Frida Kahlo de Rivera or Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo Calderon is a Mexican artist best known for her self-portraits.
Biography of the artist
Kahlo Frida (1907-1954), Mexican artist and graphic artist, wife, master of surrealism.
Frida Kahlo was born in Mexico City in 1907, in the family of a Jewish photographer, originally from Germany. Mother is Spanish, born in America. She suffered from polio at the age of six, and since then her right leg has become shorter and thinner than her left.
At the age of eighteen, on September 17, 1925, Kahlo was in a car accident: a broken iron rod from a tram's current collector stuck in her stomach and came out at her groin, shattering her hip bone. The spine was damaged in three places, two hips and a leg were broken in eleven places. Doctors could not vouch for her life.
The painful months of motionless inaction began. It was at this time that Kahlo asked her father for a brush and paints.
For Frida Kahlo, they made a special stretcher that allowed her to write while lying down. The beds are attached under the canopy large mirror so Frida Kahlo could see herself.
She started with self-portraits. “I write myself because I spend a lot of time alone and because I am the subject I know best.”
In 1929, Frida Kahlo entered the National Institute of Mexico. During a year spent in almost complete immobility, Kahlo became seriously interested in painting. Having started walking again, she attended art school and in 1928 joined the Communist Party. Her work was highly appreciated by the already famous communist artist Diego Rivera.
At 22, Frida Kahlo married him. Their family life seething with passions. They could not always be together, but never apart. They shared a relationship that was passionate, obsessive and sometimes painful.
An ancient sage said about such relationships: “It is impossible to live either with you or without you.”
Frida Kahlo’s relationship with Trotsky is shrouded in a romantic aura. The Mexican artist admired the “tribune of the Russian revolution”, was very upset about his expulsion from the USSR and was happy that, thanks to Diego Rivera, he found shelter in Mexico City.
Most of all in life, Frida Kahlo loved life itself - and this magnetically attracted men and women to her. Despite the excruciating physical suffering, she could have fun from the heart and carouse widely. But the damaged spine constantly reminded of itself. From time to time, Frida Kahlo had to go to the hospital and almost constantly wear special corsets. In 1950, she underwent 7 spinal surgeries, spent 9 months in a hospital bed, after which she could only move in a wheelchair.
In 1952, Frida Kahlo's right leg was amputated at the knee. In 1953, Frida Kahlo's first solo exhibition took place in Mexico City. In not a single self-portrait does Frida Kahlo smile: a serious, even mournful face, fused thick eyebrows, a barely noticeable mustache above tightly compressed sensual lips. The ideas of her paintings are encrypted in the details, background, figures appearing next to Frida. Kahlo's symbolism is based on national traditions and is closely connected with Indian mythology of the pre-Hispanic period.
Frida Kahlo knew the history of her homeland brilliantly. Many authentic monuments ancient culture, which Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo collected throughout their lives, is located in the garden of the Blue House (house museum).
Frida Kahlo died of pneumonia a week after celebrating her 47th birthday, on July 13, 1954.
“I look forward to leaving cheerfully and hope never to return. Frida."
The farewell ceremony for Frida Kahlo took place at Bellas Artes, the Palace of Fine Arts. IN last way Frida, along with Diego Rivera, was accompanied by Mexican President Lazaro Cardenas, artists, writers - Siqueiros, Emma Hurtado, Victor Manuel Villaseñor and other famous figures of Mexico.
The work of Frida Kahlo
In the works of Frida Kahlo, a very strong influence of Mexican folk art and the culture of pre-Columbian civilizations of America is noticeable. Her work is full of symbols and fetishes. However, the influence of European painting is also noticeable in it - Frida’s passion for, for example, Botticelli was clearly evident in her early works. The work contains the style of naive art. Frida Kahlo's painting style was greatly influenced by her husband, artist Diego Rivera.
Experts believe that the 1940s are the artist’s heyday, the time of her most interesting and mature works.
The genre of self-portrait dominates in the work of Frida Kahlo. In these works, the artist metaphorically reflected the events of her life (“Henry Ford Hospital”, 1932, private collection, Mexico City; “Self-portrait with dedication to Leon Trotsky”, 1937, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington; “Two Fridas”, 1939, Museum of Modern Art, Mexico City; “Marxism Heals the Sick,” 1954, Frida Kahlo House Museum, Mexico City).
Exhibitions
In 2003, an exhibition of Frida Kahlo's works and photographs was held in Moscow.
The painting “Roots” was exhibited in 2005 at the Tate Gallery in London, and Kahlo’s personal exhibition in this museum became one of the most successful in the history of the gallery - about 370 thousand people visited it.
House-museum
The house in Coyoacan was built three years before Frida was born on a small piece of land. Thick walls of the outer facade, flat roof, one residential floor, a layout in which the rooms always remained cool and all opened onto the courtyard - almost an example of a house in colonial style. It stood just a few blocks from the central city square. From the outside, the house on the corner of Londres Street and Allende Street looked just like others in Coyoacan, an old residential area in the southwestern suburbs of Mexico City. For 30 years, the appearance of the house did not change. But Diego and Frida made it the way we know it: a house in the prevailing blue color with elegant high windows, decorated in traditional Indian style, a house full of passion.
The entrance to the house is guarded by two giant Judases, their twenty-foot-tall papier-mâché figures making gestures as if inviting each other to conversation.
Inside, Frida's palettes and brushes lie on the work table as if she had just left them there. Next to Diego Rivera's bed lies his hat, his work robe, and his huge boots. The large corner bedroom has a glass display case. Above it is written: “Frida Kahlo was born here on July 7, 1910.” The inscription appeared four years after the artist’s death, when her house became a museum. Unfortunately, the inscription is inaccurate. As Frida's birth certificate shows, she was born on July 6, 1907. But choosing something more significant than the insignificant facts, she decided that she was born not in 1907, but in 1910, the year the Mexican Revolution began. Since she was a child during the revolutionary decade and lived among the chaos and blood-stained streets of Mexico City, she decided that she was born along with this revolution.
Another inscription adorns the bright blue and red walls of the courtyard: “Frida and Diego lived in this house from 1929 to 1954.”
It reflects the sentimental ideal attitude to marriage, which is again at odds with reality. Before Diego and Frida's trip to the USA, where they spent 4 years (until 1934), they lived in this house negligibly. In 1934-1939 they lived in two houses built especially for them in the residential area of San Angel. Then followed long periods when, preferring to live independently in a studio in San Angel, Diego did not live with Frida at all, not to mention the year when both Rivers separated, divorced and remarried. Both inscriptions embellished reality. Like the museum itself, they are part of the legend of Frida.
Character
Despite her life of pain and suffering, Frida Kahlo had a lively and liberated extroverted nature, and her daily speech was littered with profanities. A tomboy in her youth, she retained her zest in later years. Kahlo smoked heavily, drank alcohol in excess (especially tequila), was openly bisexual, sang obscene songs and told equally obscene jokes to the guests of her wild parties.
Cost of paintings
At the beginning of 2006, Frida’s self-portrait “Roots” (“Raices”) was valued by Sotheby’s experts at $7 million (the original estimate at auction was £4 million). The painting was painted by the artist in oil on sheet metal in 1943 (after her remarriage to Diego Rivera). That same year, this painting sold for US$5.6 million, a record for a Latin American work.
The record for the cost of Kahlo's paintings remains another self-portrait from 1929, sold in 2000 for $4.9 million (with an initial estimate of 3 - 3.8 million).
Commercialization of the name
IN beginning of XXI century, Venezuelan entrepreneur Carlos Dorado created the Frida Kahlo Corporation Foundation, to which the relatives of the great artist granted the right to commercially use Frida’s name. Within a few years, there was a line of cosmetics, a brand of tequila, sports shoes, jewelry, ceramics, corsets and lingerie, as well as beer with the name of Frida Kahlo.
Bibliography
In art
The bright and extraordinary personality of Frida Kahlo is reflected in works of literature and cinema:
- In 2002, the film “Frida” was made, dedicated to the artist. The role of Frida Kahlo was played by Salma Hayek.
- In 2005, the non-fiction art film “Frida against the Background of Frida” was shot.
- In 1971, the short film "Frida Kahlo" was released, in 1982 - a documentary, in 2000 - a documentary film from the "Great Artists" series, in 1976 - "The Life and Death of Frida Kahlo", in 2005 - the documentary "Life and the times of Frida Kahlo."
- The group Alai Oli has a song “Frida”, dedicated to Frida and Diego.
Literature
- The diary of Frida Kahlo: an intimate self-portrait / H.N. Abrams. - N.Y., 1995.
- Teresa del Conde Vida de Frida Kahlo. - Mexico: Departamento Editorial, Secretaría de la Presidencia, 1976.
- Teresa del Conde Frida Kahlo: La Pintora y el Mito. - Barcelona, 2002.
- Drucker M. Frida Kahlo. - Albuquerque, 1995.
- Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera and Mexican Modernism. (Cat.). - S.F.: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 1996.
- Frida Kahlo. (Cat.). - L., 2005.
- Leclezio J.-M. Diego and Frida. - M.: KoLibri, 2006. - ISBN 5-98720-015-6.
- Kettenmann A. Frida Kahlo: Passion and Pain. - M., 2006. - 96 p. - ISBN 5-9561-0191-1.
- Prignitz-Poda H. Frida Kahlo: Life and Work. - N.Y., 2007.
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Paintings by a Mexican artist
My nanny and me
The brilliant Mexican artist Frida Kahlo was often called a female alter ego. Critics classified the author of the work “Wounded Deer” as a surrealist, but throughout her life she disowned this “stigma”, declaring that the basis of her work is not ephemeral allusions and a paradoxical combination of forms, and the pain of loss, disappointment and betrayal, passed through the prism of personal worldview.
Childhood and youth
Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo Calderon was born three years before the Mexican Revolution, on July 6, 1907, in the settlement of Coyoacan (a suburb of Mexico City). The artist's mother Matilda Calderon was an unemployed fanatical Catholic who kept her husband and children strictly, and her father Guillermo Calo, who idolized creativity and worked as a photographer.
At the age of 6, Frida suffered from polio, as a result of which her right leg became several centimeters thinner than her left. Constant ridicule from her peers (in her childhood she had the nickname “wooden leg”) only strengthened Magdalena’s character. To spite everyone, the girl, who was not used to being depressed, overcame pain, played football with the guys, went swimming and boxing classes. Kahlo also knew how to competently disguise her flaw. They helped her with this long skirts, men's suits and stockings layered on top of each other.
It is noteworthy that in her childhood Frida dreamed not of becoming an artist, but of becoming a doctor. At the age of 15 she even entered the National preparatory school“Preparatorium”, in which the young talent studied medicine for a couple of years. Lame-footed Frida was one of 35 girls who received an education along with thousands of boys.
In September 1925, an event occurred that turned Magdalena’s life upside down: the bus on which 17-year-old Kahlo was returning home collided with a tram. Metal railings pierced the girl's stomach, pierced the uterus and came out into groin area, the spine was broken in three places, and the leg, crippled by a childhood illness, could not be saved even by three stockings (the limb was broken in eleven places).
Frida Kahlo (right) with her sisters The young lady lay unconscious in the hospital for three weeks. Despite the doctors' statements that the injuries received were incompatible with life, the father, unlike his wife, who never came to the hospital, did not leave his daughter a single step. Looking at Frida’s motionless body wrapped in a plaster corset, the man considered her every breath and exhalation a victory.
Contrary to the predictions of medical luminaries, Kahlo woke up. After returning from the other world, Magdalena felt an incredible craving for painting. The father made a special stretcher for his beloved child, which allowed him to create while lying down, and also attached a large mirror under the canopy of the bed so that his daughter could see herself and the space around her while creating works.
A year later, Frida made her first pencil sketch, “Crash,” in which she briefly sketched the disaster that crippled her physically and mentally. Having firmly found her feet, Kahlo entered the National Institute of Mexico in 1929, and in 1928 became a member communist party. At that time, her love for art reached its apogee: Magdalena sat at an easel in an art studio during the day, and in the evenings, dressed in an exotic outfit that hid her injuries, she went to parties.
Graceful, sophisticated Frida certainly held a glass of wine and a cigar in her hands. The obscene witticisms of the extravagant woman made guests of social events laugh non-stop. The contrast between the image of an impulsive, cheerful person and the paintings of that period imbued with a sense of hopelessness is striking. According to Frida herself, behind the chic of beautiful clothes and the gloss of pretentious phrases hid her crippled soul, which she showed to the world only on canvas.
Painting
Frida Kahlo became famous for her colorful self-portraits (70 paintings in total), distinctive feature which was a fused eyebrow and lack of a smile on the face. The artist often framed her figure with national symbols (“Self-portrait on the border between Mexico and the USA”, “Self-portrait as Tehuana”), which she was extremely knowledgeable about.
In her works, the artist was not afraid to expose both her own (“Without hope”, “My birth”, “Just a few scratches!”) and the suffering of others. In 1939, a fan of Kahlo’s work asked her to pay tribute to the memory of their mutual friend, actress Dorothy Hale (the girl committed suicide by jumping out of a window). Frida painted The Suicide of Dorothy Hale. The customer was horrified: instead of a beautiful portrait, a consolation for her family, Magdalena depicted a scene of a fall and a lifeless body bleeding.
The work entitled “Two Fridas,” which the artist wrote after a short break with Diego, is also worthy of attention. Kahlo’s inner self is presented in the painting in two guises: Mexican Frida, whom Rivera madly loved, and European Frida, whom her lover rejected. The pain of loss is expressed through the image of a bleeding artery connecting the hearts of two ladies.
World fame came to Kahlo when the first exhibition of her works took place in New York in 1938. However, the artist’s rapidly deteriorating health also affected her work. The more often Frida lay on the operating table, the darker her paintings became (“Thinking of Death”, “Mask of Death”). In the postoperative periods, canvases were created, full of echoes Bible stories, – “The Broken Column” and “Moses, or the Core of Creation.”
By the opening of an exhibition of her work in Mexico in 1953, Kahlo could no longer move independently. The day before the presentation, all the paintings were hung, and the beautifully decorated bed where Magdalena lay down became a full-fledged part of the exhibition. A week before her death, the artist painted the still life “Long Live Life,” which reflected her attitude towards death.
Kahlo's paintings had a huge influence on modern painting. One of the exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago was dedicated to Magdalena's influence on the art world and included works by contemporary artists for whom Frida became a source of inspiration and role model. The exhibition was held under the title “Free: modern Art after Frida Kahlo."
Personal life
While still a student, Kahlo met her future husband, Mexican artist Diego Rivera. In 1929, their paths crossed again. The following year, the 22-year-old girl became the legal wife of the 43-year-old painter. Contemporaries jokingly called the marriage of Diego and Frida the union of an elephant and a dove (the famous artist was much taller and fatter than his wife). The man was teased as a “toad prince,” but no woman could resist his charm.
Magdalena knew about her husband's infidelity. In 1937, the artist herself began an affair with, whom she affectionately called “the goat” because of his gray hair and beard. The fact is that the couple were zealous communists and, out of the kindness of their hearts, sheltered a revolutionary who had fled from Russia. It all ended in a loud scandal, after which Trotsky hastily left their house. Kahlo was also credited with an affair with a famous poet.
Without exception, all Frida's amorous stories are shrouded in mystery. Among the artist's alleged lovers was singer Chavela Vargas. The reason for the gossip was candid photographs of girls in which Frida, dressed in a men's suit, was drowned in the arms of the artist. However, Diego, who openly cheated on his wife, did not pay attention to her hobbies for representatives of the weaker half of humanity. Such connections seemed frivolous to him.
Despite the fact that the married life of the two stars visual arts was not exemplary, Kahlo never stopped dreaming of children. True, due to injuries, the woman was never able to experience the happiness of motherhood. Frida tried again and again, but all three pregnancies ended in miscarriage. After another loss of a child, she took up a brush and began to paint children (“Henry Ford Hospital”), mostly dead ones - this is how the artist tried to come to terms with her tragedy.
Death
Kahlo died a week after celebrating her 47th birthday (July 13, 1954). The cause of the artist's death was pneumonia. At Frida's funeral, which took place with all pomp at the Palace of Fine Arts, in addition to Diego Rivera, there were painters, writers and even former Mexican President Lazaro Cardenas. The body of the author of the painting “What the Water Gave Me” was cremated, and the urn with the ashes remains to this day in the Frida Kahlo House Museum. The last words in her diary were:
“I hope that leaving will be successful and I will not return again.”
In 2002, Hollywood director Julia Taymor presented the autobiographical film “Frida” to film lovers, the plot of which was based on the story of the life and death of the great artist. The role of Kahlo was played by an Oscar winner, theater and film actress.
Literary writers Hayden Herrera, Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio and Andrea Kettenmann have also written books about the fine art star.
Works
- "My Birth"
- "Mask of Death"
- "Fruits of the Earth"
- “What did the water give me?”
- "Dream"
- “Self-Portrait” (“Diego in Thoughts”)
- "Moses" ("Core of Creation")
- "Little Doe"
- "Embrace of Universal Love, Earth, Me, Diego and Coatl"
- "Self-portrait with Stalin"
- "Without hope"
- "Nurse and Me"
- "Memory"
- "Henry Ford Hospital"
- "Double Portrait"
Attempts to tell about this extraordinary woman have been made more than once - voluminous novels, multi-page studies have been written about her, opera and dramatic performances have been staged, feature films have been filmed. documentaries. But no one managed to unravel and, most importantly, reflect the mystery of her magical attractiveness and amazingly sensual femininity. This post is also one of such attempts, illustrated quite rare photographs great Frida!
FRIDA KALO
Frida Kahlo was born in Mexico City in 1907. She is the third daughter of Gulermo and Matilda Kahlo. Father is a photographer, Jewish by origin, originally from Germany. Mother is Spanish, born in America. Frida Kahlo contracted polio at the age of 6, which left her with a limp. “Frida has a wooden leg,” her peers cruelly teased her. And she, in defiance of everyone, swam, played football with the boys and even took up boxing.
Two-year-old Frida 1909. The picture was taken by her father!
Little Frida 1911.
Yellowed photographs are like milestones of fate. The unknown photographer who “clicked” Diego and Frida on May 1, 1924, hardly thought that his photograph would become the first line of their common biography. He captured Diego Rivera, already famous for his powerful “popular” frescoes and freedom-loving views, at the head of a column of the union of revolutionary artists, sculptures and graphic artists in front of the National Palace in Mexico City.
Next to the huge Rivera, little Frida with a determined face and bravely raised fists looks like a fragile girl.
Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo at the May Day demonstration in 1929 (photo by Tina Modotti)
On that May day, Diego and Frida, united by common ideals, stepped into future life- to never be separated. Despite the enormous trials that fate threw at them every now and then.
In 1925, the eighteen-year-old girl suffered a new blow of fate. On September 17, at an intersection near the San Juan market, a tram crashed into the bus in which Frida was traveling. One of the iron fragments of the carriage pierced Frida right through at the level of the pelvis and exited through the vagina. “That’s how I lost my virginity,” she said. After the accident, she was told that she was found completely naked - all her clothes were torn off. Someone on the bus was carrying a bag of dry gold paint. It tore, and golden powder covered Frida's bloody body. And from this golden body protruded a piece of iron.
Her spine was broken in three places, her collarbones, ribs, and pelvic bones were broken. The right leg is broken in eleven places, the foot is crushed. For a whole month, Frida lay on her back, encased in plaster from head to toe. “A miracle saved me,” she told Diego. “Because at night in the hospital death danced around my bed.”
For another two years she was wrapped in a special orthopedic corset. The first entry she managed to make in her diary: “ Good: I'm starting to get used to suffering.". In order not to go crazy from pain and melancholy, the girl decided to draw. Her parents put together a special stretcher for her so that she could draw while lying down, and attached a mirror to it so that she would have someone to draw. Frida could not move. Drawing fascinated her so much that one day she confessed to her mother: “I have something to live for. For the sake of painting."
Frida Kahlo in a men's suit. We are used to seeing Frida in Mexican blouses and colorful skirts, but she also loved to wear men's clothing. Bisexuality from her youth encouraged Frida to dress up in men's costumes.
Frida in a man's suit (center) with sisters Adriana and Cristina, as well as cousins Carmen and Carlos Verasa, 1926.
Frida Kahlo and Chavela Vargas with whom Frida had a connection and quite a non-spiritual one, 1945
After the artist’s death, more than 800 photographs remained, and some of them show Frida naked! She really enjoyed posing nude, and being photographed in general, the daughter of a photographer. Below are nude photos of Frida:
At the age of 22, Frida Kahlo entered the most prestigious institute in Mexico (national preparatory school). Out of 1000 students, only 35 girls were accepted. There Frida Kahlo meets her future husband Diego Rivera, who has just returned home from France.
Every day Diego became more and more attached to this small, fragile girl - so talented, so strong. On August 21, 1929 they got married. She was twenty-two years old, he was forty-two.
Wedding photograph taken on August 12, 1929, in the studio of Reyes de Coyaocan. She is sitting, he is standing (probably, in every family album there are similar photographs, only this one shows a woman who survived a terrible car accident. But you wouldn’t guess about it). She is wearing her favorite national Indian dress with a shawl. He is wearing a jacket and tie.
On the wedding day, Diego showed his explosive temper. The 42-year-old newlywed drank a little too much tequila and began firing a pistol into the air. The exhortations only inflamed the wild artist. The first family scandal occurred. The 22-year-old wife went to her parents. After waking up, Diego asked for forgiveness and was forgiven. The newlyweds moved into their first apartment, and then into the now famous “blue house” on Londres Street in Coyaocan, the most “bohemian” area of Mexico City, where they lived for many years.
A romantic aura surrounds Frida’s relationship with Trotsky. The Mexican artist admired the “tribune of the Russian revolution”, was very upset about his expulsion from the USSR and was happy that, thanks to Diego Rivera, he found shelter in Mexico City.
In January 1937, Leon Trotsky and his wife Natalya Sedova went ashore in the Mexican port of Tampico. They were met by Frida - Diego was then in the hospital.
The artist brought the exiles to her “blue house”, where they finally found peace and quiet. Bright, interesting, charming Frida (after a few minutes of communication no one noticed her painful injuries) instantly captivated the guests.
The almost 60-year-old revolutionary was carried away like a boy. He tried in every possible way to express his tenderness. Sometimes he touched her hand as if by chance, sometimes he secretly touched her knee under the table. He wrote passionate notes and, putting them in a book, handed them over right in front of his wife and Rivera. Natalya Sedova guessed about the love affair, but Diego, they say, never found out about it. “I’m very tired of the old man,” Frida allegedly said one day in a circle of close friends and broke off the short romance.
There is another version of this story. The young Trotskyist allegedly could not resist the pressure of the tribune of the revolution. Their secret meeting took place in country estate San Miguel Regla, 130 kilometers from Mexico City. However, Sedova kept a vigilant eye on her husband: the affair was nipped in the bud. Begging his wife for forgiveness, Trotsky called himself “her old faithful dog.” After this, the exiles left the “blue house”.
But these are rumors. There is no evidence of this romantic connection.
A little more is known about the love affair between Frida and the Catalan artist Jose Bartley:
“I don't know how to write love letters. But I want to say that my whole being is open to you. Since I fell in love with you, everything has been mixed up and filled with beauty... love is like a scent, like a current, like rain.”, wrote Frida Kahlo in 1946 in her address to Bartoli, who moved to New York to escape the horrors of the Spanish Civil War.
Frida Kahlo and Bartoli met while she was recovering from another spinal operation. Returning to Mexico, she left Bartoli, but their secret romance continued at a distance. The correspondence lasted for several years, affecting the artist’s painting, her health and relationship with her husband.
Twenty five love letters, painted between August 1946 and November 1949, will become the main lots at the Doyle New York auction house. Bartoli kept more than 100 pages of correspondence until his death in 1995, then the correspondence passed into the hands of his family. Bid organizers expect proceeds of up to $120,000.
Despite the fact that they lived in different cities and saw each other extremely rarely, the relationship between the artists continued for three years. They exchanged sincere declarations of love, hidden in sensual and poetic works. Frida wrote the double self-portrait “Tree of Hope” after one of her meetings with Bartoli.
“Bartoli - - last night I felt as if many wings were caressing me all over, as if the tips of my fingers became lips that kissed my skin”, Kahlo wrote on August 29, 1946. “The atoms of my body are yours and they vibrate together, that’s how much we love each other. I want to live and be strong, to love you with all the tenderness you deserve, to give you everything that is good in me, so that you don’t feel alone.”
Hayden Herrera, Frida's biographer, notes in her essay for Doyle New York that Kahlo signed her letters to Bartoli "Maara". This is probably a shortened version of the nickname "Maravillosa". And Bartoli wrote to her under the name “Sonia”. This conspiracy was an attempt to avoid Diego Rivera's jealousy.
According to rumors, among other affairs, the artist was in a relationship with Isamu Noguchi and Josephine Baker. Rivera, who endlessly and openly cheated on his wife, turned a blind eye to her entertainment with women, but reacted violently to relationships with men.
Frida Kahlo's letters to José Bartoli have never been published. They reveal new information about one of the most important artists of the 20th century.
Frida Kahlo loved life. This love magnetically attracted men and women to her. Excruciating physical suffering and a damaged spine were constant reminders. But she found the strength to have fun from the heart and enjoy herself widely. From time to time, Frida Kahlo had to go to the hospital and almost constantly wear special corsets. Frida underwent more than thirty operations during her life.
The family life of Frida and Diego was seething with passions. They could not always be together, but never apart. They shared a relationship that, according to one friend, was “passionate, obsessive and sometimes painful.” In 1934, Diego Rivera cheated on Frida with her younger sister Cristina, who posed for him. He did this openly, realizing that he was insulting his wife, but did not want to break off relations with her. The blow for Frida was cruel. Proud, she did not want to share her pain with anyone - she just splashed it out on the canvas. The resulting picture is perhaps the most tragic in her work: a naked female body is dissected with bloody wounds. Next to him, with a knife in his hand, with an indifferent face, is the one who inflicted these wounds. "Just a few scratches!" - the ironic Frida called the painting. After Diego's betrayal, she decided that she also has the right to love interests.
This infuriated Rivera. Allowing himself liberties, he was intolerant of Frida’s betrayals. The famous artist was painfully jealous. One day, having caught his wife with the American sculptor Isama Noguchi, Diego pulled out a pistol. Fortunately, he didn't shoot.
At the end of 1939, Frida and Diego officially divorced. “We haven’t stopped loving each other at all. I just wanted to be able to do what I wanted with all the women I liked.", Diego wrote in his autobiography. And Frida admitted in one of her letters: “I can’t express how bad I feel. I love Diego, and the torment of my love will last a lifetime..."
On May 24, 1940, a failed attempt on Trotsky took place. Suspicion also fell on Diego Rivera. Warned by Paulette Goddard, he narrowly escaped arrest and managed to escape to San Francisco. There he painted a large panel on which he depicted Goddard next to Chaplin, and not far from them... Frida in Indian clothes. He suddenly realized that their separation was a mistake.
Frida had a hard time with the divorce and her condition deteriorated sharply. Doctors advised her to go to San Francisco for treatment. Rivera, having learned that Frida was in the same city as him, immediately came to visit her and stated that he was going to marry her again. And she agreed to become his wife again. However, she put forward conditions: they would not have sexual relations and they will conduct financial affairs separately. Together they will only pay for household expenses. This is such a strange marriage contract. But Diego was so happy to have his Frida back that he willingly signed this document.
Frida Kahlo's work has always gravitated towards surrealism, but the relationship was ambiguous. Founder of surrealism Andre Breton, traveling in Mexico in 1938, was fascinated by Kahlo’s paintings and definitely classified Frida Kahlo’s paintings as surrealism. Thanks to the initiative of Andre Breton, the exhibition of Frida Kahlo's paintings at the Julian Levy fashion gallery in New York , and Breton himself wrote the preface to the catalog of works, after the exhibition half of Frida’s paintings were sold. Andre Breton proposed organizing an exhibition in Paris, but when Frida Kahlo, who did not speak French, arrived in Paris, an unpleasant surprise awaited her - Breton did not bother to pick up the works of the Mexican artist from the customs service. The event was saved by Marcel Duchamp, the exhibition took place 6 weeks later. She did not become financially successful, but critical reviews were favorable, Frida Kahlo's paintings were praised by Picasso and Kandinsky, and one of them was bought by the Louvre. However, Frida Kahlo, having a quick temper, was offended and did not hide her dislike for, “ crazy crazy sons of bitches surrealists" She did not abandon surrealism immediately, in January 1940. she took part ( with Diego Rivera) at the International Exhibition of Surrealism, but later fiercely argued that she had never been a true surrealist. “ They thought I was a surrealist, but I wasn't. Frida Kahlo never painted dreams, I painted my reality,” said the artist.
Frida began to be annoyed by the far-fetched and pretentiousness of surrealism. The noisy gatherings of surrealists seemed childish to her, and one day in her hearts she accused them of " Such intellectual sons of bitches cleared the way for all the Hitlers and Mussolinis".
Latin American art and Frida's paintings
National motifs are of particular importance in the work of Frida Kahlo. Frida Kahlo knew the history of her homeland brilliantly. Frida had a special love for Mexican folk culture and collected ancient works of applied art, even in Everyday life wore national costumes. Frida Kahlo's paintings are very much influenced by Mexican folk art and the culture of pre-Columbian civilizations in America. Her work is full of symbols and fetishes. The ideas of her paintings are encrypted in the details, background, figures appearing next to Frida, and the symbolism is revealed through national traditions and is closely connected with the Indian mythology of the pre-Hispanic period. And yet, in Frida’s paintings, the influence of European painting is also noticeable.
Experts believe that the 1940s are the era of the heyday of Frida Kahlo’s creativity, the time of her most interesting and mature works.
From the biography of Frida Kahlo
At the age of 18, Frida Kahlo gets into a serious accident. She was traveling on a bus that collided with a tram and was seriously injured as a result. Her life began to suffer painful months of motionless inaction. It was at this time that she asked her father for a brush and paints. A special stretcher was made for Frida, which allowed her to write while lying down. A large mirror was attached under the canopy of the bed so that Frida could see herself. She started with self-portraits. " I write myself because I spend a lot of time alone and because I am the subject I know best" - said Frida Kahlo.
Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera
At 22, Frida Kahlo became the wife of a famous Mexican artist Diego Rivera. Diego Rivera was 43 years old at the time. The two artists were brought together not only by art, but also by common communist beliefs. Their stormy life together became a legend. Frida met Diego Rivera back in adolescence, when he painted the walls of the school where Frida studied. After injury and temporary forced confinement, Frida, who painted many paintings during this time, decides to show them to a recognized master. The paintings made a great impression on Diego Rivera: “ Frida Kahlo's paintings conveyed a vital sensuality, complemented by a ruthless, but very sensitive, ability to observe. It was obvious to me that this girl was a born artist.».
Frida Kahlo died of pneumonia a week after celebrating her 47th birthday, on July 13, 1954. The farewell ceremony for Frida Kahlo took place at Bellas Artes, the Palace of Fine Arts. Frida and Diego Rivera were seen off on their last journey by Mexican President Lazaro Cardenas, artists, writers - Siqueiros, Emma Hurtado, Victor Manuel Villaseñor and other famous Mexican figures. In the last years of the 20th century, Frida Kahlo became the subject of a cult that was rationally inexplicable.
Frida Kahlo painting
Self-portrait
Death Mask
Self-portrait with her hair down
What did water give me?
Self-portrait
Self-portrait
Dream
Little doe
Self-portrait
Embrace of universal love, Earth, me, Diego and Coatl
Christina
For most of us, Frida Kahlo is not a discovery; many have watched the biography film “Frida”, others have seen paintings, read the biography by Hayden Herrera, etc. But I think it wouldn’t be superfluous to mention this brilliant woman again...
And you must admit that it is not so easy to single out women in the field of art who have achieved significant success. At one time, Schopenhauer wrote that the greatest works of art were created by men (well, it seems like women have a different purpose!).
So, Frida Kahlo for me is an example of un-feminine tenacity of character, willpower, ardent disposition, combined with absolutely original beauty, seductiveness and tragic fate... which is directly reflected in her paintings, which I would like to dwell on in more detail.
I will not focus on the love affairs of Frida and Diego, although many may find this the most interesting... I will only touch on facts and events that help to understand the essence of some of her paintings and the artist’s achievements.
As you know, Frida Kahlo was born in 1907, in Mexico, Coyoacan. At the age of 6, she fell ill with polio, after which she was left with a limp for the rest of her life, and her right foot stopped growing. When Frida was 18 years old, she got into a serious accident, received a broken spine, a broken collarbone, broken ribs, a broken pelvis, 11 fractures in right leg, a crushed and dislocated right foot, a dislocated shoulder. In addition, the abdomen and uterus were pierced by a metal railing. Year she was bedridden, and health problems accompanied her all her life. After this tragedy, she first asked her father for brushes and paints. A special stretcher was made for Frida, which allowed her to write while lying down, and a large mirror was attached to the bed so that she could see herself. The first painting was a self-portrait, which forever determined the main direction of creativity: “ I write about myself because I spend a lot of time alone and because I myself is the subject that I know best.».
Frida Kahlo's self-portraits helped her form an idea of herself and find a path to self-knowledge. The artist’s face is almost always like a mask and does not show feelings or mood. Her works should be seen as metaphorical summaries of specific experiences. She draws techniques from Mexican folk art, pre-Columbian culture, and indigenous retablos.
In 1928 she shows her works. The paintings made a great impression on him: “ They conveyed a vital sensuality, complemented by a ruthless, but very sensitive, ability to observe. It was obvious to me that this girl was a born artist.».
And the next year they got married. Diego received orders to work in the USA, where they spent a total of 4 years, and Frida suffered several unsuccessful pregnancies.
After her second miscarriage she paints a picture "Henry Ford Hospital", 1932.
We see Frida lying in a hospital bed. The white sheet is stained with blood. Above her belly, still round from pregnancy, she holds three red ribbons, like arteries. The end of the first ribbon becomes the umbilical cord, which leads to the fetus, this is the child lost in miscarriage. A snail hovers above the head of the bed. This is a symbol of the slow progress of a failed pregnancy. The pink anatomical model of the lower torso above the foot of the bed, as well as the bone model at the bottom right, indicate the cause of the miscarriage - a damaged spine and pelvis in the accident. The device at the bottom left may symbolize her own “unusable” muscles, which did not allow her to keep the child in the womb. The purple orchid shown in the center under the bed was brought to the hospital by Diego.
Although the motifs of the painting are depicted carefully and in detail, the composition as a whole avoids realistic life-like appearance. Objects are removed from their usual environment and included in new combinations. For Frida, it turns out to be much more important to reproduce an emotional state than to capture a real situation with photographic accuracy. She depicted reality not as she saw it, but as she felt it.
IN "Self-portrait on the border between Mexico and the USA", 1932 Frida expressed her views and thoughts of that period, her attitude towards America, and showed her isolation from her homeland.
She stands like a statue on a pedestal, on the border between two different worlds. On the left side appears the landscape of ancient Mexico, where the forces of nature and natural life cycles. On the right we see the landscape North America where technology reigns. Frida holds a Mexican flag in one hand and a cigarette in the other. The clouds in the Mexican sky echo the plumes of smoke billowing from the chimneys of Ford's factories, while lush vegetation on the left gives way to specimens of electrical equipment on the right, whose wires turn into roots that suck energy from the ground. And Frida is torn between these two opposites.
When she and Diego returned to Mexico the following year, Frida was ready to throw herself into painting, but health problems forced her back into the hospital, and a year later she had to terminate another pregnancy.
In 1938, Frida went to the USA to prepare of his exhibition, organized by André Breton, at the Julien Levy gallery. Despite the economic depression that gripped the United States, half of the exhibited works were sold. Claire Booth Luce, publisher of Vanity Fair magazine, commissioned Frida to paint a portrait of her friend, actress Dorothy Hale, who jumped out of her apartment window shortly before the opening of the exhibition.
Similar to time-lapse photography, Frida captures the different stages of the fall and places the body itself in the lower foreground. The inscription below tells the story of the event in blood-red letters. When Claire Booth Luce received the painting, she wanted to destroy it. " I will always remember the shock I felt when I pulled the painting out of the drawer. I felt really physically ill. What was I supposed to do with this disgusting image of my friend's shattered body? I wouldn’t order even my sworn enemy to be portrayed so bloodied, much less my unfortunate friend».
The following year, Andre Breton decided to organize exhibition of works Frida in Paris, with Marcel Duchamp helping with the organization. The exhibition took place in the famous gallery of Renu and Collet, but under the approaching threat of war it was not a financial success. Because of this, Frida canceled her next exhibition at the Guggenheim Gallery in London. However, Frida Kahlo's painting Self-portrait "Rama", 1937 became the first work of a Mexican artist of the twentieth century, acquiredLouvre .
That same year, Frida and Diego divorce; she reproduces her experiences in a self-portrait." Two Fridas", 1939, made up of two different individuals.
That part of her being that Diego Rivera respected and loved - the Mexican Frida in Tehuan dress - holds in her hands a medallion with a portrait of her husband as a child. Sitting next to her is her alter ego, European Frida in a lace white dress. The hearts of the two women are exposed, connected only by one thin artery. Along with the loss of her lover, European Frida lost a part of herself. Blood drips from the newly severed artery, held in place only by a surgical clamp. There is a danger that the rejected Frida may bleed to death.
During this period, Frida threw herself into work. She tried to provide for her own life by painting. IN next years a series of self-portraits appear, differing solely in attributes, background, color scheme, through which the mood is expressed.
In 1940, she remarried Diego Rivera.
In 1943, Frida began teaching at the School of Painting and Sculpture, but after a few months, due to poor health, Frida was forced to teach at home. She had to wear a steel corset, which appears in her self-portrait" Broken Column", 1944.
The corset straps seem to be the only thing holding parts of the body, cracked in half, upright. An Ionic column, broken into several pieces, takes the place of the damaged spine. The lifeless, cracked landscape echoes the gaping crack in her body, which becomes a symbol of her pain and loneliness. The nails stuck into the face and body invoke images of the martyrdom of St. Sebastian, pierced by arrows. The white cloth wrapped around the hips echoes the Shroud of Christ. She borrows elements from Christian iconography to give a particularly dramatic expression to her pain and suffering.
In 1946, Frida underwent back surgery, and in the same year she received a state license. Prize from the Ministry of Education for the painting " Moses, or the Core of Creation", 1945.
At the end of the 1940s. it has arrived serious deterioration Frida's health. In 1950, she spent nine months in hospital and suffered seven operations on the spine. After 1951 she experienced such unbearable pain that she could no longer work without painkillers. Her painting begins to be characterized by weak, hasty, almost careless brushwork, which is a consequence of taking strong drugs. The artist's desire to include a political dimension in her work in order to "serve the Party" and "benefit the Revolution" becomes especially clear in the paintings of 1954." Marxism will give health to the sick", "Frida and Stalin" and in the unfinished portrait of Stalin.
