“Feet, what do I need you for when I have wings to fly.” – Frida Kahlo
Frida Kahlo is considered to be one of Mexico’s greatest artists. She is best known for her surreal brightly coloured still-lifes and of course her famous self-portraits which unapologetically featured her uni-brow and mustache. She was confident in her beauty and refused to conform to the male-gaze and narrow societal beauty standards. Frida’s work mainly features Mexican imagery and motifs.
Although Frida’s art is well-known and well-loved worldwide, many people do not realize that Frida was a wheelchair user for much of her life. She began painting her ubiquitous self-portraits after an accident left her injured and bed-bound for a year. Afterwards, he suffered from severe chronic pain, and had over 30 surgeries during her life. Despite this, she used her pain as fuel and as a source of inspiration for her paintings. Several paintings include her wheelchair, as well as her steel corset she wore to stabilize her spine.
Early Life
Frida was born on July 6, 1907, in Coyoacán, Mexico City, Mexico. Her father, Wilhelm, was a German photographer who immigrated to Mexico where he met her mother Matilde. At the age of six, Frida contracted polio. This left her bedridden for months. After she had recovered, she walked with a limp due to damage the disease had done to her right leg and foot. Nonetheless, she played soccer and other sports to aid recovery.
In 1922, she was enrolled at the prestigious National Preparatory School. She was one of the few female students at the time and was planning to go to medical school to become a physicians. It was during this time that she become politically involved, joining the Young Communist League; as well as, the Mexican Communist Party.
Accident
The course of Frida’s life drastically changed on September 17, 1925 when she was involved in a serious bus accident. The bus she was travelling on collided with a street-car, causing a steel handrail to impale her through her hip and pelvis. This resulted in extensive injuries including: a fractured pelvis, three spinal fractures, eleven fractures in her right leg, a crushed and dislocated right foot, a broken collarbone and dislocated shoulder; as well as, a punctured abdomen and uterus.
She spent a month in the hospital, and two months recuperating at home. After this this she continued to suffer from fatigue and back pain. An x-ray revealed she had also dislocated 3 of her vertebrae. As a result she had to wear a plaster corset and was confined to her bed for over 3 months. It was during this time that she started painting as a way to pass the time on bed-rest. Although the accident decimated her dreams of becoming a physician and caused her serious pain for the rest of her life, it was the beginning of her life as an artist.
Inspiration
Her bed-rest was over by 1927 and she began to socialize with her old friends again, many of who were involved with student politics. She soon joined the Mexican Communist Party and through this circle was introduced to her future husband, Diego Rivera, who was 20 years her senior. After their marriage in 1929 they moved to Morelos, an area that seen some of the heaviest fighting of the civil war. In addition to her feminist and anti-colonialist ideations, this time period helped shape her pride in authentic and indigenous Mexican cultural heritage in post-revolutionary Mexico.
During 1931 through 1933 Frida and Diego travelled the United States while he was commissioned to paint various murals. These trips further galvanized her anti-colonialist attitudes. She wrote she was ” very interested in all the industrial and mechanical development of the United States”, though she felt “a bit of a rage against all the rich guys here, since I have seen thousands of people in the most terrible misery without anything to eat and with no place to sleep, it is terrifying to see the rich having parties day and night whiles thousands and thousands of people are dying of hunger.”
Famous Works
After the trips around the United States Frida and Diego returned to Mexico City. Diego was not particularly happy about being back in Mexico and it created a rift in their marriage. They eventually divorced in 1939 following multiple instances of infidelity on both sides. Following her separation from Rivera, Kahlo moved back to her childhood home and studio known aptly as “La Casa Azul.” She was determined to earn her own living as an artist and, began another highly productive period.
She was influenced by her experiences travelling abroad as well as her declining health and painted several of her most famous pieces during this period. These include: The Two Fridas (1939), Self Portrait with Cropped Hair (1940), The Wounded Table (1940) and Self Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird (1940). She began to experience more widespread recognition at this time as well.
Declining Health
Between 1940 and 1954 Frida’s back pain and spinal problems worsened, during this time she wore 28 separate supportive corsets, which ranged from steel and leather to plaster, At this point her back had worsened to the point that she could no longer continuously sit or stand. Her paintings from this time include: The Broken Column (1944), Tree of Hope, Stand Fast (1946) and The Wounded Deer (1946). These all prominently reflect her declining health.
In 1945 she traveled to New York for a spinal bone graft fusion which added steel support to her spine to straighten and strengthen it. Unfortunately the operation was a failure due to lack of rest and physically re-opening her wounds in a one-off fit of anger. She underwent a new bone graft surgery in 1950 in Mexico City. This was another failure due to infection and required several follow up surgeries. After this she used a wheelchair and crutches for ambulation, and mostly stayed in La Casa Azul.
At this point in her life she dedicated much of her time to political causes, rejoining the Communist Party of Mexico and campaigned for peace. On the night of July 12, 1954 Frida had a high fever and was experiencing extreme pain, the next morning she was found dead in her bed by her nurse. She was 47 years old. The official cause of death was pulmonary embolism.
Legacy
Despite having only one solo-exhibit in her life, only a year before her death. Her art and legacy live on. She gradually gained more recognition for her art in the 1970s. By 1984 she had grown so popular that Mexico declared her works part of the national cultural heritage. Prohibiting them from being exported from the country. She is considered to be one of the most significant artists of the twentieth century, and one of Mexico’s most important twentieth-century figures.
Kahlo’s legacy has been commemorated in several ways. La Casa Azul, was opened as a museum in 1958, and has become one of the most popular museums in Mexico City. The city dedicated a park, Parque Frida Kahlo, to her in Coyoacán in 1985. Art critic John Berger wrote of Kahlo’s legacy: “the sharing of pain is one of the essential preconditions for a refunding of dignity and hope.” Even through pain and misfortune she transformed and used it as fuel for her art and passion.
“I used to think I was the strangest person in the world but then I thought there are so many people in the world, there must be someone just like me who feels bizarre and flawed in the same ways I do. I would imagine her, and imagine that she must be out there thinking of me too. Well, I hope that if you are out there and read this and know that, yes, it’s true I’m here, and I’m just as strange as you.” – Frida Kahlo
