keeping.31 The painting, Fulang Chang and I, was so popular that when Conger Goodyear found the work had been given to Frida’s friend Dorothy Shapiro (now Sklar), he commissioned another painting of Frida and her monkey. Frida worked in her room at the Barbizon-Plaza Hotel for a week to complete Self-Portrait with Monkey. By the time the show closed, Frida was exhausted. Her health had failed near the end of

93. Self-Portrait with Braid, 1941.

their stay and she spent considerable time visiting doctors to deal with her back, spine, foot,

Oil on masonite, 51 x 38.5 cm.

and leg problems. But she returned to Mexico looking forward to her next sortie, this time

Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection,

into the bastion of the Europeans, a show of her work by André Breton in Paris, France.

Mexico City.

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In 1939, Paris life had a nervous edge to it. Hitler’s Germany had spent almost four years testing new military hardware in Spain and was rattling its blooded sabre at Poland. The French army was confident that its Maginot Line of fixed fortifications would defeat any attacks. French politicians were confident that Hitler was a blow-hard and would never challenge the Republic. The French people waved the tricolore, sang the Marseillaise and updated their passports. The avant-garde was no longer avante as the absurdities of the world stage replaced the fantasies of aging artists, writers, and poets of the 1920s. But Paris still retained much of its allure and cultural cachet as it struggled to maintain sang-froid in the face of news bulletins. André Breton’s “Mexique” exhibition of Mexican art arrived at the Colle Gallery in time to provide a distraction. As a show organiser, Breton turned out to be a disaster. Frida found her paintings still held unclaimed in customs and no gallery had been selected for the show. She was furious. Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase stepped in, rescued her paintings and eventually helped the hapless Breton book the gallery of Pierre Colle. Frida lodged with the Bretons for a while, but found it impossible to stay as problems with the show deepened. She fumed in her letters about the “…coo-coo sons of bitches of the surrealists”. Even after the show found walls, its composition further inflamed her. In a letter to Nickolas Muray, she wrote: Now Breton wants to exhibit together with my paintings, 14 portraits of the XIX Century (Mexican), about 32 photographs of Alvarez Bravo and 94. The Chick, 1945.

lots of popular objects which he bought on the markets of Mexico –

Oil on masonite, 27 x 22 cm.

All this junk, can you beat that? …the 14 oils of the XIX Century

Museo Dolores Olmedo, Mexico City.

must be restored and the damned restoration takes a whole month.

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95. Sun and Life, 1947. Oil on hard fibre, 40 x 50 cm. Galería Arvil, Mexico City.

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Letter to Ella and Bertram Wolfe Paris, March 17, 1939 Beautiful Ella and Boitito, my true pals, After two months, I’m writing to you. I know you are going to think the same as always: “Chicua is a jerk!” But believe me, this time it was not my jerkiness but my damned bad luck. Here you have my explanations – powerful explanations: First, since I came back, things have not been going well for me. My exhibit was not ready – my paintings were quietly waiting for me at the customs office because Breton had not even picked them up. You don’t have even the slightest idea of what kind of old cockroach Breton is, along with almost all those in the surrealists’ group. In a few words, they’re a bunch of perfect sons of... their mothers. I’ll tell you the whole story about the exhibition when we see each other’s faces again, since it is long and sad. But in summary, it took a month and a half before we could be completely sure about the date/place, etc., etc. of the damn exhibition. All this happened to the accompaniment of arguments, discussions, gossip, anger, and nuisances of the worst kind. Finally, Marcel Duchamp (the only one among the painters and artists here who has his feet on the ground and his brains in their place) was able to make the arrangements for the exhibition with Breton. It opened on the 10th of this month at the Pierre Colle Gallery, which they tell me is one of the best here. They say there were a great number of compatriots the day of the “opening”. [There were] lots of congratulations for the Chicua, among them, a big hug from Joan Miró and great praises from Kandinsky on behalf of my painting; congratulations from Picasso, Tanguy, Paalen, and from other “big shits” of surrealism. Overall, I’d say that it was a success, and considering the quality of the stuff (meaning the bunch of congratulators), I think this whole thing turned out quite well. Second, of the two months that I’ve been in Paris, I’ve been in bed for a month and a half (ten days in a hospital and the rest at the home of Duchamp’s wife). One day I woke up with my abdomen like a drum and could not burp, go pee, or anything. It was like having my belly full of anarchists, each one of them planting a bomb in a corner of my poor gut. I felt really beat up and thought that la pelona [Death] would take me away. Between the pain and the sadness of being alone in pinchísimo [miserable] Paris, which to me is like a kick in the belly, I assure you that I would’ve much preferred to kick the bucket. But I started feeling a little better when I was at the American Hospital where I could “bark” in English and explain my situation. At least I could say, “Pardon me, I burped!!” (Of course, this was not the case, since burping is exactly what I could not do, nor the aforementioned). It was not until four days later that I had the pleasure of producing the first burp and from that happy day on, I’ve felt better. The reason for the anarchist revolt in my gut was that it was full of colon bacillus. These rude things tried to go beyond the decent limits of their activity. They decided to go out on a binge, running through my bladder and my kidneys, and I started to burn. Frankly, they screwed

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me up, because they had such devilish parties in my bladder and kidneys that they almost sent me to the funeral home. I was counting the days for the fever to go away so I could take a boat to the United States, since here nobody understood my situation and they did not give a damn. I got used to it gradually, and friends of the Bretons came to see me, so I could make cool pals. Now you can understand why I frankly did not feel like writing letters, since my belly and head were a real mess. Martin visited me several times at the hospital and here at Mary Reynolds’s house; she is Duchamp’s wife. I have been staying here since I left the hospital. My address is F. K., c/o Mary Reynolds, 14 rue Halle, Paris. I was very glad to see Martin because I felt that I was not so alone anymore. Plus, here I have a school buddy named Renato Leduc, who is a very neat person. Ask Martín and he will tell you what kind of pal Renato is. Lately I have seen comrade Leo. I like him very much and I think he is a great element (I do not know his full name but you know who he is). Today, I just saw Andrade and Gorkin. I have already sent Diego a telegram regarding the matter of the comrades from the Poum. I think that it will be taken care of in Mexico. I am waiting for definite news from Diego to arrange, once and for all, the departure of those 400 people. If you knew what condition these poor people are in – the ones that could escape from the concentration camps – your heart would break. Manolo Martínez is here, Rebull’s friend. He told me that Rebull was the only one who had to stay on the other side, since he could not leave his dying wife behind. Perhaps now as I am writing you the poor guy may even have been executed. These French jerks have been real pigs with the refugees, they are asses of the worst kind I have known. I am nauseated by all these rotten people from Europe – all these damned democracies are worth nothing. We will talk about all this later. Meanwhile, I want to let you know that I miss you a lot; that I love you more and more; that I have behaved and have not had any adventures, “slips” or lovers – nothing of that sort – that I miss Mexico like never before; that I love Diego more than my own life; that sometimes I also miss Nick a lot; that I am turning into a serious person; and finally, that I want to send many, many kisses to both of you for the time being. Share some of them equally among Jay, Mack, Shiba, and all my buddies. And if you have a little bit of time, visit Nick and give him a little kiss also and another to Mary Sklar. Your Chicua that never forgets you, Frida Boitito, how is the book going, my friend? Are you working a lot: More gossip: Diego had problems with the IV [International] and seriously kicked “piochitas” Trotsky out of his life. I will tell you about the problem later. Diego is absolutely right.

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an old bastard and son of a bitch, saw my paintings and found that only two were possible to be shown, because the rest are too “shocking” for the public!! I could kill that guy and eat it afterwards…32 To her benefit, Frida received her closest exposure to the Surrealists since being admitted to their number. Max Ernst, Duchamp, Man Ray and Breton all welcomed her and she did her best to be no less outrageous than they, but she had little sympathy or time for the hangers-on and poseurs. They sit for hours in the “cafes” warming their precious behinds, and talk without stopping about “culture” “art” “revolution” and so on and so forth, thinking themselves the gods of the world, dreaming the most fantastic nonsenses and poisoning the air with theories and theories that never come true. 33 Her paintings displayed at “Mexique” received good reviews and her presence was a show in itself. Powerhouses such as Kandinsky and Picasso sang her praises. She also managed a stroke of recognition that had been withheld from her famous husband. The Louvre purchased Framed Self-Portrait “The Frame” that today is part of the George Pompidou Centre collection. Unfortunately, Framed Self-Portrait “The Frame” was her only sale. By March, 1939, Frida was sated with Parisian art life and packed up for a trip to New York to spend some time with Nick Muray. As with Noguchi, separation had cooled Muray’s love and Frida discovered he was engaged to be married to another woman. The destruction of this romance hurt Frida deeply and pointed out to her how trapped she was in her relationship with Rivera. Her life had opened up with many possibilities following her trips abroad and exposure to a new independence, but her identity remained tied to emotionally and professionally. A

96. The Suicide of Dorothy Hale, 1938-1939.

Noguchi or a Muray might have opened even more doors to her independent life, but she had

Oil on masonite with decorated wooden

thrown in her lot with Rivera at such an early age, they were seen as two sides of the same

frame, 60.4 x 48.6 cm.

coin, he as “heads” and she as “tails”.

Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix (Arizona).

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She returned to Mexico in May, 1939 and as her relationship with Rivera deteriorated, she poured her emotions and frustration into two paintings. Two Nudes in the Wood transports the pair of women from a floating sponge in What the Water Gave Me to a patch of desert land at the edge of a frightening jungle alive with entwined shapes and inhabited by a voyeur Fulang Chang. Frida once told a friend that whenever she portrayed her hands over her genitalia, it meant she was masturbating. This pair shares a loving moment, the fair Frida in the lap of the dark Indian girl and yet Frida pleasures herself, still separate from sharing the act with her companion. The men in her life had done Frida a great disservice from which she would never completely recover. She needed a final act that was both symbolic and real. Sexual relations had ended. Civility had ended. The gayety and adventures had ended. All that remained were obligations Diego and Frida accepted as parts of an unspoken agreement, the trickle of a relationship that no legality could sever. It is possible that Diego had heard of Frida’s affair with Trotsky. Her reasons were obvious and humiliating. He wrote in his autobiography that: The situation between us grew worse and worse… I telephoned her to plead for her consent to a divorce… It worked and Frida declared that she too wanted an immediate divorce… I simply wanted to be free to carry on with any woman who caught my fancy…What she could not understand was my choosing women who were unworthy of me, or inferior to her… They were formally divorced on November 6, 1939. The second painting would become her signature masterpiece, the six-foot square The 97. The Two Fridas, 1939.

Two Fridas. A mirror had long played a central role in her paintings, at first from necessity

Oil on canvas, 173.5 x 173 cm.

due to her bed-ridden state. Later, the mirror became a reflection of reality that could

Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City.

be manipulated and translated into a fantasy vision of her very personal verité.

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Letter to Nickolas Muray (written in English) June 13, 1939 Dear Nick, I received the wonderful photo you sent. I like it even more than in New York. Diego says it’s as good as a Piero della Francesca. To meet means more than that: it is a treasure. Moreover, it will always make me remember that day when we had breakfast at the drugstore at Barbizon Plaza and then went to your studio to take pictures. This was one of them and right now I have it close to me. You will always find yourself inside that magenta shawl (on the left side). Thanks a million for sending it. When I received your letter a few days ago, I didn’t know what to do. I must admit that I couldn’t help my tears. I felt like something got stuck in my throat – as if I had swallowed the whole world. I still don’t know if I felt sad, jealous, or angry, but the first thing I experienced was a feeling of great hopelessness. I have read your letter many times – too many times, I think – and I am realising things I didn’t perceive at the beginning. Now I understand everything; it is all clear. The only thing I want to tell you, in the most sincere way, is that you deserve the best, the absolute best in life, because you are one of the few people in this ditty world who is honest with himself. Actually, that is the only thing that counts. I don’t know how your happiness could offend me even for one minute. Mexican girls (like me) sometimes have such a dumb view of life! However, you know this and I’m sure that you’ll forgive me for having behaved in such a stupid way. Nevertheless, to me you’ll always be the Nick that I met one morning at number 18 of East 48th Street, in New York. I told Diego that you’ll get married soon, and he communicated it to Rose and Miguel (Covarrubias) the next day when they came to visit. I had to admit it was true. I regret very much having mentioned it before asking for your permission, but now it is done and I beg you to forgive me for my indiscretion. I want to ask you a big favour: send me the little pillow by mail. I don’t want anyone else to use it. I promise I will make you another one but I want the one that is now on the sofa downstairs,

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close to the window. Another favour: don’t allow “her“ to touch the fire signs on the stairs (you know which). If you can avoid it, and if it’s not to o much of a bother to you, try to avoid taking her to Coney Island, especially to Half Mo on. Take my picture down from the chimney and put it in the ro om that Mam has in the studio. I’m sure that she likes me as much as before. Plus, it’s not convenient for the other woman to se e my picture in your house. I would like to tell you a lot of things, but I don’t want to make you uncomfortable. I hope you can understand all my wishes without words... As for the letters I sent you, if they’re getting in your way, please give them to Mam and she can send them to me. In any case, I don’t want to be a burden for you. Please forgive me for behaving like an old-fashioned bride. Asking you for my letters is ridiculous on my part, but I’m doing it for you and not for me. I would think that those papers don’t interest you anymore. While I was writing this letter, Rose called and told me that you had already gotten married. I don’t have anything to say about what I felt. I hope you’re happy, very happy. If you have the time from time to time, please send me a few words just to let me know how you are. Will you do it...? Thanks again and again for the magnificent photo. Thank you for your last letter and for all the treasures you gave to me. A hug, Frida Please forgive me for calling you on the phone that night. I’ll never do it again.

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In The Two Fridas, the mirror duality becomes a schizophrenic visualisation of Frida’s personal dilemma, the European woman (Frida) in white with lace and appliqués befitting a chaste Catholic girl and the Tehuana woman of darker skin and colourful costume, the earthy peasant persona encouraged by Diego Rivera. Both hearts are exposed and a vine-like blood vessel connects a small amulet that is a miniature portrait of Diego as a child and the two hearts of the “Fridas”. The European “Frida’s” heart is ripped and savaged while she grips the end of the shared artery with a surgical clamp. But blood still drips from its end onto her snow white dress. At this point in her life, she had found a path to her independence, but at a cost she seemed unwilling to pay. The assassination of Leon Trotsky with an Alpine piolet (ice axe) on August 20, 1940 by Ramón Mercader – an acquaintance of Frida’s who pursued her while she was in Paris – brought everything to a head. Frida and her sister Cristina were hauled away by the police and vigorously interrogated for 12 hours as possible suspects in the assassination conspiracy. Diego fled to San Francisco, leaving her behind. Compared to the humiliations she suffered because of his sexual betrayals, this failure was only a pin-prick, but it capped her resolve that she had done the right thing in divorcing him.

27

Herrera, Hayden, op.cit., p. 442

28

Rummel, op.cit., p. 119

29

Herrera, Hayden, op.cit., p. 306

30

Ibid., p. 329

31

Hardin, Terri, Frida Kahlo A Modern Master,

98. Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair, 1940.

Smithmark Publishers, New York, 1997, p. 66

Oil on canvas, 40 x 28 cm.

32

Herrera, Hayden, op.cit., p. 334

Donation from Edgar Kaufman Jr.,

33

Ibid., p. 339

The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

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T

he 1940s came at Frida Kahlo in a rush of contradictions. Legally, she had shed her ties with Diego Rivera, but financially her life was bound to him through a complex banking arrangement where her expenses were paid from sales of his work. She was

in complete denial when she wrote to Nickolas Muray: …I don’t accept a damned cent from Diego, the reasons you must understand. I will never accept money from any man till I die…34 Her freedom to begin her life anew had been secured – an apparently happy result – and

yet her 1940 painting, Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair, is clearly a regression to her previous “cropped hair” period following Diego’s affair with her sister Cristina. Frida sits on a yellow cane chair, her hair cropped like a convict. Scattered on the floor are the cut remnants of her usually abundant coiffure. The hair cuttings don’t lie on the ground in realistic perspective, but float dreamlike in suspension like seaweed or the roots of long-dead plants. She wears an outsized man’s suit of the kind favoured by Diego, giving her the appearance of being undernourished, a refugee or aging petitioner seeking redress. The scissors rest in her lap. Might the pruning process continue? And, finally, her new reality of independence brought with it the nagging need to back up her financial “revolt” with actual sales. She wrote: I organise things as necessary to live more or less “decently”… I’m always painting pictures, since as soon as I’m done with one, I have to sell it so I have the moola for all the month’s expenses.35 As Europe plunged into World War II on the tracks of Hitler’s Panzers, the world of art

99. Frida and Diego Rivera or Frida Kahlo

seemed oddly remote. Artists’ canvasses remained aloof to the calls of patriotism and self-

and Diego Rivera, 1931.

sacrifice. Many artists fled before the insanity of armed conflict engulfed their native

Oil on canvas, 100 x 79 cm.

countries, or they turned inward and reclusive, doing nothing to earn the wrath of occupying

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art,

armies. There were few Goyas who documented Napoleon’s Peninsular War in Spain,

San Francisco.

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or painters such as John Singer Sargent, Fernand Léger, Oskar Kokoschka, George Grosz, or Marc Chagall who once added their visions to the horrors of World War I, and fewer Picasso’s turning out condemnations such as Guernica, commissioned by the Spanish Republican government in 1937. Frida and Diego were both committed to the Communist Party and the anti-fascist cause – even if the Communists had ideological reservations about Diego’s commitment to anticapitalist dogma due to his willingness to accept commissions from anyone who could write a check – and the capitalists had all the money. This Communist thread always seemed to join the two artists regardless of their current conjugal state. They constantly appeared at rallies and fund-raisers, especially after June, 1941 when Hitler invaded Russia. With her life in this turmoil of contradictions, she doggedly pressed forward with her art. Frida imagined her self esteem could only survive through the success of her paintings in what remained of the art world outside the distraction of world war. The Wounded Table, painted in 1940, was an explosion of her favourite lexicon of symbolism across a huge horizontal canvas. The old partnership from Four Inhabitants of Mexico City returned again: the Judas, the Aztec idol, and the skeleton. Only now, they are the worse for wear, leaking blood into the plank stage behind drawn-back curtains. The little girl from Four Inhabitants of Mexico City has been replaced by the innocents: Isolde and Antonio, her sister Cristina’s children, and her pet deer, El Granizo complete with camouflage spots. Frida has joined the group as well, but her body is almost lost in the awkward gropings and strokings of her grim companions. The idol’s legs are a pair of canes (“See those canes?” Lupe Marín had ridiculed at the wedding party when she exposed Frida’s withered leg beneath the long skirt. “That’s what Diego must put up with!”). The forlorn assembly sits at a table, turning a triage of wounded misfits into a Punch and Judy show. Who will speak the first line? The table’s legs are flayed human legs. It seems unable to support these broken things that sit awaiting either their cue, or the audience judgment. Her broken marriage and fragmented life become the focus of her early 1940s work. In The Dream, the Judas makes an encore appearance, its paper puppet limbs wired as a bomb. He accompanies her four poster bed on its journey floating through a bilious sky. Judas the passenger rests above her on the canopy just where an actual Judas figure reclined in her bedroom in La Casa Azul. Her flowered bedspread lives as vines radiate with leaves that reach for and embrace her. The Dream is an agitating and uneasy painting to view, complimenting her fragility that is threatened in The Wounded Table. Frida had worked hard on the large painting The Wounded Table for the International 100. Still Life: Viva la Vida (Long Live Life),

Surrealism Convention scheduled to be held in Mexico City. Ultimately, the convention was

c. 1951-1954.

cancelled due to the war. German travel restrictions virtually shut down France and the

Oil and earth on masonite, 52 x 72 cm.

occupied countries as Hitler’s henchmen began spreading their nets to induct labour

Museo Frida Kahlo, Mexico City.

conscripts and capture Jews.

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101. Coconuts (Glances), 1951. Oil on masonite, 25.4 x 34.6 cm. Private collection.

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Letter to Dr. Leo Eloesser Coyoacán, March 15, 1941 Very dear Doctor, You are right to think that I am a jerk since I didn’t even write to you when we returned to Mexicalpán de las Tunas [Mexico], but you must know that it wasn’t laziness on my part but that when I came back I had a lot of things to take care of at Diego’s house – it was very dirty and disorganised. As soon as Diego arrived, you can imagine how much attention I had to give him and how absorbing that is. Every time he comes back to Mexico he’s in the worst of moods, until he gets used to the rhythm of this “cuckoo” country again. This time his bad mood lasted more than two weeks. It wasn’t until he was brought some marvellous idols from Nayarit that, just from looking at them, he started liking Mexico again. Besides, the other day he ate a very good duck in mole; this helped him care about life even more. He pigged out on the duck in mole so badly that I thought he was going to get sick, but he is very resilient, as you know. After these two events, the idols from Nayarit and the mole, he decided to go out and paint watercolours in Xochimilco, and he has been gradually recovering his good mood. Generally, I understand well why he is so frustrated in Mexico and I agree with him, since to live in Mexico you have to always go around with barbed wire on so the others don’t screw you over. The stress needed here to defend oneself from all those assholes is greater than in Gringolandia, for the simple reason that over there people are more stupid and malleable, and here people are always tearing at each other’s hair wishing to trick and fuck their neighbour. Moreover, in Diego’s field, people always react with tricks and fuck-ups, and that’s what’s most frustrating, since as soon as he returns, the newspapers start to bother him. They’re so envious that they would like to make him disappear by magic. By contrast, in Gringolandia, things have been different. Even in the case of the Rockefellers, we could fight against them without stabs in the back. In California everyone has treated him very well. They actually respect everybody’s work.

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Here, he finishes a fresco, and a week later it’s all scratched or spat upon. This, as you can imagine, makes anyone feel discouraged, especially when one works like Diego, putting in all the effort and energy that he is capable of, without considering that art is “sacred” and all that bunch of stupidities; on the contrary, working hard like a mason. On the other hand, and this is my personal opinion, even though I understand the advantages that any job or activity may have in the United States, I am more for Mexico. I don’t like gringos, for all their good qualities and bad defects. I very much dislike the way they are, their hypocrisy and disgusting puritanism, their Protestant sermons, their limitless pretentiousness, and the fact that one always has to be “very decent” and “very proper...“ I know that people down here are sons of bitches, jerks, etc., etc., but I don’t know why, they do even the biggest dirty tricks with a little bit of a sense of humour. Gringos, on the other hand, are arrogant by birth, even if they are very respectful and decent (?). Also, their lifestyle seems most dreadful to me: those fucking parties, where everything is solved after imbibing a bunch of aperitifs (they don’t even know how to get drunk in a happy way), from a window in a painting, to a declaration of war, always keeping in mind that the seller of the painting or the declarer of war must be an “important” person. Otherwise, they don’t pay attention to you at all. Up there, only the “important people” can make it, even if they are scoundrels. I can tell you some more little comments concerning those types. You will reply that you can also live there without aperitifs or parties, but in that case, you can never do anything and it seems to me that the most important thing for everyone in Gringolandia is to have ambition and to become “somebody“ and, frankly, I don’t have the least ambition to be anybody. I don’t care for people’s pretentiousness, and I am in no way interested in becoming a “big shit .“

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102. Moving Still Life, 1952. Oil on canvas. Collection María Félix, Mexico City.

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103. Congress of People For Peace, 1952. Oil and tempera on masonite, 19.1 x 25.1 cm. Private collection.

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While she flushed her bad feelings into her paintings, Frida put on a game face and continued her socialising. To break the ice at parties, she had a pair of pink diamond-studded incisors made that she could slip on like caps over her teeth. Her alcohol input increased exponentially and her mood swings from happiness to depression became more frequent. Soon, there was never enough alcohol to escape the depression and uncertainty. Knowing there was a good market for her self-portraits with animals, she poured her state of mind and body into them. Her Self-Portrait with Thorny Necklace mirrors this period. A dead hummingbird – when portrayed alive it is a symbol worn to bring luck – dangles from a thorny necklace that spreads down across her shoulders as naked vines cover a trellis. The necklace pierces her neck with thorns, drawing blood in a Christ-like martyr’s pose. She wears blameless white before a tangle of exquisitely veined jungle leaves. One of her monkeys, Caimito de Guayabal, thoughtfully examines the necklace while a black cat crouching behind her left shoulder takes the measure of the viewer. Frida herself seems exhausted in her selfmortification. Her exaggerated eyebrows above drooping eyelids match the arc of the hummingbird’s dead wings. Once again, Diego intervened in her self-destructive lifestyle and consulted their mutual friend, Dr. Eloesser, in San Francisco. The doctor suggested she come to the States. She had spent three months in a traction device connected to her chin and welcomed the invitation from her old friend. Frida arrived in San Francisco in September, 1940. Eloesser immediately committed her to a rest cure and assorted therapies in St. Luke’s Hospital for her exhaustion and alcoholism. He also contacted Diego and explained the Mexican doctors’ grim diagnoses such as tuberculosis of the bones and a need for spinal surgery were false and what she needed was her Panzón at her side during her recovery. While he had her under his cure, the doctor was determined to affect reconciliation between the two artists who were miserable in their self-imposed separation. During their time together, Diego introduced her to the public relations officer of the Golden Gate Exhibition, a young refugee from Nazi Germany, Heinz Berggruen. She and the young man were immediately attracted to each other and when Frida finished her hospital stay, she made a trip to New York with Berggruen and they spent a tempestuous time together, staying at the familiar Barbizon-Plaza Hotel and touring the Manhattan party circuit. Eventually, Berggruen came to his senses as he accepted Frida’s need for someone with the fortitude to support her high maintenance life style and complex emotional needs. Heinz was no Diego Rivera. Even so, their parting was emotional and difficult. “No sex” and “no cash” were two of Frida’s stipulations to make the remarriage work. She had no intention of sharing Diego sexually with any other women and she insisted on making

104. Diego Rivera,

her own way financially and paying half of the household expenses. Diego was pleased with

Night Landscape, 1947.

the former and maintained the mutually accepted fiction of the latter. The agony of their

Oil on canvas, 111 x 91 cm.

separation played itself out on Diego’s 54 birthday, December 8, 1940 when they were

INBA Collection, Museo de Arte

remarried in a civil ceremony.

Moderno, Mexico City.

th

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Her fortunes were once again on the rise. She joined Diego in the International Golden Gate Exhibition where he executed a mural on Treasure Island. They spent Christmas in Mexico with Frida’s family and then he returned to complete the mural. While he was gone, Frida revelled in a period of relatively good health, shopping in Coyoacon and Mexico City, sunning herself in the garden, or preparing Diego’s room for when he returned. La Casa Azul had become a repository for their combined collections of Mexican arts and crafts and a zoo for Frida’s herd of animals, a mix of species including assorted cats, small deer and parrots who guzzled beer and complained raucously about their hangovers. Besides her big child – Diego – this coterie of critters was indulged as her surrogate children. When her pet osprey, Gertrude Caca Blanca (white shit) dropped a load of excrement on a guest’s hat, the large bird was laughingly scolded with a waggled finger like a delinquent. Everywhere, Frida’s own deep earthy laugh could be heard above the chatter of a never-ending stream of visitors who gathered around the big table, sat in cane chairs at her bedside, or reclined on petates, spread on the yellow-painted floor, discussing politics, art, gossip, and drinking from clay mugs. And still, while caring for Diego’s every need and seeing to domestic chores, every day she set aside time to paint through the warm weeks of spring. Bare shouldered, she peers from her painting, Self-Portrait with Braid, as if rising from a salad of greens wearing only a heavy jade necklace and a preposterous braid of woven hair on her head. As suggested by some, this crown of hair might represent the cuttings from her “cropped hair” portrait of the year before, a symbol of support for her re-marriage vows to Diego. She had been encouraged to continue her work by reaction to her paintings when The Two Fridas hung at the Museum of Modern Art’s show, Twenty Centuries of Mexican Art, her participation in the Surrealist show in Mexico City and the Golden Gate International Exhibition in San Francisco. She was determined to step from beneath Diego’s shadow and avoid such crass comments as Frank Crowninshield offered up in Vogue Magazine’s coverage of the MoMA show: 105. The Mask, 1945. Oil on canvas, 40 x 30.5 cm.

…the most recent of Rivera’s ex-wives (was) a painter apparently obsessed by an interest in blood...36

Museo Dolores Olmedo, Mexico City.

Just as her life had once again settled into a comfortable pattern, the summer heat brought 106. Self-Portrait with Monkey, 1945.

with it a further deterioration in her health, a weakness and loss of weight. In July, her father,

54.5 x 39.5 cm.

Guillermo, died. That blow added to her depression over the war and its horrendous effect on

Casa Museo Robert Brady, Cuernavaca.

Russia. The June invasion had swept Stalin’s rag-tag army before Hitler’s mechanised juggernaut. As German troops marched northward, Frida’s troop of doctors marched back into

107. Portrait of My Father, 1951.

her life with brand new plaster corsets for her back, X-rays, hormone injections, cures for the

Oil on masonite, 60.5 x 46.5 cm.

fungus that infected her right hand, pills and injections for angina and la grippe. She smoked

Museo Frida Kahlo, Mexico City.

too much and still drank a few too many copitas with meals.

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She carefully hoarded her time for painting and maintained the appearance of an income with her self-portraits, still-lifes, portraits of friends and relatives. But her retinue of servants and nurses, shopping sprees, the cost of drugs and horrific doctor bills kept her dependent on Diego. On July 18, she wrote Dr. Eloesser from Coyoacon: My shank is getting better. But my general state is pretty fuc—bulous. I think it’s due to the fact that I don’t eat enough and that I smoke too much. What is rare is that I am not drinking any small or big aperitifs anymore. I feel pain in my belly and a constant need to burp. (Pardon me, burped!!) My digestion is in a shambles. My mood is really bad; I am becoming more corajuda every day… in other words, I am very crabby. If there is a remedy in medicine to control this mood, please give me a prescription so I can take it immediately. We’ll see what results I get.37 Besides their painting, Diego and Frida poured considerable time into other pursuits. Diego had begun building a repository for his huge collection of Pre-Hispanic Mexican art, a temple-like museum he called the Anahuacalli, erected on volcanic lava beds outside Coyoacon. Frida had made the initial land purchase, but over the years, Diego had bought up surrounding parcels. She became ensnared in the project, keeping track of the considerable sums he poured into it, his papers, and even filed correspondence with his lady-friends.38 While she toiled as his secretary, archivist, chief cook and bottle washer, when she wasn’t painting her own work, she began teaching in 1943 at the experimental School of Painting and Sculpture on Esmeralda Street in the Guerrero District. Like the National Preparatory School she had attended, this high school secundaria offered free courses in painting and drawing as well as French, art history, Mexican Art and culture. Like her own self- designed Bohemian education, she took her students beyond the walls of the school and into the streets to observe and experience life for their work. Her health forced the painting and drawing classes – such as they were – to be held in La Casa Azul. Often, instead of painting, the instructor and students engaged in long conversations, opening their minds to new ideas – some of which got her into trouble with the politically conservative school administration. She expanded their experience beyond easel painting by procuring commissions for them to paint murals on the walls of a pulqueria (street corner saloon), some houses and a laundry building. She loved this work and was, in turn, loved by her students, who came to be called, Los Fridos. To keep generating revenue, Frida accepted portrait commissions from local politicians, friends, and her patrons. After the unfortunate misunderstanding over The Suicide of Dorothy Hale for Clare Booth Luce, Frida was careful not to offend her clients with overstating what she saw, or transferring her current personal demons into symbolism that obscured the client’s

108. Self-Portrait “Time Flies”, 1929.

expected result. Even diluting her visual intensity, Frida managed to achieve some remarkably

Oil on masonite, 86 x 68 cm.

intimate portraits.

Private collection, USA.

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A friend and sincere patron of her work, engineer and career diplomat, Eduardo Morillo Safa, ordered Kahlo portraits of himself and his family. Of this series, the most sensitive and beautifully seen example is the 1944 Portrait of Doña Rosita Morillo, Eduardo’s mother. The family matriarch sits in front of a seething background of flowering vines, cactus and leaves. Her simple brown cloak covers the shoulders of her black dress that is buttoned to the neck. Doña Rosita’s ample bosom serves to support and isolate her head and frames the largeknuckled working hands that knit with rough brown yarn. Everything is painted in earth colours. Her luminous dark-skinned face capped by a crown of silver white hair looks out from the frame wearing an expression of weariness that must have touched Frida. Doña Rosita has fewer days in front of her than have passed. She is alone without her husband and is the guest of her children in her old age. There are more memories than expectations in those inward-focused eyes. The expression is not worn for the benefit of the artist, but has been etched there by life, smoothed and rounded by the erosion of time. These portraits executed in the 1940s demonstrate how far Frida Kahlo had come from her early groping with technique and struggle to see beneath the skin. These are not primitive copies of the retablo style churned out by local religious painters, but truly realised discoveries created by the facility of communication between her hands and fingers and the instinctual vision that drove them. Her own self-portraits benefited from this visual and mechanical maturity during this rich period in her creative arc. In letters to friends, she begged, “Don’t forget me!”39 She preserved the memory of her presence in a symbolic tapestry of her fears and dreams as well as her stoic public image of the “survivor”. Alejandro Gómez Arias offered that these portraits served as, …a recourse, the ultimate means to survive, to endure, to conquer death…” 40 The self-portraits persisted as the body cannibalised itself toward eventual destruction and her mind endured the metamorphosis from youthful anticipation to the dawning realisation that the fantasy of a life without daily stabs of physical pain was a false hope. In effect, Frida created her own exhibition of self images that, over time, produced a visual documentary displaying the day by day corruption of her physical and mental world from behind a mask that never complained or cried. Every day, she added a brush stroke to her own impassive monument. Another outlet for Frida’s increasing introspection into her own mortality and the fragility of life appeared in her ongoing still life paintings. These works first appeared in the late 1930s with that erotic gem, The Flower of Life – also called The Flame Thrower – and simple dishes 109. Self-Portrait with the Portrait of Dr. Farill,

of fruit (Still Life with Pitahayas, 1938 and Tunas (Still Life with Prickly Pear Fruit), 1938, both

1951.

painted on metal). They allowed her to explore uncomfortable internal ideas using benign

Oil on masonite, 41.5 x 50 cm.

subject matter that didn’t immediately scare away potential buyers. One particular example of

Private collection.

this genre was the 1943 painting, The Bride Frightened at Seeing Life Opened.

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Letter to Dr. Leo Eloesser Coyoacán, July 18, 1941 Very dear Doctor, I wonder what you think of me – that I am a jerk. I didn’t even thank you for your letters or for the child that made me so happy – not even a word in months and months. You’re more than justified to remind me of my... family. But you know that the fact that I don’t write you doesn’t mean I think of you any less. You know I have the huge flaw of being as lazy as they come for this writing stuff. But believe me, I have thought of you a lot and always with the same affection. [...] My shank is getting better. But my general state is pretty fucbulous [think it’s due to the fact that I don’t eat enough and that I smoke too much]. What is rare is that I am not drinking any small or big aperitifs anymore. I feel pain in my belly and a constant need to burp. (Pardon me, burped!!) My digestion is in shambles. My mood is really bad; I am becoming more corajuda every day (in the Mexican sense) not meaning courageous (Academy of the Language, Spanish style); in other words, I am very crabby. If there is a remedy in medicine to control this mood, please give me a prescription so I can take it immediately. We’ll see what results I get. As for my painting, I am working. I paint little, but I feel that I’m learning something and that I’m not as stupid as before. They want me to paint a few portraits in the Dining Hall of the National Palace (there are): the five Mexican women who have had the most relevance in the history of our people. Right now I am researching what kind of cockroaches these heroines were, what kind of snout they had, and what kind of psychology burdened them, so that when I paint them, [people] can distinguish them from the vulgar and common females of Mexico, who, in my opinion, are more interesting and have “bigger teeth” [are more powerful] than the above-mentioned ladies. If among your trinkets you have a book that talks about Doña Josefa Ortíz de Domínguez, about Doña Leona Vicario de [illegible], about Sor JuanaInés de la Cruz, please send me some data, photographs, or engravings, etc. of those times and of their well respected effigies. For this job I’ll earn some moola, which I’ll use to buy some knick knacks

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that are pleasant to my eyes, nose, and hands, or some really cool planters that I saw in the market the other day. Remarriage is working well. Small amounts of arguing, greater mutual understanding, and, on my part, fewer obnoxious-type investigations regarding other ladies who suddenly occupy a preponderant place in his heart. You can understand that I finally learned that life is so and the rest is unimportant. If I were healthy I could say I’m happy, but feeling so bad from my head to my paws sometimes makes my mind go crazy and my life bitter. Bye, aren’t you going to attend the International Medical Conference that will take place in this beautiful City of Palaces – as they call it? Come on, do it. Take as teel bird that says “Zücalo México”. What do you say: yes or yes? Bring lots of Lucky or Chesterfield cigarettes since here they are a luxury, partner. I cannot “affordear“ a buck a day just for smokes. Tell me what’s going on in your life; something that will show me that you always think that in this land of Indians and gringo tourists, there exists for you a girl who is your true friend. Ricardo was a little jealous about you because he says I use the informal way of address with you. I’ve explained to him all there is to explain, though. I love him very much and I already told him that you know it. I’ll close for now. I have to go to Mexico to buy paint and brushes for tomorrow and it’s getting very late. I wonder when you’ll write me a very, very long letter. Say hi to Stack and Ginett and to the nurses at Saint Luke’s — especially to the one that treated me so well – you know which one. Right now I cannot remember her name. It starts with an M. Goodbye, beautiful doctor. Don’t forget me. Lots of greetings and kisses from Frida My father’s death has been horrible for me. I think that’s why I’m rundown and why I lost quite a bit of weight. Do you remember how sweet and good he was?

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110. Coconut Tears (Crying Coconut), 1951. Oil on masonite, 23.2 x 30.5 cm. Private collection.

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The “bride” in this oil is doll-like, wearing a virginal white wedding dress and viewing a prickly landscape of quartered watermelons resembling pointed teeth and open jaws. There are cocoanuts with the “eyes” of one resembling the face of a small furry animal. It huddles next to blemished plantains beneath the stick legs of a striding locust. A sharp-leafed pineapple holds down the right side of the composition, just behind a fierce-eyed parrot. At the top is a cleft melon overripe with black seeds ready to pour out. This table top covered with fruits has been transmogrified into a trap that seems to pulse with life and promise of good things, but is actually a fragile illusion. Another – this time truly frightening – still life from her mind is The Chick. On a nest of barren sticks, a chick – you can almost feel it trembling – watches huge spiders continue to engulf a handled vase filled with lilacs, a caterpillar, a grasshopper and fronds with a network of sticky webbing. You want the chick to move away from the death trap, but it seems frozen in place, held in a thrall, vulnerable to the web and the terror of capture. It is a Hieronymus 111. Still Life dedicated to Samuel Fastlicht,

Bosch nightmare with the web slashed on with uncharacteristic palette-knife strokes.

“painted with all my love”, 1952.

In 1944, Frida Kahlo created two significant windows into to her persona. She painted

Oil on canvas mounted on wood,

The Broken Column and began a diary that she continued until her death. If anyone needs to

25.8 x 44 cm.

understand her suffering during the last years of her life, viewing The Broken Column and

Private collection.

reading her diary dispels any questions.

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The downward spiral of her health kept a gaggle of doctors busy. The pain in her right foot had become virtually constant and the need for permanent relief, not drugged respite that impaired her ability to paint, became a constant quest. Doctor Alejandro Zimbrón decided a steel corset would ease the pain and give her back support. With it in place, she began fainting and lost 13 pounds in six months. The pain was still there. Zimbrón added spinal injections to the treatment. She experienced excruciating headaches. A year later, in 1945, Doctor Ramiriz Moreno diagnosed syphilis and began blood transfusions. The pain continued and syphilis was never proved. Zimbrón tried again with a traction device that hung her face-down suspended by her chin from the ceiling to relieve stress on her spine. With sandbags laced to her feet, she hung there for three months, painting for at least an hour every day. While she dangled, other doctors conceived a variety of corsets made with plaster, steel, plaster and steel, leather, and one applied by an inexperienced doctor that didn’t cure properly and almost suffocated her before being frantically cut away. She had 28 corsets lashed or slathered onto her torso during her last ten years. The toes of her right foot contracted gangrene and required amputation. Actually, they dropped off of their own accord. Most of

112. Still Life with Parrot and Flag, 1951.

these “cures” only exacerbated the pain and deepened her addiction to narcotics which didn’t

Oil on masonite, 28 x 40 cm.

go well with the bottle of brandy she downed almost every day.

Private collection.

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113. Still Life with Pitahayas, 1938. Oil on plate, 25.4 x 35.6 cm. Private collection.

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By the late 1940s, Frida’s physical condition consumed her. Metamorphosed into the shape of a deer pierced by arrows that have drawn blood, she hurries through a wood of barren trees in The Wounded Deer (The Little Deer) painted in 1946. That same year she traveled to New York for major surgery. Doctor Philip Wilson, a back specialist, had suggested fusing certain of her vertebrae and fixing them in place with a steel rod. The Broken Column shows Frida against a ripped and rent desert background. She wears her hair long down her back and stands, as if for an examination, stripped to the waist except for the belts of Zimbrón’s wrap-around corset that hugs her nude torso. Down the centre of her body is a jagged autopsy-like slash revealing an Ionic column that is broken in a half-dozen places along its fluted length. Her naked flesh is pierced all over with pointed tacks. Tears pour down her cheeks, the tears that will be increasingly familiar in future compositions. Frida’s diary, also begun in 1944, became a constant companion as she lay in bed, later in a wheelchair, and finally housebound. It seems to be written in a world other than the one she was experiencing. The pages are filled with colourful drawings, doodles, cartoons and no small amount of bawdy humour, long rambling cadences of poetry, gentle insights, and raucous leperadas – scabrous stories. Accidental drools of ink are turned into profiles of heads and fantastic shapes. A reader can almost feel the numbing narcotic course through her veins as her pen moves across the page. Like her paintings, but with greater spontaneity, it maps her state of mind in a chaotic world that becomes less real as the end draws near. Anguish and pain, pleasure and death, Frida writes, are no more than a process.41

34

Rummel, op.cit., p. 133

35

Ibid., p. 133

36

Herrera, Hayden, op.cit., p. 436

37

Zamora, Martha, The Letters of Frida Kahlo, Chronicle Books, San Francisco, 1995

38

Zamora, Martha, The Brush of Anguish, Chronicle Books, San Francisco, 1990

Oil on canvas, 28.5 x 36 cm.

39

Ibid., p. 102

Augustin Cristóbal Collection,

40

Ibid., p. 102

Galería Arvil, Mexico City.

41

Kahlo, Frida, The Diary of Frida Kahlo, Harry N. Abrams, Inc., New York, 1995

114. Still Life, 1951.

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Letter to Bertram and Ella Wolfe Coyoacán 1944, Mexico Very dear Boitito and Ella, You’ll think I have suddenly resuscitated in this traitor world when you receive this singular missive, or that I was just pretending that “the virgin was talking to me” and that’s why I hadn’t paid any attention to you guys since the last time we saw each other in New York three years ago. Think what you damn well please. Even though I don’t put out even a penny’s worth of writing, you’re always present in my thoughts. I want to wish for both of you that this current year of 1944 (even though I don’t like its numbering) might be the happiest and most pleasant of all that you have lived and will live. [...] OK children, here comes the interrogation: How is your health? What kind of lifestyle do you lead? Whom do you see and speak with once in a while? Do you still remember that in Coyoacán there is a well-born dame, by all appreciated, whose luck has not yet been jinxed, who always hopes to see your dear faces some day, in this dear land called Tenochtitlán? If this is the case, please write soon, telling me all the details so that my heart can rejoice. I’ll tell you without much detail, i.e., “briefly”, [...] how I am after my remarriage, the second episode in my life, which you already know about: Health: So, so. My spine can still take a few more blows. Love: Better than ever because there is a mutual understanding between the spouses without getting in the way of equal freedom for each spouse in similar cases. We have eliminated jealousy, violent arguments, and misunderstanding. There’s a great deal of dialectics based on past experience. So say I! Moola: Scarce amount, almost zero, but it’s getting to be enough for the most urgent needs, for food, clothes, contributions, cigarettes, and here and there a bottle of aged “Cuervo” tequila, which costs $3.50 (for a litre). Work: Too much for my energy, since I’m now a teacher at a painting school (increase in category, but decrease in strength). I start at 8 A.M. and get off at 11 A.M. I spend half an hour covering the distance between the school and my house – 12 noon. I organise things as necessary to live more

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or less “decently”, so there’s food, clean towels, soap, a set-up table, etc., etc. = 2 P.M. How much work!! I proceed to eat, then to the ablutions of the hands and hinges (meaning teeth and mouth). I have my afternoon free to spend on the beautiful art of painting. I’m always painting pictures, since as soon as I’m done with one, I have to sell it so I have moola for all of the month’s expenses. (Each spouse pitches in for the maintenance of this mansion.) In the nocturnal evening, I get the hell out to some movie or damn play and I come back and sleep like a rock. (Sometimes the insomnia hits me and then I am fuc-bulous!!!) Alcohol: I’ve succeeded in making my will of steel help me decrease the amount of drinking, bringing it down to two glasses by day. Only on rare occasions does the amount of consumption increase in volume, and is transformed by magic into a drunk state with its necessary morning “hangover”. But these cases are not very common or beneficial. As for the rest of things that happen to everyone... After 19 years, Don Diego’s paternal love has been reborn, and as a result, little Lupita, so-called Picos, has been living with us for the last two years. Her mother, big Lupe. The eternal bomb, exploded against little Lupe, and such events made me into an adoptive “mummy” with her adoptive child. I can’t complain, since the child is good to Meechelangelo and more or less adapts herself to her dad’s personality. Even so, my life is not ideal. From 1929 to the present, I don’t remember any time when the Rivera couple did not have at least one female companion in their home. Home, sweet home! What changed was the nature of the company; in the past, it was closer to worldly love; now it is more filial. You know what I mean. Well comrades, I’m leaving now. I told you a few things about my current life. I expect to get an answer right away to this unexpected, abrupt, heterogeneous, and almost surrealistic letter. Your faithful and sure friend, Doña Frida, the trickster.

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116. Fruits of the Earth, 1938. Oil on masonite, 40.6 x 60 cm. Collection of the Banco Nacional de México, Fomento Cultural Banamex, Mexico City.

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I

n 1938, Sigmund Freud fled Vienna to live in London and returned to a previous study of the story of Moses. He also returned to themes that constantly resurfaced in his work, the impact of trauma on memory and a people’s identification with a leader who has both

uplifted and disappointed them. Frida borrowed a copy of Moses and Monotheism from one of

her patrons, Jose Domingo Lavín. He suggested she take some of Freud’s ideas and commit them to a painting. When she had finished the book, she took three months to create one of her more revealing masterpieces, titled simply, Moses. Of all her later work, Moses recalls her multi-subject story compositions painted in the mid-1930s, specifically My Dress Hangs There (1933) and What the Water Gave Me (1938). But in Moses, the frame barely contains the mural-like explosion of portraits, birth symbols and historic vignettes. It is a “mural” only in its stylistic tying together of diverse story elements à la Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros and Jose Clemente Orozco. While she uses the birth of Moses, a heroic character, as the core raison for the painting, Frida manages to turn it into a personal pastiche of gods, demigods, philosophers, Judeo-Pharaonic symbolisation, sociopaths, and mythic heroes stirred together with her own iconic code. At an informal gathering at Lavín’s home, she explained some of her personal beliefs and how they are enmeshed in a portion of the work: …Like Moses, there have always been lots of “high-class” reformers of religions and human societies. It could be said that they are a kind of messenger between the people they manipulate and the gods they invent to be able to do it. Many gods of this type still exist, as you know. Naturally, I didn’t have enough space for all of them, so I placed on both sides of the sun those, who, like it or not, are directly related to the sun. On the right are the Western (gods) and on the left the Oriental ones …42 Whatever her mix of verbal and artistic gymnastics, Moses captured the attention of the Mexican art establishment. She received the Ministry of Education National Prize of Arts and Sciences and the sum of five thousand pesos. Frida Kahlo’s ingenuous use of language in her diary and here, explaining one of her more densely populated and philosophically impenetrable works,

117. Tunas (Still Life with Prickly Pear Fruit),

gives away the core of her personality and one reason for her legion of friends and admirers. Each

1938.

life that touched hers came away with a reflection that matched an expectation. Each took away

Oil on plate, 19.7 x 24.8 cm.

a piece of the Frida Kahlo puzzle as a revelation, a personal discovery and a gift.

Private collection.

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Letter to Alejandro Gómez Arias New York, June 30, 1946 Alex darling, I’m not allowed to write much, but this is just to let you know that I’m already over the big operation. It’s been three weeks since they cut and cut bones. The doctors are so marvellous and my body so full of vitality that today they had me stand on my poor feet for two little minutes. I don’t believe it myself. The first two weeks I was in great pain and tears. The pain is such that I wouldn’t wish it on anybody. It’s very strong and bad. But this week the pain has decreased with the help of drugs and I’m doing relatively well. I have two big scars on my back in this shape. Later, they cut a piece of my pelvis to use as an implant in my spine. This is the scar that is the least ugly and most straight. Five vertebrae were damaged, but now they are going to be fine. The drag, though, is that the bone takes a long time to grow and settle, so I still have six weeks in bed until I’m discharged from the hospital and until I can flee this horrible city and return to my beloved Coyoacán. How are you? Please write me and send me one book. Please don’t forget me. How’s your mother; Alex, don’t leave me all alone in this sickening hospital; write to me. Cristi is really bored and we’re both dying of heat. It’s very hot and we don’t know what to do anymore. What’s new in Mexico, what’s going on with my people around there? Tell me things about everyone and especially about you. Your, F I send you lots of affection and many kisses. I received your letter. It made me very happy! Don’t forget me.

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Letter to Ella Wolfe Coyoacán, Oct. 23, 46 Beautiful Ella of my heart, You may be surprised that this lazy and shameless girl wrote you, but you know anyway that I love you very much, with or without letters. Here there’s no important news. I’m getting better and I’m already painting again (a really shitty picture) but at least it’s something. Nothing would be worse. Diego is working as usual – twice as much. After the discussion with Boitito there haven’t been any heated arguments in this house. He is over his anger, and I think it was good for both of them to get some things off their chests. How is Boit? And Sylvia; (I wrote my I’s wrong). Give lots of kisses to Boit, Jimmy, Sylvia, Rosita, and to all the pals that remember Mee-chelangelo. I want to ask you a favour the size of the Teotihuacán pyramid. Can you do it? I’m going to send letters for Bartoli to your address for you to forward them to wherever he is, or to keep them and give them to him when he comes through New York. For all you hold dear in life, please don’t allow these to go [to other hands] but directly to his. You know what I mean, kid! I wouldn’t like anybody, even Boitito, to know it, if you can avoid it, since it’s better for just you to keep my secret, do you understand; Here nobody knows anything except for Cristi, Enrique, you, me, and the man in question. If you want to ask something about him in your letters, refer to him as

SONJA

– is that clear! I beg you to tell me how you

think he’s doing, what he’s doing, whether he’s happy, whether he takes care of himself, etc. about this matter, please. [...]

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118. Diego Rivera, The Temptations of St Anthony, 1947. Oil on canvas, 90 x 110 cm. Museo Nacional de Arte, Mexico City.

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But if Moses conveys her ability to control a multi-dimensional philosophical concept, the sheer brutality of her situation comes forward in brush strokes loaded with thick impasto as she is either expecting to be force fed, or has just spewed out a conglomeration of food that hangs draped in a gelatinous mass from her bed easel. This unsettling scene titled Without Hope plays out on a devastated landscape beneath a broiling sun. She peers at the viewer through tears from beneath a bedspread decorated with microscopic life, the persistent infections that dogged her. The following year, 1946, she created Tree of Hope, Keep Strong where she lives in a divided world. The “two Fridas” in this case represent an incised but as yet unstitched postoperative patient stretched out on a hospital cart behind the seated Tehuana-dressed beauty clutching one of her many corsets that has been painted bilious pink and in the other hand a flag that reads, “Tree of Hope, keep firm”. Despite this rallying cry and the ministrations of her doctors, the spiral continued downward. Hope, in this case was denied her as Wilson’s vertebrae fusing operation failed to ease the pain, possibly because Wilson fused the wrong vertebra. Of course, it didn’t help that Frida refused to obey his recommendation for bed rest and a more sedentary lifestyle. In 1950, a bone graft from a piece of her pelvis followed the failed fusion and was equally unsuccessful. And by now, a previous fungus growth appeared once again on her hand. An abscess was discovered beneath one of her corsets and another surgical wound that had not healed properly stank, “…like a dead dog”. She spent that year in bed. For much of her stay, Diego took a room next to hers and did what he could to keep her spirits up. Frida had symbolically reduced Diego to a benign and helpless infant in her maternal 119. Page from the diary of Frida Kahlo,

arms as they both face the fates in her 1949 painting, The Love Embrace of the Universe, The

1953.

Earth (Mexico), Diego, I and Señor Xóloth. She also placed in the centre of his forehead her

Gouache on paper.

single eye of truth and wisdom. He had become the single constant in her life that she

Private collection.

trusted – regardless of his infidelities. He began to age visibly as he watched her paint in shades and hues of pain.

120. Page from the diary of Frida Kahlo,

By now, Diego Rivera was part of an aging mythos, the Mexican mural movement that

1953.

began in 1922. Though he remained popular, his legend appeared in the past tense as Frida

Watercolour on paper.

Kahlo’s was in ascendancy. Her work had appeared in a number of group shows around the

Private collection.

world and earned decent prices from a growing number of collectors. Diego took great pride in her success and took every opportunity to show her off and praise her talent. That didn’t

121. Page from the diary of Frida Kahlo,

stop him from having affairs, or stop her from abusing doctors’ orders as if to hurl more guilt

1953.

in his face when her body rebelled. But as his trips to the hospital became more frequent with

Gouache on paper.

the illnesses of aging, she cheered him and sent him small presents as though he was her

Private collection.

ailing child.

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Invitation to a gallery showing of her work, 1953? With friendship and affection straight from the heart, I have the pleasure to invite you to my humble exhibition. At eight at night, since you have a watch, after all, I’ll wait for you at the Gallery of Lola Alvarez Bravo. It is in Amberes number twelve; with doors on the street so you won’t get lost because that wouldn’t be nice. I just want you to give me your sincere and good opinion; you are well-read and written you have a first-class knowledge. These painted squares I painted with my own hands are waiting on the walls to be liked by my brothers. Well, my dear buddy, with true friendship, I am deeply thankful to you, “Frida Kahlo de Rivera”.

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Poem by Diego Rivera to Teresa Proenza, (undated) in the saliva. in the paper. in the eclipse. In all the lines in all the colours in all the jugs in my chest outside, inside. in the inkwell – in the difficulties of writing in the wonder of my eyes, in the last lines of the sun (the sun doesn’t have any lines) in everything. Saying “in everything” is idiotic and magnificent DIEGO in my urine

DIEGO

in my mouth – in my

heart in my madness, in my sleep – in the blotting paper – in the tip of the pen in the pencils – in the landscapes – in the food – in the metal – in the imagination. In the sicknesses – in the display cases – in his lapels – in his eyes – in his mouth, in his lie. Frida Kahlo

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CONCLUSION

By 1951, she emerged from her year of hospitalisation to be confined to a wheel chair. But in her Self-Portrait with Portrait of Dr. Farill, her outward gaze remains steady while her engorged heart is affixed to her palette suggesting she is painting with her life’s blood. Another portrait marked this year, a picture that tied up loose ends and her coming to grips with the death of her father, ten years earlier. Portrait of My Father is a sympathetic treatment of the man who urged her to seek her own path in life. He is portrayed with the view camera of his trade and the text in red on retablo banner inscrolled beneath the likeness ends, “with adoration, your Frida”. By this time, she must have sensed that there was not much time left to her. As with many who face death, she sought a return to her only religion, the only cause that had sustained her interest and commitment. Frida rejoined the Communist Party. Even in her wheel chair, she could still offer up her rally voice singing the Internationale and raise her fist in solidarity with her comrades. Her loyalty to Mexico was finally honoured in April, 1953 when Frida’s friend, Dolores Alvarez Bravo, devoted her Galleria de Artes Contemporaneo to a one-woman show of Frida Kahlo’s work. This was the only such show accorded Frida in Mexico in her lifetime. At the time of the show’s opening, her body was hacking its way through a bronchitis attack and she was confined to her bed. She and the bed were delivered to the gallery behind an escort of police sirens and blowing horns. There, heavily sedated, she became part of her exhibit, smiling up from her four-poster resting place at well-wishing faces from her past and those silent familiar witnesses looking down from the walls. As 1953 drew to a close, her painting continued though its brushwork had reverted to a more primitive style from her learning years in the 1920s. She seemed to collapse into herself following the amputation of her right leg that had become septic with gangrene. She had kept that leg since her brush with polio at age thirteen when it was turned into a withered “cane”. The bus accident had broken it in eleven places. She had dragged it with her for more than 30 years and in all her paintings of that treacherous limb, she had used a mirror reflection and

122. “Pinté de 1916”.

rendered it as her left leg. Now, it had been hacked off below the knee. Frida grudgingly

The first illustration in the diary which

accepted a wooden leg, but she was too frail to get much use from the prosthetic. Her

Frida kept from 1946-1954.

addiction to pain killers and reliance on alcohol also made its convenience more hazardous

Museo Frida Kahlo, Mexico City.

than useful. Despite daily injections that left her back and arms covered with scabs, she managed long periods of lucidity, keeping notes in her diary, and working on an autobiography through

123. Page from Frida’s diary demonstrating her continued belief in Communism.

1953. Her final painting, entitled Still Life: Viva la Vida (Long Live Life), depicts a collection of chopped watermelons with those words inscribed into a melon’s pulp. She attended a

124. Page from Frida’s diary (1946-1954)

Communist rally on July 2, 1954 shaking her fist and chanting wit the crowd. Ten days later

showing the artist’s personal conflict

as Diego sat with her holding her hand she gave him a silver ring celebrating their 25th

in Moon, Sun, I?

wedding anniversary 17 days distant. When he questioned the timing of her gift, she said,

Gouache on paper.

“…because I sense that I’ll be leaving you very soon”.

Private collection.

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Letter to the President of Mexico, Miguel Alemán Coyoacán, October 20, 1948 Miguel Alemán: This letter is a protest of just indignation that I want to communicate to you, against a cowardly and humiliating crime that is being perpetrated in this country. I am referring to an intolerable act without precedent that the owners of the Hotel del Prado are committing by covering up with wooden boards the mural painting by Diego Rivera in the Dining Hall of this hotel. A few months ago this painting caused the most shameful and unjust attack in the history of Mexico against a Mexican artist for reproducing the controversial but historical phrase of Ramirez, “El Nigromante”. After that dirty and concealed attack on the part of the media, the hotel owners closed the scene with a bang by covering up the mural with wooden boards and... nothing happened! Nobody in Mexico protests! As it is commonly said, “they just dumped dirt on the issue”. I do protest, and I want to communicate to you the tremendous historical responsibility that your government is assuming by letting a Mexican painter’s work, renowned worldwide as one of the highest examples of the Mexican Culture, be covered up, hidden from the eyes of this country’s people and from the international public because of sectarian, demagogic, and mercenary reasons. That type of crime against the culture of a country, against the right that every man has to express his ideas – those criminal attacks against freedom have only been committed in regimes like Hitler’s and are still being committed under Francisco Franco, and in the past, during the dark and negative age of the “Holy” Inquisition. It is not possible that you – who represent at this moment the will of the Mexican people, with democratic liberties gained through the incomparable effort of a Morelos or of a Juarez, and through the blood shed of the people themselves – can allow a few investors, in complicity with a few ill-willed Mexicans, to cover up the words that tell the History of Mexico and the work of art of a Mexican citizen whom the civilised world recognises as one of the most illustrious painters of our times. […] As a Mexican citizen and, above all, as President of your people, will you permit History to be silenced — the word, the cultural action and the message of the genius of a Mexican artist to be silenced? Will you permit public freedom of expression and opinion, the means of progress of every free people, to be destroyed? All this in the name of stupidity, narrow-mindedness, chicanery, and the betrayal of democracy? I beg you to give yourself an honest answer about the historical role you have as the leader of Mexico in an issue of such significance.

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I am laying forth this problem before your conscience as a citizen of a democratic country. You must join this cause, which is shared by all those who do not live under regimes of shameful and destructive oppression. By defending our culture, you will demonstrate to the peoples of the world that Mexico is a free country; that Mexico is not the ignorant and savage nation of the Pancho Villas; that, in democratic Mexico, we respect the blessings of Archbishop Martinez as well as the historic words of Nigromante. We paint saints and Virgins of Guadalupe, as well as paintings with a revolutionary content, on the monumental staircase of the Palacio Nacional. Let people from all over the world come to Mexico to learn how in Mexico we respect freedom of expression! It is your obligation to demonstrate to civilised nations that you will not sell out, that in Mexico we have fought with our blood and we are still fighting to free our country from colonisers, even if they have lots of dollars. This is the moment to stop beating around the bush and to exercise your character as a Mexican, as the President of your people, and as a free man. A word from you to those hotel owners will be a strong example in the history of freedom gained on behalf of Mexico. You must not permit them to use gangster like demagogy against the dignity of your own decree and the cultural heritage of our whole country. If you do not act as an authentic Mexican at this critical moment, by defending your own decrees and rights, then let the science and history book burning start; let the works of art be destroyed with rocks or fire; let free men get kicked out of the country; let torture in, as well as prisons and concentration camps. I can assure you that very soon and with very little effort, we will have a flaming “ made-in-Mexico ” fascist regime. Once you called me on the phone, from the very studio of Diego Rivera, to greet me and to remind me that we were school mates at the Preparatoria. Now, I am writing to you to greet you and to remind you that, above all, we are Mexicans and that we will not permit anybody, especially some Yankee-type hotel owners, to ride on the neck of the Culture of Mexico, the essential root of the life of our country, thus denigrating and underestimating our national values of worldwide significance, turning a mural painting of universal transcendence into a dressed-up flea. Frida Kahlo

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125. Diego Rivera, The Dove, 1957. Watercolour on paper, 9.7 x 14.8 cm. Museo Dolores Olmedo, Mexico City.

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126. Page from the diary of Frida Kahlo, 1953. Watercolour on paper. Private collection.

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On July 13, 1954, Frida Kahlo died at age 47. In a drawer near her bed was a large cache of Demerol vials, but some of her friends claimed she would never have taken her own life. Others disagreed. The official death certificate cites “pulmonary embolism”. She had chosen cremation because after spending so many years of her short life stretched out on a bed, she had no wish to spend eternity lying on her back. Meticulously dressed in a Tehuana costume and bedecked with her jewellery, Frida’s body was driven to the Palace of Fine Arts in Mexico City where more than 600 visitors paid their respects beneath the lobby’s towering neoclassical ceiling. A distraught and shaken Diego Rivera sat at her side throughout the visitation. Earlier, in his state of weeping denial, he had her veins cut to make sure she was truly dead. The funeral became a politically charged (a red hammer-and-sickle Communist flag had been draped on her coffin), overwrought, emotional event totally in keeping with her chaotic lifestyle. A light rain fell on the cortege as the mourners walked down the Avenida Juarez behind the hearse to the Panteón Civil de Dolores, the civil cemetery. At the centre of the front line of walkers was Frida’s poor old Panzón. Gone was the jaunty Stetson hat, the baggy suit with its pocket sagging from the weight of his Colt pistol. He wore a raincoat and looked like an aging banker. With his last kiss still lingering on her cold forehead, what remained of Frida left him behind at the crematory doors to cope with the final three years of his life. In his autobiography, he admitted, “…Too late now, I realised that the most wonderful part of my life had been my love for Frida”.43 Diego Rivera died in Mexico City in 1957. In her 1953 autobiography, Frida wrote: My paintings are well-painted, not nimbly but patiently. My painting contains in it the message of pain. I think that at least a few people are interested in it. It’s not revolutionary. Why keep wishing for it to be belligerent? I can’t. Painting completed my life. I lost three children and a series of other things that would have fulfilled my horrible life. My painting took the place of all of this. I think work is the best.44 127. Self-Portrait with the Image of Diego on My Breast and Maria on My Brow, 42

Zamora, op. cit., p. 122

1953-1954.

43

Diego Rivera / Gladys March, My Art, My Life: An Autobiography, Citadel, New York, 1960

Oil on hard fibre, 61 x 41 cm.

44

Zamora, op. cit., p. 157

Private collection.

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Written in 1949 for the catalogue that accompanied an exhibition presented as an homage to Diego Rivera, organised by the National Institute of Fine Arts, Mexico City. PORTRAIT OF DIEGO I warn you that I will paint this portrait of Diego with colours that I am not familiar with: words […] HIS SHAPE: Diego is a big, immense child with a kind face and a somewhat sad gaze, with an Asian head on which grows dark hair, so thin and fine that it seems to float in the air. His bulging, dark, very intelligent, and big eyes are held almost outside their sockets with difficulty by swollen and protuberant eyelids. They are like batrachian eyes, separated from each other more than others. They are like this so his gaze can encompass a much broader visual field, as if they were built especially for a painter of big spaces and crowds. Between his eyes, so far away from each other, one can guess the invisible Oriental wisdom and very seldom does an ironic and sweet smile, blossom of his image, disappear from his Buddha-like mouth of thick lips. Seeing him naked, one thinks immediately of a child-frog standing on his hind legs […] His enormous, soft, and tender abdomen is like a sphere resting on his strong, beautiful, column-like legs. These end in big feet that open outward in an obtuse angle as if to cover the whole earth and stand on it matchless, like an antediluvian being, from which would emerge, from the waist up, an example of future humanity, two or three thousand years distant from us […] HIS CONTENT: Diego is on the periphery of all limited and defined personal relationships. He is contradictory like all the things that ignite life; he is an immense caress and a violent discharge of powerful and unique forces at the same time. One can experience him on the inside like the seed possessed by the earth, and on the outside, like a landscape […] As for his painting, his painting itself speaks prodigiously. The men of science will describe his function as a human organism, and all those who know how to value his incalculable transcendence in time will tell of his valuable social revolutionary cooperation and of his personal and objective work […] There are three directions or lines that 1 consider basic in his portrait: First, he is a steadfast revolutionary fighter, dynamic, extraordinarily sensitive, and vital; an indefatigable worker in his trade with a knowledge like few painters in the world [possess]; a fantastic enthusiast of life and, at the same time, he is always unhappy for not having been able to learn more, build more, and paint more. Second, he is always curious; a tireless researcher of everything. And third, he has an absolute lack of prejudice and therefore of any faith, because Diego accepts – like Montaigne – that “where doubt ends, stupidity begins”, and the person who has faith in something admits unconditional submission without the freedom to analyse or change the course of events. Because of this marvellously dialectic, materialistic knowledge of life, Diego is a revolutionary… He is attacked constantly because of his profound desire to help transform the society in which he lives into one more beautiful, healthier, less painful, and more intelligent, and because he puts all his creative powers,

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his building genius, his penetrating sensitivity, and his constant work into this inevitable and positive Social Revolution […] They say he is looking for publicity. I have rather observed that others want to be on good terms with him for personal gain, except that they use poorly applied Jesuit methods, so that, generally, it backfires on them. Diego does not need any publicity, much less the kind that is offered to him in his own country. His work speaks of him, not only what, he has done in the land of Mexico, where he is shamelessly insulted more than anywhere else, but also in all the civilised countries of the world, where he is recognised as one of the most important and talented men in the field of culture [… ] All these hidden and overt acts are done in the name of democracy, morality, and Viva Mexico! Sometimes they also use, Long Live Christ, the King! All this publicity that Diego does not seek or need proves two things: that Diego’s works and his irrefutable great personality are so important that they have to be considered by those whom he accuses of being hypocritical and shameless opportunists; that this country’s deplorable and weak pseudo-colonial condition allows things to happen in 1949 that could only take place at the height of the Middle Ages, during the times of the Holy Inquisition, or while Hitler was in power. They are waiting for his death to acknowledge [that he is] a marvelous painter, a valiant fighter, an honest revolutionary. […] But insults and attacks do not make Diego change. They are part of the social phenomena of a world in decadence and that is all. Everything in life still interests and amazes him, because it all changes. Everything beautiful gets his attention, but nothing disappoints him or scares him because he knows the dialectic mechanism of phenomena and facts […] That is why Diego is not a defeatist or a sad person. Essentially, he is a researcher, builder, and above all, an architect. He is an architect in his painting, in his thinking process, and in his passion-ate desire to build a harmonic, functional, and solid society. He always builds with precise elements, [using] mathematics. It does not matter whether his composition is a painting, a house, or an argument. His foundation is always reality. […] He is extremely intelligent by nature and he does not admit ghosts. He is inflexible in his opinions, he never gives in, and he disappoints all those who hide in belief or fake goodness. That is why they call him immoral, but he really does not have anything to do with those who accept moral laws or rules […] Covered by thorns, he protects his tenderness inside. He lives with his strong sap in a ferocious environment. He shines alone like a sun avenging the gray colour of rocks. His roots go beyond the anguish of solitude and sadness and of all frailties that do dominate other beings. He stands up with amazing power, then blossoms and bears fruit like no other plant.

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Index Moses or Nucleus of Creation, 1945

FRIDA KAHLO Basket of Flowers, 1941 Beauty Parlour (I) or The Perm, 1932 The Bride Frightened at Seeing Life Opened, 1943 The Broken Column, 1944 The Bus, 1929

152 70 224-225 39 32-33

The Chick, 1945

181

The Circle, 1951

158

Coconut Tears (Crying Coconut), 1951

216-217

Coconuts (Glances), 1951

198-199

166-167

Moving Still Life, 1952

202

My Birth, 1932

80-81

My Dress Hangs There or New York, 1933

101

My Grandparents, My Parents and I, 1936

106-107

My Nanny and I, 1937

136

Page from Frida’s diary demonstrating her continued belief in Communism

244

Page from Frida’s diary (1946-1954) Congress of People For Peace, 1952 The Deceased Dimas Rosas at the Age of Three, 1937 Diego and I, 1949 The Dream or The Bed, 1940 Ex voto, c. 1943

203 79 144 4 35

showing the artist’s personal conflict in Moon, Sun, I? Page from the diary of Frida Kahlo, 1953

245 237, 240, 241, 249

Pancho Villa and Adelita, c. 1927 “Pinté de 1916”

10 242

Portrait of a Lady in White, c. 1929

19

Portrait of Alicia Galant (detail), 1927

16 24

A Few Small Nips, 1935

76-77

The Flower of Life, 1943

148

Portrait of Diego Rivera, 1937

Framed Self-Portrait “The Frame”, c. 1938

170

Portrait of Doña Rosita Morillo, 1944

Frida and Diego Rivera or Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, 1931

194

Portrait of Dr. Leo Eloesser, 1931

74

173

Frida and the Abortion or The Abortion, 1932

83

Portrait of Engineer Eduardo Morillo

48

Frida and the Caesarean Section, 1932

84

Portrait of Eva Frederick, 1931

30

Portrait of Lucha Maria, a girl from Tehuacán, (Sun and Moon), 1942

37

Portrait of Luther Burbank, 1931

61

Portrait of Miguel N. Lira, 1927

23

Fruits of Life, 1953

174-175

Fruits of the Earth, 1938

228-229

Fulang Chang and I, 1937 Girl in Diaper (Portrait of Isolda Pinedo Kahlo), 1929

142 28

Portrait of My Father, 1951 Girl with Death Mask, 1938 Henry Ford Hospital or The Flying Bed, 1932

85

The Love Embrace of the Universe, The Earth (Mexico), I, Diego and Señor Xólotl, 1949 Magnolias, 1945

209

162

149 95

Portrait of My Sister Cristina, 1928

18

Portrait of Virginia, 1929

62

Roots or The Pedregal, 1943 Saint Nicholas, c. 1932, dated 1937

128-129 71

Marxism Will Give Health to the Sick, c. 1954

163

Self-Portrait, 1930

6

The Mask, 1945

207

Self-Portrait, 1948

110

Me and My Parrots, 1941

133

Self-Portrait as a Tehuana or Diego on My Mind, 1943

Memory or The Heart, 1937

127

Self-Portrait dedicated to Dr. Eloesser, 1940

254

52 131

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Self-Portrait dedicated to Leon Trotsky or Between the Curtains, 1937

119

Still Life with Pitahayas, 1938

Self-Portrait dedicated to Marte R. Gómez, 1946

109

Study for the Portrait of Luther Burbank, 1931

Self-Portrait dedicated to Sigmund Firestone, 1940

132

The Suicide of Dorothy Hale, 1938-1939

Self-Portrait Sitting on the Bed or My Doll and I, 1937

55

Self-Portrait (Standing) along the Border between Mexico and the United States, 1932

96

Self-Portrait “Time Flies”, 1929

210

Self-Portrait with “Bonito”, 1942

44

Self-Portrait with Braid, 1941

178

Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair, 1940

192

Self-Portrait with Hair Down, 1947

145

Self-Portrait with Itzcuintli Dog, c. 1939

120

Self-Portrait with Monkey, 1938

43

Self-Portrait with Monkey, 1940

146

Self-Portrait with Monkey, 1945

112, 208

Self-Portrait with Monkey and Parrot, 1942

45

Sun and Life, 1947

36

Tunas (Still Life with Prickly Pear Fruit), 1938

230

The Two Fridas, 1939

189

Two Nudes in the Wood or The Earth or My Nanny and I, 1939

137

Untitled (drawing with cataclysmic theme), 1946

87

Untitled (drawing with subject inspired by Eastern philosophy), 1946

86

What the Water Gave Me, 1938 Window Display in a Street in Detroit, 1931

The Wounded Deer (The Little Deer), 1946

122-123

DIEGO RIVERA

Assets, 1931

Self-Portrait with Red and Gold Dress, 1941

117

Calla Lily Vendor, 1943

Self-Portrait with Stalin or Frida and Stalin, c. 1954

118

The Day of the Dead, 1944 Delfina and Dimas

Self-Portrait with Thorny Necklace, 1940

143

Still Life, 1942

155

Still Life, 1951

223

Still Life dedicated to Samuel Fastlicht, “painted with all my love”, 1952

102 93 68-69 31 248

Indian Spinning

64-65

Night Landscape, 1947 47

34

The Dove, 1957

Modesta, 1937 Self-Portrait with Velvet Dress (detail), 1926

98-99 140-141

111

213

161

Without Hope, 1945

Self-Portrait with Necklace, 1933

Self-Portrait with the Portrait of Dr. Farill, 1951

182-183

Tree of Hope, Keep Strong, 1946

Artist’s Studio, 1954

250

186

42

134

Maria on My Brow, 1953-1954

60

Thinking about Death, 1943

Self-Portrait with Monkeys, 1943

Self-Portrait with the Image of Diego on My Breast and

220-221

Nude of Frida Kahlo, 1930

56 204 12, 13

Landscape with Cactus, 1931

67

Portrait of Señora Doña Evangelina Rivas de Lachica, 1949

20

Portrait of Mrs Natasha Gelman, 1943

90, 92

218

Self-Portrait, 1906

9

Still Life: Viva la Vida (Long Live Life), c. 1951-1954

197

Self-Portrait, 1949

59

Still Life with Parrot and Flag, 1951

219

The Temptations of St Anthony, 1947

234-235

255

B

ehind Frida Kahlo’s portraits lies the story of both her life and work. It is precisely this combination that draws the reader in. Frida’s work is a record of her life, and rarely can we learn so much about an artist from what she records inside the picture frame. Frida Kahlo truly is Mexico’s gift to the history of art. She was just eighteen years old when a terrible bus accident changed her life forever, leaving her handicapped and burdened with constant physical pain. But her explosive character, raw determination and hard work helped to shape her artistic talent. At her side was the great Mexican painter and muralist, Diego Rivera, whose obsessive womanising did not stop her winning him over with her charm, talent and intelligence. Kahlo soon learnt to lean on the success of her companion in order to explore the world, thus creating her own legacy and carefully surrounding herself with a close-knit group of friends. Her personal life was turbulent, as she frequently left her relationship with Diego to one side whilst she cultivated her own bisexual affairs. Despite this, Frida and Diego managed to save their frayed romance. The story and the paintings that Frida left us display a courageous account of a woman constantly on a journey of self-discovery.