Frida Kahlo

Who was she? Above all, she was a self-portraitist. Born in Mexico, she gave her birth date as July 7th 1910, although her birth certificate shows July 6th 1907 she allegedly wanted her birth year to coincide with the eruption of the Mexican revolution, so that her life would begin with the birth of modern Mexico. I believe this says a lot. Her work has been described as painful and passionate, and has often been celebrated as being emblematic for the feminist movement, for its uncompromising depiction of the female experience and form. She was basically a surrealist, although her work could be better described as what is called magic realism. One surrealist painter of the time said she was like a ribbon around a bomb.

I was born a bitch. I was born a painter. She was not. Actually, Frida suffered lifelong health problems and the very worst of them all was a bus accident she was seriously injured in. She ended up with a broken spinal column, a broken collarbone, broken ribs, a broken pelvis, eleven fractures in her right leg, a crushed and dislocated right foot, and a dislocated shoulder. Also, an iron handrail pierced her abdomen and her uterus, compromising her chance to ever have a baby. Apparently, this was just the push she needed. This is when her actual work begun. She painted to occupy her time, during her temporal immobilization. The portraits became the most fulfilling part of her life during those times. She once said I paint myself because I am so often alone and because I am the subject I know best. She drew from her personal experience a stormy marriage, numerous miscarriages and operations. No wonder her work is full of suggestions of pain. At age 22 she married famous muralist Diego Rivera, whose work she admired, as a young artist. He recognized her talent. He incouraged her. Finally, they became intimate. They got married, despite the firm disapproval of Fridas mother. Their marriage was troublesome. They both had irritable temperaments. Extramarital affairs. Frida was bisexual. He tolerated her relationships with women, but it was her relationships with men that made him mad jealous. She went mad when she found out Diego was having an affair with her younger sister, Cristina. They divorced in 1939, but remarried in 1940. Their second marriage was as much a disaster as the first one. Despite all that, they adored each other.

As active communists, Frida and Diego befriended Leon Trotsky. At one point, he lived with her and they even had a romantic affair. He and his wife then relocated and there, in 1940, he was assassinated. Frida created over 140 paintings, along with dozens of drawings and studies, 55 of which are self-portraits. Her work often incorporated symbolic portrayals of physical and psychological wounds. She insisted I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality. Her greatest inspiration was undoubtedly Diego. Werent it for him, she would have never painted the same way. Nevertheless, she found inspiration in indigenous Mexican culture which is apparent in her use of bright, vibrant colors, dramatic symbolism and a somewhat primitive style. She frequently included the symbolic monkey - in Mexican culture, monkeys are believed to be symbols of lust, but she portrayed them as tender and protective symbols. Christian and Jewish themes are also often depicted in her work. Reviewers and critics tend to stress the female aesthetic in her work and an apparent narcissism, rooted in her biography and eccentric disposition. Unfortunately, audience is more often than not presented with a sensitive narrative about Frida's emotional life, which does not go beyond the trite image of her, incarnated by Salma Hayek in Taymor's film Frida. If art history and social questions are mentioned at all, they are reduced to fodder for Frida's self-reflection and individual psychological interpretation. However, even though all the upper mentioned factors, such as martial problems and physical trauma played quite a role in her life, suffering is not a mandatory requirement for the creation of art. What is needed is a general, creative dissatisfaction with the state of the world and a desire to explore the sources of this dissatisfaction. To understand this situation, we need to take a look at the bigger picture: at the time, the Mexican government was conducting a campaign against poverty and widespread illiteracy. They engaged numerous intellectuals in the process and this way, this tendency found expression in muralism it was the way to show the history of Mexico, its new values and revolutionary ideal through pictures, not only to the educated few, but also to the illiterate. The government called on los tres grandes: Rivera, Siqueiros and Jose Clemente Orozco. Student Frida Kahlo and her school clique, cachuchas appears to have been marked by its singular lack of respect for the school authorities they discussed the reformist ideas of the Ministry of Education, the philosophy of Marx, as well as the conservative ideas of Spengler. Toward the end of the 1920s, the government was still allowing artists a certain amount of political freedom. Is 1928, Diego Rivera was able to commemorate communists as mural subjects in the Ministry for Public Education to celebrate the forthcoming transition to socialism (The Weapon Arsenal, 1928). Frida can be seen at the centre of this painting, wearing a red shirt with a red star and handing out weapons. This was the year she joined the Communist Party of Mexico (PCM).

In the midst of the Stalinist campaign against deviants and reconcilers, Rivera failed to measure up to the phony proletarian cultural ideal of the artist who subordinates his artistic freedom to the partys political line. This is why, in 1929, Diego was expelled from PCM and Frida followed him. She developed quite a rage against all the rich people in USA. It is very difficult to find out anything about Frida Kahlos actual political involvement with communism, and what can be discovered is usually only vaguely presented. Kahlos sympathy for the Left Opposition against Stalin manifested itself in the most fulfilling and creative stage of her life, and it is impermissible to reduce this fact to a mere episode. Finally, when one considers the historical background of her paintings (such as The Broken Column, 1944), it is very difficult to look at them and think only of her physical illness. It was something else in there that was broken, and si managed to put up with it through her art. Surrealist, feminist, avant-gardist it doesnt even matter.

Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frida_Kahlo http://www.fridakahlo.com/ http://www.biography.com/people/frida-kahlo-9359496 http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2010/09/kah1-s10.html http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2010/09/kah2-s11.html "Frida Kahlo", Christina Burrus, editura Univers, 2010

The Broken Column, 1944

The Weapon Arsenal, 1928