But how much does this tell us about the historical Frida Kahlo, an artist of rare talent who grew up amidst the turmoil of the Mexican Revolution, endured chronic pain and fragile health throughout her life and who, in the wake of her marriage to Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, mixed with some of the 20th century\u2019s most important figures? A great deal in that she understood the power of her own image, but also not much at all when you compare the kinds of images typically chosen for Kahlo merchandise to paintings that are rarely, if ever, shown on book covers. To take just one of the many self-portraits that were so integral to her work, Henry Ford Hospital (1932) shows Kahlo lying in a pool of her own blood on a hospital bed (pictured below right). A single tear falls across one cheek. Six red umbilical cords emanate from her stomach, one of which is attached to a male foetus. The painting was created in the wake of a miscarriage.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a bleak and unflinchingly honest portrayal of trauma. Without this kind of extraordinary painting to give substance to her public persona, \u2018Fridamania\u2019 \u2013 a term that encompasses not just Kahlo\u2019s posthumous fame but her adoption as a figurehead by Mexican-Americans, feminist movements and members of the LGBTQ+ community<\/a> \u2013 simply wouldn\u2019t exist. Forget for a moment Kahlo\u2019s 21st-century image and focus on how she became a painter capable of such work.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a story that begins in 1907 in Coyoac\u00e1n, then a small village on the outskirts of Mexico City, when Kahlo became the third of four daughters born to German \u00e9migr\u00e9 Guillermo Kahlo (1871\u20131941) and Matilde Calder\u00f3n y Gonz\u00e1lez (1874\u20131932), herself the daughter of an indigenous father and a Spanish-descended mother. Guillermo was a talented and successful photographer, although the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution in 1910 badly impacted on his work because he relied on commissions from the recently overthrown government.<\/p>\n While Kahlo\u2019s relationship with her conservative mother was often tense, she was close to her father, especially after Kahlo contracted polio when she was six years old. This left her with a withered and shortened right leg \u2013 and may partly explain her love of long traditional dresses because they covered her disability. According to art historian Hayden Herrera\u2019s biography Frida, Guillermo\u2019s own experience of epileptic fits helped the pair forge a close bond based on a shared experience of ill-health. Guillermo taught his daughter about photography and painting. Later she would write in her diary of his \u201ctenderness \u201d and \u201cunderstanding for all my problems\u201d.<\/p>\n In 1922, Kahlo entered the prestigious Escuela Nacional Preparatoria (National Preparatory School), one of only 35 girls among 2,000 students. The school authorities embraced indigenismo, an anti-colonial approach to Mexican identity that played into Kahlo\u2019s creation of a distinctive public image. She began claiming she had been born in 1910, \u201ca daughter of the revolution\u201d.<\/p>\n She and her friends, a small and informal group called Los Cachuchas after the peaked caps they wore, were rebellious and irreverent, but also politically engaged and fiercely intellectual. \u201cWe Cachuchas were anarchically happy,\u201d wrote one of their number, Manuel Gonz\u00e1lez Ram\u00edrez, adding, \u201cIt would be a bit pious to say that we were studying in those days. We actually devoured books on a variety of subjects, but especially literature.\u201d<\/p>\n Kahlo planned to become a doctor until a horrific accident changed the trajectory of her life. On 17 September 1925, Kahlo and her first love, Alejandro G\u00f3mez Arias, the unofficial leader of Los Cachuchas, were aboard a bus when it was hit by a streetcar. Several passengers died. Kahlo was impaled on an iron handrail that pierced her pelvis.<\/p>\n Her abdomen and uterus were punctured, she suffered multiple broken bones and her right foot was crushed. Doctors doubted she would survive. After her initial convalescence, she was diagnosed as having three displaced vertebrae, and had to wear a plaster corset and spend a further three months in bed. Her relationship with Arias, of which his parents disapproved, would finally end after he was sent on a tour of Europe.<\/p>\n Enduring a second long convalescence \u2013 her battle with polio had isolated her for nine months \u2013 Kahlo began to take art seriously. Her mother gave her a specially designed easel so Kahlo could paint in bed. She later wrote, \u201cI paint myself because I am often alone and I am the subject I know best.\u201d<\/p>\n In late 1927, although she would live in chronic pain for the rest of her life and undergo multiple operations, Kahlo was well enough to enter the world again. Her friends, now at university, were involved in student politics. Kahlo joined the Mexican Communist Party (PCM), whose members included such radical figures as the Italian-American photographer Tina Modotti (1896\u20131942). At one of Modotti\u2019s social gatherings \u2013 although accounts differ, and both parties had a habit of embellishing stories \u2013 Kahlo was introduced to Diego Rivera (1886\u20131957).<\/p>\nWhere was Frida Kahlo born?<\/h2>\n
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Who was married to Frida Kahlo?<\/h2>\n
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