Frida Kahlo

Painting
Frida Kahlo. Painting “Self-portrait with a crown of thorns and a hummingbird”, 1940

The biography of the creator is inseparable from his works.

Frida Kahlo’s life was filled with tragic events. Polio left her lame in her early childhood. The right leg became thinner than the left, and peers teased her for it. But it gets worse. At the age of eighteen, Frida Kahlo had a terrible accident. The bus she was traveling on crashed into a tram. The girl’s spine was broken in three places, a triple fracture of the pelvis, broken ribs, collarbone, eleven fractures of the bones of the right leg and many more injuries, the abdomen was pierced through by an iron handrail.

Painting
Frida Kahlo. Painting “Self-portrait in a velvet dress”, 1926

A terrible sight.

But Frida survived. We must pay tribute to her will to live. She spent more than a year in the hospital, underwent three dozen operations, and after that she always wore a special corset. It was while in the hospital that Frida Kahlo began to paint. She escaped from forced idleness and monotony, pouring her pain and horror onto canvases. It is this pain and horror that we admire when we come to exhibitions of her paintings.

Frida was going to become a doctor, but, by the will of fate, she met Diego Rivera, who was engaged in painting the walls there, at the medical preparatory center.

It was the artist-politician who was friends with Trotsky and who hosted the parade on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the October Revolution in Moscow at Lenin’s mausoleum, who became her husband and the main engine of her career. Diego Rivera came from a wealthy and influential family and spent many years in Europe. He was greedy for women, he loved perversions. Sick and passionate Frida became a diamond in his collection. He admired her paintings of the hospital period, called them “clean” and “fresh”, pushed them to key exhibitions and advertised them to friends. And Frida fell in love with this man, who often portrayed himself in the form of a toad.

Frida Kahlo. Painting
Frida Kahlo. Painting “Viva la vida”, 1954

Frida was infected with his revolutionary spirit, she was glad that he appreciated her work. At the same time, the artist was almost constantly under the influence of drugs (there were no other painkillers then). Most of her paintings are painted in an altered mind.

Diego loved to watch his bisexual wife having fun with other women, smoking, drinking and swearing. And Frida found joy in the contrast of suffering and the euphoria of dirty entertainment.

Frida never forgave her husband only one betrayal: when he slept with her younger sister in spite of her.

Frida frantically feigned new illnesses. She had a good command of medical terminology, knew the symptoms of various manifestations of ill health. In this way, some of the affective disorders of her behavior were manifested. Several times the artist provoked doctors to carry out new operations that were completely unnecessary. All this was done to attract attention. Frida died after leg amputation at the age of 47. Many of her biographers are sure that she still died not from postoperative pneumonia, but from a drug overdose. There is a version that this very operation was caused by the simulation.

Frida Kahlo. Painting
Frida Kahlo. Painting “My dress hangs here”, 1933
  1. First, it is not customary in society to talk badly about the talents of people with disabilities. She suffered – it means, well done, it means that she threw out genuine feelings on the canvas. But these feelings arose under the influence of strong drugs.
  2. Secondly, she is the brightest representative of her country (Mexico). How many Mexican artists do we know? It turns out that she was one of the first to put Mexico on the artistic map of the world. And the fact that she is far from Raphael does not bother us.
  3. Thirdly, Frida Kahlo is a symbol of struggle, resistance and non-conformism. But a good revolutionary does not mean a good artist. Show her pictures to your children and they will tell you what they think of them.

 

Frida Kahlo. Painting
Frida Kahlo. Painting “Two Fridas”, 1939
Frida Kahlo. Painting
Frida Kahlo. Painting “Self-portrait on the border between Mexico and the United States”, 1932

 

Frida Kahlo. Painting
Frida Kahlo. Painting “Bus”, 1929
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