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Frida Kahlo, in her own words: A new documentary draws from diaries, letters

Mandalit del Barco

A new documentary about Frida Kahlo's life, now streaming on Amazon Prime, tells her story using her own words and art. Leo Matiz/Fundación Leo Matiz hide caption

A new documentary about Frida Kahlo's life, now streaming on Amazon Prime, tells her story using her own words and art.

"I paint myself because that's who I know the best," the late Mexican artist Frida Kahlo once wrote in her illustrated diary. So it's fitting that a new documentary about Kahlo's life, now streaming on Amazon Prime, tells her story using her own words and art.

In the 70 years since Kahlo's death there have been countless efforts to revisit her complicated life, politics and artwork. Most famous is probably the 2002 fictional film starring Salma Hayek and directed by Julie Taymor that depicted Kahlo's tempestuous relationship with painter Diego Rivera. Many of these treatments have relied on actors, interviews with academics, art historians and contemporary artists. Filmmaker Carla Gutiérrez wanted a fresh take.

"Instead of having that historical distance of other people explaining [to] us what she meant with her art," Gutiérrez says, "I really wanted to give that gift to viewers of just hearing from her own words. We wanted to have the most intimate entry way into her heart and into her mind."

In Frida, Kahlo's words are taken from letters and diaries, and voiced by Mexican actor Fernanda Echevarría del Rivero. The film is in Spanish, with English subtitles. Archivo Manuel Álvarez Bravo, S.C. hide caption

In Frida, Kahlo's words are taken from letters and diaries, and voiced by Mexican actor Fernanda Echevarría del Rivero. The film is in Spanish, with English subtitles.

In Gutiérrez's documentary Frida, Kahlo's words are taken from handwritten letters and illustrated diaries, and voiced by Mexican actor Fernanda Echevarría del Rivero. The film is in Spanish, with English subtitles.

Gutiérrez says she wanted to get inside Kahlo's head. "What was she thinking? what was she feeling? I felt that as a Latina, somebody that grew up in Latin America, there was this connection I have with the world that created Frida."

Gutiérrez was born in Peru and saw her first Frida Kahlo painting, as a college student in Massachusetts. It was an image of Kahlo standing with one foot in Mexico, another in the U.S. "Her impressions of the United States and yearning [for] home for Mexico, that painting really reflected my own experience," says Gutiérrez. "And then I became obsessed, like millions of people around the world."

As an editor, Gutiérrez has worked on documentaries on other what she calls "badass women", including the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg , singer Chavela Vargas and chef Julia Child . But Frida is her first film as director.

The Picture Show

Frida kahlo's private stash of pictures.

She enlisted the help of Hayden Herrera, who wrote the definitive Frida Kahlo biography in 1983 . Gutiérrez' team combed through Herrera's closets and attic, looking through her archives.

"We had a good time," Herrera says. "I basically gave them all my research material."

That included transcripts of interviews with people who knew Kahlo. One of the film's archivists, Gabriel Rivera, also scoured university libraries, museums and private collections finding photos and handwritten messages.

"These letters often have little doodles on them," Rivera says. "She would, like, do kind of lipstick kisses on these letters."

The film includes the words written by or about Kahlo's contemporaries, including Diego Rivera, who she married twice, her friends such as surrealist André Breton and her lovers such as Russian revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky.

Some of Kahlo's paintings are slightly animated in the new film. Archivo Manuel Álvarez Bravo, S.C. hide caption

Some of Kahlo's paintings are slightly animated in the new film.

Gabriel Rivera says they tried to follow any lead, including a tip about some footage of Kahlo dancing in the streets of New York City with a rose stem gripped in her mouth. He discovered through writings that the film canister had been left on an airplane in the late 1960s, which Rivera said is "just devastating." They tried to find lost luggage and are still hoping it shows up one day.

But there is plenty of material they did find.

In Mexico, another archivist, Adrián Gutiérrez, was able to collect some rarely seen photos and footage of Kahlo and Rivera together, and of Rivera kissing another woman. There's footage of the Mexican revolutionary Emilio Zapata and of Red Cross workers in Mexico City bandaging trolley accident victims like Kahlo, who was famously injured as a teen. She painted about that and other pain she suffered.

For the documentary, composer Víctor Hernández Stumpfhauser created a soundtrack of electronic music with folkloric guitar and the ethereal voice of his wife, Alexa Ramírez.

Hear Mandalit del Barco's 1991 radio documentary about Frida Kahlo

"The idea was that Frida herself was so ahead of her time, with her thoughts, her ideas. She was a very modern person," says Stumpfhauser. "So we thought, well, let's let's do something modern, but of course, with a with a Mexican flair."

Gutiérrez also made the decision to slightly animate some of Kahlo's paintings. Frida's open heart beats and bleeds, tears roll down her face, and when she cuts her hair in desperation over her divorce, her scissors move and pieces of her hair fall to the floor.

Latin America

As mexico capitalizes on her image, has frida kahlo become over-commercialized.

The Salma Hayek film also animated some of Kahlo's work. But Herrera says doing so in a documentary was gutsy.

"When I saw the first animation, I thought, Oh my God," says Herrera. "But then I found it really seductive and really added so much to the understanding of her paintings. I found them very astute and actually quite witty. And they brought you closer to Frida."

Art Where You're At

5 lesser-known, late-in-life works by frida kahlo now on view in dallas.

Herrera says its remarkable that Frida mania is still very much alive.

"I think she would have been pleased that we're still talking about her, and I think she would have liked this film," she says. "Although seeing your own paintings animated might not be easy, but she might have given one of her big guffaws and laughed and thought it was amusing."

Herrera says this latest documentary is her favorite telling of Frida Kahlo, and is itself a work of art.

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‘frida’ review: a portrait of frida kahlo that’s a triumph of deep-dive research and dynamic artistry.

The debut doc by editor Carla Gutiérrez explores the great Mexican artist’s life and work through her own words.

By Sheri Linden

Sheri Linden

Senior Copy Editor/Film Critic

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My guess is that Frida Kahlo would have loathed “Immersive Frida Kahlo,” the kind of touring exhibit that professes to honor the canvas while bathing it in digital-tech kitsch. And, having seen Carla Gutiérrez’s riveting documentary Frida , I’m certain the artist would have announced her disdain with a laugh and a healthy dose of juicy invective. If you want to immerse yourself in Frida Kahlo, here is the real thing.

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Whatever that 2002 movie’s strengths and weaknesses, Gutiérrez’s nonfiction portrait (which takes its streaming bow March 15 on Prime Video) is, for starters, uncluttered by the layers of performance that define biographical drama. Frida ’s voice cast never diverts attention from the heart and soul of the story, and the exquisite work by Fernanda Echevarría del Rivero, as Kahlo, brings the great artist’s joys, sorrows, fierce intelligence and mouthy humor to life with an intense person-to-person intimacy.

The doc takes rewarding chances in its treatment of Kahlo’s artwork, chances that heighten the emotional connection between the painter and the image without overstepping. With sensitivity and elegance, animation by Sofía Inés Cázares and Renata Galindo adds movement to elements of the paintings and zeroes in on details: A Chihuahua’s tail wags, a plant’s leaves unfurl and sway, the earth cracks. If at certain moments the animation feels unnecessary given the sheer power of the imagery, it’s always in sync with the mood Kahlo is expressing, whether that mood is playful, celebratory or despairing.

As to the biography itself, it begins with photos of a plump toddler with a discerning gaze — hardly a surprise that she would soon be a smartass kid tossed out of class for pestering the priest with questions, or that, as a teen burning with intellectual and sexual hunger, she would hang out with the rebellious boys. Art was not Kahlo’s Plan A; she wanted to be a doctor, but a horrendous 1925 bus accident, when she was 18, would instead turn her into a lifelong patient. “The handrail,” Kahlo recalled, “went through me like a sword through a bull.” The free spirit was trapped, “alone with my soul,” and she began painting.

Emiliano Zapata was a crucial public figure in her childhood, and the film makes clear that through everything she endured — constant physical pain, many surgeries, braces and casts, the endless infidelities of her celebrated husband, Diego Rivera — she never let go of that revolutionary outlook. Art and revolution were resolutely entwined in the frescoes of her beloved Rivera and Mexico’s other great muralists of the early 20th century, David Alfaro Siqueiros and José Clemente Orozco. One of the many delights of Frida is hearing her exuberant cursing (via Echevarría del Rivero) about the titans of industry who commissioned works from Rivera, along with the other “rich bitches,” “jerks” and “gringos” who made her seethe.

Kahlo had her own extramarital adventures, to be sure, among her lovers the on-the-lam Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky and numerous famous artists, both men and women. And yet her struggles to accept Rivera’s affairs, as expressed in her writings, are wrenching; they cut through the simplistic “strong woman” stereotype to reveal the anguish and vulnerability that are often strength’s essence.

Perhaps the most searing example of her piercing insight involves her interactions with the French poet André Breton. Upon a visit to Mexico, he found her paintings in sync with the work of the Surrealists, the school of art he led. She knew nothing about them, and though Breton promoted her work in Paris, he also ignited her fury with his condescending use of cheap Mexican tchotchkes in the exhibit, meant as a thematic complement to her visionary canvases. Eventually, disgusted by the armchair revolutionaries she encountered in the salons of Europe, Kahlo concluded that she hated Surrealism. “A decadent manifestation of bourgeois art,” she called it.

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‘Frida’ Review: Popular Mexican Painter Speaks for Herself in Doc Drawn From Kahlo’s Diaries

Editor-turned-director Carla Gutiérrez assembles a unique and visceral portrait of Frida Kahlo, weaving artist’s own writings, exclusive archival footage and animated versions of her paintings.

By Carlos Aguilar

Carlos Aguilar

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The image of Frida Kahlo, the prominent Mexican painter of the early 20 century, is one of the most replicated and commercialized of any artist in the history of the world. From T-shirts to houseware, merchandise of all sorts emblazoned with her face has turned Kahlo into a kitschy, mainstream, decontextualized emblem for Mexican identity. It doesn’t help that the vast majority of her works are self-portraits. Onscreen, the Salma Hayek-starring Hollywood biopic from director Julie Taymor and Paul Leduc’s 1983’s Mexican-production “Frida Still Life” attempted to decipher the tehuana-clad iconoclast via scripted portrayals.

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Still, as far as respectfully making her surrealist oeuvre part of the already rich tapestry of moving parts that comprise the doc, the choice is mostly sound. “I paint because I need to,” Gutiérrez’s Frida says. That notion that her artistic expression was an extension of her inner turmoil is confirmed by some of the supporting characters, also speaking in first-person through voice actors, namely Rivera and her friend Lucile Blanch.

If not entirely revelatory, the doc is definitely visceral. Foul-mouthed and unabashedly open about her sexual desires, the Frida we are introduced to here is unbound. One candid montage features an assortment of Kahlo’s many lovers, male and female, to illustrate her proclivity for indulging in the pleasures of the flesh. Early on, Gutiérrez makes a point of noting how even as a child, Kahlo was reprimanded for asking “improper” inquiries — that part of her remained unchanged throughout the years. So did her undying adoration for her Mexican identity to a fault, at times at odds with the patriarchal gender norms she disdained but that still applied to most other women in the country at the time.

One of the most memorable chapters epitomizes her detestation for the ultra-wealthy and pompous intellectuals who rushed to rationalize her work. Following her divorce from Rivera, Kahlo painted prolifically out of the need to support herself. She accepted exhibits in New York and later in Paris under the wing of writer André Breton, whom she came to detest. There’s a peculiar flavor to hearing her insulting their self-centered tirades about the world from their pedestals that wouldn’t come across from only reading about her dislike of them. That emotional immediacy is where Gutiérrez succeeds.

Gutiérrez, who edited the film herself, does a remarkable job harnessing the myriad of materials and keeping a steady pace for a cohesive, tight finished product — even though the cradle-to-grave structure rings obvious. “Frida” feels somewhat definitive. If you only see one filmic piece about Kahlo, this may be the one that presents the most complete overview of both the biographical highlights and her multifaceted persona behind closed doors without turning it into a didactic lesson. Even those already familiar with the trajectory of Kahlo’s existence may find the delivery here raw, vulnerable, and refreshing.

Reviewed at the Sunset Screening Room, Jan. 9, 2024. In Sundance Film Festival (U.S. Documentary Competition). Running time: 88 MIN.

• Production: (Documentary) A Prime Video release of an Amazon Studios, Imagine Documentaries, Storyville Films, Time Studios production. Producers: Sara Bernstein, Loren Hammonds, Alexandra Johnes, Katia Maguire, Justin Wilkes. Executive producers: Lynne Benioff, Julie Cohen, Alexa Conway, Brian Grazer, Ron Howard, Meredith Kaulfers, Betsy West.
• Crew: Director: Carla Gutiérrez. Editor: Carla Gutiérrez. Music: Victor Hernandez Stumpfhauser. Animation: Sofia Cázares, Renata Galindo
• With: Fernanda Echevarría Del Rivero

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Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo

Hayden herrera.

528 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

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Community reviews.

The art historian Parker Lesley described her thus: "Everyone stared at Frida, who wore her Tehuana dress and all Diego's gold jewellery, and clanked like a knight in armour. She had the Byzantine opulence of the Empress Theodora, a combination of barbarism and elegance. She had two gold incisors and when she was all gussied up she would take off the plain gold caps, and put on gold caps with rose diamonds in front, so that her smile really sparkled."

"The story of Frida Kahlo begins and ends in the same place. From the outside, the house on the corner of Londres and Allende streets looks very like other houses in Coyoacan, an old residential section on the southwestern periphery of Mexico City. A one-story stucco structure with bright blue walls enlivened by the restless shadows of trees, it bears the name Museo Frida Kahlo over the portal. Inside is one of the most extraordinary places in Mexico--a woman's home with all her paintings and belongings, turned into a museum."

"Years after Frida and Diego died, friends remembered them as 'sacred monsters.' Their escapades and eccentricities were beyond the petty censurings of ordinary morality; not simply condoned, they were treasured and mythologized. As for being 'monsters,' the Riveras could harbor Trotsky, paint paeans to Stalin, build pagan temples, wave pistols, boast of eating human flesh, and carry on in their marriage with the vast imperiousness of Olympian deities. By the 1940s, Diego, of course, was an ancient myth. Frida, on the other hand, was new to mythic stature, and during this decade their myths meshed."

Mexico had its own magic and myths and did not need foreign notions of fantasy. The self-conscious search for subconscious truths that may have provided European Surrealists with some release from the confines of their rational world and ordinary bourgeois life offered little enchantment in a country where reality and dreams are perceived to merge and miracles are thought to be daily occurrences

“The painter, poet, and prominent critic José Moreno Villa struck in Novedades the note that would resound over the years: “ It is impossible,” he wrote, “to separate the life and work of this singular person. Her paintings are her biography.””

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Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo Paperback – October 1, 2002

"Through her art, Herrera writes, Kahlo made of herself both performer and icon. Through this long overdue biography, Kahlo has also, finally, been made fully human." —  San Francisco Chronicle

Hailed by readers and critics across the country, this engrossing biography of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo reveals a woman of extreme magnetism and originality, an artist whose sensual vibrancy came straight from her own experiences: her childhood near Mexico City during the Mexican Revolution; a devastating accident at age eighteen that left her crippled and unable to bear children; her tempestuous marriage to muralist Diego Rivera and intermittent love affairs with men as diverse as Isamu Noguchi and Leon Trotsky; her association with the Communist Party; her absorption in Mexican folklore and culture; and her dramatic love of spectacle.

Here is the tumultuous life of an extraordinary twentieth-century woman -- with illustrations as rich and haunting as her legend.

• Print length 528 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Harper Perennial
• Publication date October 1, 2002
• Dimensions 6.12 x 1.4 x 9.25 inches
• ISBN-10 0060085894
• ISBN-13 978-0060085896
• See all details

Editorial Reviews

"A haunting, highly vivid biography." — Ms . magazine

From the Back Cover

About the author.

Hayden Herrera is an art historian. She has lectured widely, curated several exhibitions of art, taught Latin American art at New York University, and has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. She is the author of numerous articles and reviews for such publications as Art in America, Art Forum, Connoisseur, and the New York Times, among others. Her books include Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo; Mary Frank; and Matisse: A Portrait. She is working on a critical biography of Arshile Gorky. She lives in New York City.

Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harper Perennial (October 1, 2002)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 528 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0060085894
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0060085896
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.45 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.12 x 1.4 x 9.25 inches
• #111 in Biographies of Artists, Architects & Photographers (Books)
• #177 in Arts & Photography Criticism
• #316 in Art History (Books)

About the author

Hayden herrera.

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more

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Customers find the writing style insightful and enjoyable to read. They also describe the paintings as extraordinary.

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Customers find the writing style insightful, detailed, and excellent. They also appreciate the symbolism, inspirational story, and colourful paintings. Customers also mention that the book contains some photographs and illustrations.

"...This is really a beautiful and raw written book regarding her as a person and then as an artist while giving you the context of what was happening..." Read more

"...There are some photographs and then also illustrations of some of Frida's works. Best biography I have read ever." Read more

" Detailed , well-researched material Thoroughly enjoyed this author's offering." Read more

"...Her unique, symbolic and colourful paintings not only conveyed her inner thoughts and feelings, but also the events in her 47 year lifetime...." Read more

Customers find the writing in the book to be a pleasure to read.

"...The authors style is engaging and keeps you wanting to read . She clearly knows the art world and all about Frida and Diego...." Read more

" Way too wordy for my liking ." Read more

"This biography of Frida Kahlo an important female artist was enjoyable to read ...." Read more

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ARTS & CULTURE

The real frida kahlo.

A new exhibition offers insights into the Mexican painter’s private life

Julia Kaganskiy

Mexican painter Frida Kahlo is remembered today for her personal struggle and extraordinary life story as much as for her vibrant and intimate artwork. Kahlo was plagued by illness since youth and a bus accident at age 18 smashed her spinal column and fractured her pelvis, confining her to bed for months and leaving her with lifelong complications.

Though she had never planned on becoming an artist and was pursuing a medical career at the time of her accident, Kahlo found painting a natural solace during her recovery. It would become an almost therapeutic practice that would aid her in overcoming physical pain as well as the emotional pain of a turbulent marriage with muralist Diego Rivera and, years later, several miscarriages and abortions.

Despite the candidness of her work, Kahlo always maintained an image of poise, strength and even defiance in her public life. An exhibition at the National Museum for Women in the Arts (NMWA), "Frida Kahlo: Public Image, Private Life. A Selection of Photographs and Letters," on display through October 14, examines the dichotomy between Kahlo's self-cultivated public persona and the grim realities of her life. Commemorating Kahlo's 100th birthday, the exhibit is a collaboration between the NMWA, the Smithsonian Latino Center and the Mexican Cultural Institute.

The exhibit was inspired by the NMWA's recently acquired collection of Kahlo's unpublished letters to family and friends from the 1930s and 1940s, most of which document the four years Kahlo and Rivera spent living in the United States. The letters offer a glimpse into Kahlo's thoughts, her impressions of new and exotic places and her relationships with loved ones.

"She would pour her heart out into these letters," says Henry Estrada, public programs director at the Smithsonian Latino Center, who coordinated the translation of the letters. "She would do everything to convey these new experiences of San Francisco or New York. She would actually draw pictures of the apartment she was staying in and describe the beaches on the west coast. She would say things like 'mil besos,' which means 'a thousand kisses,' and kiss the letters."

The letters, which are accompanied by a selection of iconic Kahlo photographs by renowned photographers such as Lola Alvarez Bravo and Nickolas Murray and never-before-seen photographs of Kahlo's private bathroom at the Casa Azul in Coyoacàn, Mexico, act as a bridge between the images of the stylized mexicanista decked in traditional Tehuantepec dresses and pre-Columbian jewelry and those of medical supplies and corsets that underscored Kahlo's troubled existence.

But why would an artist who is so explicit in her artwork take pains to construct a public image that seems to mask her private life? "I think when she was in front of the camera she felt very different than when she was in front of the canvas, and she expressed something different," says Jason Stieber of the NMWA, co-curator of the exhibition. "She expressed her glamour, her Mexican heritage, her Communist leanings. She was expressing her strength, whereas in her paintings she's expressing her pain."

More than just a link between the two sides of Kahlo's persona, the letters may also offer significant new information for Kahlo scholars. Though biographers often depict Kahlo's relationship with her mother as strained and conflicted, the letters show remarkable tenderness and affection between mother and daughter and may prompt scholars to re-evaluate the way they look at her mother's impact on Kahlo's life and work.

"People credit her father with the fact that she was as strong a woman as she was, but it’s possible that her mother was also in large part responsible for that," Stieber says. "Her mother ran the household."

The letters track a particularly emotional time in Kahlo's relationship with her mother, as they coincide with her mother's declining health. Stieber believes the NMWA collection has the last letter Kahlo's mother ever wrote to her, where she describes how wonderful it had been to talk on the telephone—the first time she had spoken on the phone in her life.

Regardless of the problems Kahlo may have been facing, her letters reveal a love of life that never faltered. "The thing that really struck me was how much this artist enjoyed life and lived life to the fullest," Estrada says. "She was just vivacious and articulate and engaged with her environment, with people, with lovers, with friends, with family. She communicated and she did so with passion in her heart, not just in her artwork, but in her relationships with people."

Julia Kaganskiy  is a freelance writer in Boston, Massachusetts.

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This was published 1 year ago

This Frida Kahlo ‘biography’ is magical and moving

By john shand, save articles for later.

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FRIDA KAHLO: THE LIFE OF AN ICON ★★★★★ The Cutaway, Barangaroo, January 4 Until March 7

It hijacks your senses from the moment you walk in, but keeps its king-hit for the end. Having already become familiar with aspects of Frida Kahlo’s life and work, now you actually enter the late Mexican painter’s world, via headphones and virtual-reality headsets. This begins with the view from her bed when she was an invalid before her death: the furniture, the paintings and the window with a hummingbird hovering outside.

Then, as happened in her life, the bed is moved to expand her vista, down passages and even streetscapes, until it evaporates, and suddenly you’re drifting through 3D elements of her art, lush with exotic undergrowth, loaded with symbolism and rampant with colours of hallucinogenic brightness. All the while there’s music that seems an organic outgrowth of the images.

Given that the mooted First Nations’ cultural centre at the Cutaway was killed off, this Layers of Reality installation at least makes brilliant use of the space.

It carries its own relevance to invaded minorities, with the heady influence that Mexican indigenous traditions had on the vibrancy, mythology, mystique, horror and humour of Kahlo’s art.

The Cutaway is transformed for the opening of Frida Kahlo: The Life of an Icon, part of the Sydney Festival. Credit: Flavio Brancaleone

Panels of text provide background information for those unfamiliar with her history and oeuvre, before the first installation, The Incident . This is a multi-layered holograph depicting the accident that smashed Frida’s pelvis and spine.

But being non-literal, it’s all the more moving. This is the poetry of torment: a book, a shoe and an umbrella fly through the air, while a porcelain Frida shatters into a thousand pieces, to be remade.

The Dream is a projection of a recuperating Kahlo in her bed, while her dreams take shape around her head: a newborn child, a breast dripping milk, an unbroken spinal column.

Endless Symbology is an interactive projection of a sea of flowers, fruit, and skulls, which changes when you walk through it, as if wading through water.

Another room is for colouring in Kahlo self-portraits, with a scanning machine to project them on the walls. In the biggest room, Immersive Biography , the walls and floor carry a chronology of images. It’s a magical space to sit and lose yourself in the life of another, with some of the animations reminiscent of Terry Gilliam’s most lyrical work. The whole experience takes about an hour, and you’ll be so glad you bothered.

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Early years and bus accident

Marriage to diego rivera and travels to the united states, first solo exhibitions.

• The Two Fridas and later works
• The Frida Kahlo Museum and posthumous reputation

Who is Frida Kahlo?

• What was Surrealism and its goal?
• What are the characteristics of Surrealism?
• How are Surrealism and Dada related?
• Which artists practiced Surrealism?

Frida Kahlo

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• Official Site of Frida Kahlo
• Jewish Women's Archive - Biography of Frida Kahlo
• National Center for Biotechnology Information - PubMed Central - Frida Kahlo
• Artnet - Biography of Frida Kahlo
• The Art Story - Frida Kahlo
• PBS - The Life and Times of Frida Kahlo
• Art in Context - Frida Kahlo - Mother of Mexican Magical Realism
• My Hero - Biography of Frida Kahlo
• Frida Kahlo - Children's Encyclopedia (Ages 8-11)
• Frida Kahlo - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)
• Table Of Contents

Frida Kahlo was a Mexican painter best known for her uncompromising and brilliantly colored self-portraits that deal with such themes as identity, the human body, and death. Although she denied the connection, she is often identified as a Surrealist. She was also known for her tumultuous relationship with muralist Diego Rivera.

What tragic accident happened to Frida Kahlo?

In 1925 Frida Kahlo was involved in a bus accident, which so seriously injured her that she had to undergo more than 30 medical operations in her lifetime. During her slow recovery, Kahlo taught herself to paint and studied the art of the Old Masters.

When did Frida Kahlo paint Self-Portrait Wearing a Velvet Dress ?

Kahlo painted Self-Portrait Wearing a Velvet Dress, a regal waist-length portrait of herself against a dark background with roiling stylized waves, in 1926. Although the painting is fairly abstract, Kahlo’s soft modeling of her face shows her interest in realism.

Which of Frida Kahlo's paintings is displayed in the Louvre?

The Louvre acquired Frida Kahlo's work The Frame ( c. 1938), making her the first 20th-century Mexican artist to be included in the museum’s collection.

When was the Frida Kahlo Museum established?

After Kahlo’s death in 1954, Diego Rivera had redesigned Frida Kahlo's childhood home, La Casa Azul (“the Blue House”), in Coyoacán, as a museum dedicated to her life. The Frida Kahlo Museum opened to the public in 1958, a year after Rivera’s death.

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Frida Kahlo (born July 6, 1907, Coyoacán , Mexico—died July 13, 1954, Coyoacán) was a Mexican painter best known for her uncompromising and brilliantly colored self-portraits that deal with such themes as identity, the human body , and death. Although she denied the connection, she is often identified as a Surrealist . In addition to her work, Kahlo was known for her tumultuous relationship with muralist Diego Rivera (married 1929, divorced 1939, remarried 1940).

Kahlo was born to a German father of Hungarian descent and a Mexican mother of Spanish and Native American descent. Later, during her artistic career, Kahlo explored her identity by frequently depicting her ancestry as binary opposites: the colonial European side and the indigenous Mexican side. As a child, she suffered a bout of polio that left her with a slight limp, a chronic ailment she would endure throughout her life. Kahlo was especially close to her father, who was a professional photographer, and she frequently assisted him in his studio, where she acquired a sharp eye for detail. Although Kahlo took some drawing classes, she was more interested in science , and in 1922 she entered the National Preparatory School in Mexico City with an interest in eventually studying medicine. While there she met Rivera, who was working on a mural for the school’s auditorium.

In 1925 Kahlo was involved in a bus accident, which so seriously injured her that she had to undergo more than 30 medical operations in her lifetime. During her slow recovery, Kahlo taught herself to paint, and she read frequently, studying the art of the Old Masters. In one of her early paintings, Self-Portrait Wearing a Velvet Dress (1926), Kahlo painted a regal waist-length portrait of herself against a dark background with roiling stylized waves. Although the painting is fairly abstract, Kahlo’s soft modeling of her face shows her interest in naturalism. The stoic gaze so prevalent in her later art is already evident, and the exaggeratedly long neck and fingers reveal her interest in the Mannerist painter Il Bronzino . After her convalescence, Kahlo joined the Mexican Communist Party (PCM), where she met Rivera once again. She showed him some of her work, and he encouraged her to continue to paint.

Soon after marrying Rivera in 1929, Kahlo changed her personal and painting style. She began to wear the traditional Tehuana dress that became her trademark. It consisted of a flowered headdress, a loose blouse, gold jewelry, and a long ruffled skirt. Her painting Frieda and Diego Rivera (1931) shows not only her new attire but also her new interest in Mexican folk art . The subjects are flatter and more abstract than those in her previous work. The towering Rivera stands to the left, holding a palette and brushes, the objects of his profession. He appears as an important artist, while Kahlo, who is petite and demure beside him, with her hand in his and painted with darker skin than in her earlier work, conveys the role she presumed he wanted: a traditional Mexican wife.

Kahlo painted that work while traveling in the United States (1930–33) with Rivera, who had received commissions for murals from several cities. During this time, she endured a couple of difficult pregnancies that ended prematurely. After suffering a miscarriage in Detroit and later the death of her mother, Kahlo painted some of her most-harrowing works. In Henry Ford Hospital (1932) Kahlo depicted herself hemorrhaging on a hospital bed amid a barren landscape, and in My Birth (1932) she painted a rather taboo scene of a shrouded woman giving birth.

In 1933 Kahlo and Rivera returned to Mexico , where they lived in a newly constructed house comprising separate individual spaces joined by a bridge. The residence became a gathering spot for artists and political activists, and the couple hosted the likes of Leon Trotsky and André Breton , a leading Surrealist who championed Kahlo’s work. Breton wrote the introduction to the brochure for her first solo exhibition, describing her as a self-taught Surrealist. The exhibition was held at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York in 1938, and it was a great success. The following year Kahlo traveled to Paris to show her work. There she met more Surrealists, including Marcel Duchamp , the only member she reportedly respected. The Louvre also acquired one of her works, The Frame (c. 1938), making Kahlo the first 20th-century Mexican artist to be included in the museum’s collection.

Frida Kahlo

Painter Frida Kahlo was a Mexican artist who was married to Diego Rivera and is still admired as a feminist icon.

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(1907-1954)

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FULL NAME: Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón BORN: JULY 6, 1907 BIRTHPLACE: Coyoacán, Mexico City, Mexico ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Cancer

Artist Frida Kahlo was considered one of Mexico's greatest artists who began painting mostly self-portraits after she was severely injured in a bus accident. Kahlo later became politically active and married fellow communist artist Diego Rivera in 1929. She exhibited her paintings in Paris and Mexico before her death in 1954.

Kahlo was born Magdalena Carmen Frieda Kahlo y Calderón on July 6, 1907, in Coyoacán, Mexico City, Mexico.

Kahlo's father, Wilhelm (also called Guillermo), was a German photographer who had immigrated to Mexico where he met and married her mother Matilde. She had two older sisters, Matilde and Adriana, and her younger sister, Cristina, was born the year after Kahlo.

Around the age of six, Kahlo contracted polio, which caused her to be bedridden for nine months. While she recovered from the illness, she limped when she walked because the disease had damaged her right leg and foot. Her father encouraged her to play soccer, go swimming, and even wrestle — highly unusual moves for a girl at the time — to help aid in her recovery.

In 1922, Kahlo enrolled at the renowned National Preparatory School. She was one of the few female students to attend the school, and she became known for her jovial spirit and her love of colorful, traditional clothes and jewelry.

While at school, Kahlo hung out with a group of politically and intellectually like-minded students. Becoming more politically active, Kahlo joined the Young Communist League and the Mexican Communist Party.

On September 17, 1925, Kahlo and Alejandro Gómez Arias, a school friend with whom she was romantically involved, were traveling together on a bus when the vehicle collided with a streetcar . As a result of the collision, Kahlo was impaled by a steel handrail, which went into her hip and came out the other side. She suffered several serious injuries as a result, including fractures in her spine and pelvis.

After staying at the Red Cross Hospital in Mexico City for several weeks, Kahlo returned home to recuperate further. She began painting during her recovery and finished her first self-portrait the following year, which she gave to Gómez Arias.

In 1929, Kahlo and famed Mexican muralist Diego Rivera married. Kahlo and Rivera first met in 1922 when he went to work on a project at her high school. Kahlo often watched as Rivera created a mural called The Creation in the school’s lecture hall. According to some reports, she told a friend that she would someday have Rivera’s baby.

Kahlo reconnected with Rivera in 1928. He encouraged her artwork, and the two began a relationship. During their early years together, Kahlo often followed Rivera based on where the commissions that Rivera received were. In 1930, they lived in San Francisco, California. They then went to New York City for Rivera’s show at the Museum of Modern Art and later moved to Detroit for Rivera’s commission with the Detroit Institute of Arts.

Kahlo and Rivera’s time in New York City in 1933 was surrounded by controversy. Commissioned by Nelson Rockefeller , Rivera created a mural entitled Man at the Crossroads in the RCA Building at Rockefeller Center. Rockefeller halted the work on the project after Rivera included a portrait of communist leader Vladimir Lenin in the mural, which was later painted over. Months after this incident, the couple returned to Mexico and went to live in San Angel, Mexico.

Never a traditional union, Kahlo and Rivera kept separate, but adjoining homes and studios in San Angel. She was saddened by his many infidelities, including an affair with her sister Cristina. In response to this familial betrayal, Kahlo cut off most of her trademark long dark hair. Desperately wanting to have a child, she again experienced heartbreak when she miscarried in 1934.

Kahlo and Rivera went through periods of separation, but they joined together to help exiled Soviet communist Leon Trotsky and his wife Natalia in 1937. The Trotskys came to stay with them at the Blue House (Kahlo's childhood home) for a time in 1937 as Trotsky had received asylum in Mexico. Once a rival of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin , Trotsky feared that he would be assassinated by his old nemesis. Kahlo and Trotsky reportedly had a brief affair during this time.

Kahlo divorced Rivera in 1939. They did not stay divorced for long, remarrying in 1940. The couple continued to lead largely separate lives, both becoming involved with other people over the years .

While she never considered herself a surrealist, Kahlo befriended one of the primary figures in that artistic and literary movement, Andre Breton, in 1938. That same year, she had a major exhibition at a New York City gallery, selling about half of the 25 paintings shown there. Kahlo also received two commissions, including one from famed magazine editor Clare Boothe Luce, as a result of the show.

In 1939, Kahlo went to live in Paris for a time. There she exhibited some of her paintings and developed friendships with such artists as Marcel Duchamp and Pablo Picasso .

Kahlo received a commission from the Mexican government for five portraits of important Mexican women in 1941, but she was unable to finish the project. She lost her beloved father that year and continued to suffer from chronic health problems. Despite her personal challenges, her work continued to grow in popularity and was included in numerous group shows around this time.

In 1953, Kahlo received her first solo exhibition in Mexico. While bedridden at the time, Kahlo did not miss out on the exhibition’s opening. Arriving by ambulance, Kahlo spent the evening talking and celebrating with the event’s attendees from the comfort of a four-poster bed set up in the gallery just for her.

After Kahlo’s death, the feminist movement of the 1970s led to renewed interest in her life and work, as Kahlo was viewed by many as an icon of female creativity.

Many of Kahlo’s works were self-portraits. A few of her most notable paintings include:

'Frieda and Diego Rivera' (1931)

Kahlo showed this painting at the Sixth Annual Exhibition of the San Francisco Society of Women Artists, the city where she was living with Rivera at the time. In the work, painted two years after the couple married, Kahlo lightly holds Rivera’s hand as he grasps a palette and paintbrushes with the other — a stiffly formal pose hinting at the couple’s future tumultuous relationship. The work now lives at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

'Henry Ford Hospital' (1932)

In 1932, Kahlo incorporated graphic and surrealistic elements in her work. In this painting, a naked Kahlo appears on a hospital bed with several items — a fetus, a snail, a flower, a pelvis and others — floating around her and connected to her by red, veinlike strings. As with her earlier self-portraits, the work was deeply personal, telling the story of her second miscarriage.

'The Suicide of Dorothy Hale' (1939)

Kahlo was asked to paint a portrait of Luce and Kahlo's mutual friend, actress Dorothy Hale, who had committed suicide earlier that year by jumping from a high-rise building. The painting was intended as a gift for Hale's grieving mother. Rather than a traditional portrait, however, Kahlo painted the story of Hale's tragic leap. While the work has been heralded by critics, its patron was horrified at the finished painting.

'The Two Fridas' (1939)

One of Kahlo’s most famous works, the painting shows two versions of the artist sitting side by side, with both of their hearts exposed. One Frida is dressed nearly all in white and has a damaged heart and spots of blood on her clothing. The other wears bold colored clothing and has an intact heart. These figures are believed to represent “unloved” and “loved” versions of Kahlo.

'The Broken Column' (1944)

Kahlo shared her physical challenges through her art again with this painting, which depicted a nearly nude Kahlo split down the middle, revealing her spine as a shattered decorative column. She also wears a surgical brace and her skin is studded with tacks or nails. Around this time, Kahlo had several surgeries and wore special corsets to try to fix her back. She would continue to seek a variety of treatments for her chronic physical pain with little success.

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About a week after her 47th birthday, Kahlo died on July 13, 1954, at her beloved Blue House. There has been some speculation regarding the nature of her death. It was reported to be caused by a pulmonary embolism, but there have also been stories about a possible suicide.

Kahlo’s health issues became nearly all-consuming in 1950. After being diagnosed with gangrene in her right foot, Kahlo spent nine months in the hospital and had several operations during this time. She continued to paint and support political causes despite having limited mobility. In 1953, part of Kahlo’s right leg was amputated to stop the spread of gangrene.

Deeply depressed, Kahlo was hospitalized again in April 1954 because of poor health, or, as some reports indicated, a suicide attempt. She returned to the hospital two months later with bronchial pneumonia. No matter her physical condition, Kahlo did not let that stand in the way of her political activism. Her final public appearance was a demonstration against the U.S.-backed overthrow of President Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala on July 2nd.

Kahlo’s life was the subject of a 2002 film entitled Frida , starring Salma Hayek as the artist and Alfred Molina as Rivera. Directed by Julie Taymor, the film was nominated for six Academy Awards and won for Best Makeup and Original Score.

The family home where Kahlo was born and grew up, later referred to as the Blue House or Casa Azul, was opened as a museum in 1958. Located in Coyoacán, Mexico City, the Museo Frida Kahlo houses artifacts from the artist along with important works including Viva la Vida (1954), Frida and Caesarean (1931) and Portrait of my father Wilhelm Kahlo (1952).

Hayden Herrera’s 1983 book on Kahlo, Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo , helped to stir up interest in the artist. The biographical work covers Kahlo’s childhood, accident, artistic career, marriage to Diego Rivera, association with the communist party and love affairs.

Watch the 2024 documentary, titled Frida , about the artist's life on Amazon Prime Video.

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• I never paint dreams or nightmares. I paint my own reality.
• My painting carries with it the message of pain.
• I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone, because I am the person I know best.
• I think that, little by little, I'll be able to solve my problems and survive.
• The only thing I know is that I paint because I need to, and I paint whatever passes through my head without any other consideration.
• I was born a bitch. I was born a painter.
• I love you more than my own skin.
• I am not sick, I am broken, but I am happy as long as I can paint.
• Feet, what do I need you for when I have wings to fly?
• I tried to drown my sorrows, but the bastards learned how to swim, and now I am overwhelmed with this decent and good feeling.
• There have been two great accidents in my life. One was the trolley and the other was Diego. Diego was by far the worst.
• I hope the end is joyful, and I hope never to return.

The Biography.com staff is a team of people-obsessed and news-hungry editors with decades of collective experience. We have worked as daily newspaper reporters, major national magazine editors, and as editors-in-chief of regional media publications. Among our ranks are book authors and award-winning journalists. Our staff also works with freelance writers, researchers, and other contributors to produce the smart, compelling profiles and articles you see on our site. To meet the team, visit our About Us page: https://www.biography.com/about/a43602329/about-us

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Frida Kahlo and her paintings

Mexican artist Frida Kahlo is remembered for her self-portraits, pain and passion, and bold, vibrant colors. She is celebrated in Mexico for her attention to Mexican and indigenous culture and by feminists for her depiction of the female experience and form.

Kahlo, who suffered from polio as a child, nearly died in a bus accident as a teenager. She suffered multiple fractures of her spine, collarbone and ribs, a shattered pelvis, broken foot and a dislocated shoulder. She began to focus heavily on painting while recovering in a body cast. In her lifetime, she had 30 operations.

Life experience is a common theme in Kahlo's approximately 200 paintings, sketches and drawings. Her physical and emotional pain are depicted starkly on canvases, as is her turbulent relationship with her husband, fellow artist Diego Rivera , who she married twice. Of her 143 paintings, 55 are self-portraits.

The devastation to her body from the bus accident is shown in stark detail in The Broken Column . Kahlo is depicted nearly naked, split down the middle, with her spine presented as a broken decorative column. Her skin is dotted with nails. She is also fitted with a surgical brace.

Kahlo's first self-portrait was Self-Portrait in a Velvet Dress in 1926. It was painted in the style of 19th Century Mexican portrait painters who themselves were greatly influenced by the European Renaissance masters. She also sometimes drew from the Mexican painters in her use of a background of tied-back drapes. Self-Portrait - Time Flies (1929), Portrait of a Woman in White (1930) and Self-Portrait Dedicated to Leon Trotsky (1937) all bear this background.

I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone, because I am the person I know best." - Frida Kahlo

In her second-self portrait, "Time Flies," Kahlo uses a folk style and vibrant colors. She wears peasant clothing, and the red, white and green in the painting are the colors of the Mexican flag.

During her life, self portrait is a subject that Frida Kahlo always returns to, as artists have always returned to their beloved themes - Rembrandt his Self Portrait , Vincent van Gogh his Sunflowers , and Claude Monet his Water Lilies .

Frida and Diego: Love and Pain

Kahlo and Rivera had a tumultuous relationship, marked by multiple affairs on both sides. Self-Portrait With Cropped Hair (1940), Kahlo is depicted in a man's suit, holding a pair of scissors, with her fallen hair around the chair in which she sits. This represents the times she would cut the hair Rivera loved when he had affairs.

The 1937 painting Memory, the Heart , shows Kahlo's pain over her husband's affair with her younger sister Christina. A large broken heart at her feet shows the intensity of Kahlo's anguish. Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera divorced in 1939, but reunited a year later and remarried. The Two Fridas (1939) depicts Kahlo twice, shortly after the divorce. One Frida wears a costume from the Tehuana region of Mexico, representing the Frida that Diego loved. The other Frida wears a European dress as the woman who Diego betrayed and rejected. Later, she is back in Tehuana dress in Self-Portrait as a Tehuana (1943) and Self Portrait (1948).

Pre-Columbian artifacts were common both in the Kahlo/Rivera home (Diego collected sculptures and idols, and Frida collected Jewelry) and in Kahlo's paintings. She wore jewelry from this period in Self-Portrait - Time Flies (1926), Self-Portrait With Monkey (1938) and Self-Portrait With Braid (1941), among others. Other Pre-Columbian artifacts are found in The Four Inhabitants of Mexico City (1938), Girl With Death Mask (1938) and Self-Portrait With Small Monkeys (1945).

My painting carries with it the message of pain." - Frida Kahlo

Surreal or Realist?

Frida Kahlo participated in the "International Exhibition of Surrealism" in 1940 at the Galeria de Arte, Mexicano. There, she exhibited her two largest paintings: The Two Fridas and The Wounded Table (1940). Surrealist Andrew Breton considered Kahlo a surrealistic, a label Kahlo rejected, saying she just painted her reality. However, In 1945, when Don Jose Domingo Lavin asked Frida Kahlo to read the book Moses and Monotheism by Sigmund Freud - whose psychoanalysis works Surrealism is based on - and paint her understanding and interpretation of this book. Frida Kahlo painted Moses , and this painting was recognized as second prize at the annual art exhibition in the Palacio de Bellas Artes.

Kahlo did not sell many paintings in her lifetime, although she painted occasional portraits on commission. She had only one solo exhibition in Mexico in her lifetime, in 1953, just a year before her death at the age of 47.

Today, her works sell for very high prices. In May 2006, Frida Kahlo self-portrait, Roots , was sold for $5.62 million at a Sotheby's auction in New York, sets a record as the most expensive Latin American work ever purchased at auction, and also makes Frida Kahlo one of the highest-selling woman in art.

Widely known for her Marxist leanings, Frida, along with Marxism Revolutionary Che Guevara and a small band of contemporary figures, has become a countercultural symbol of the 20th century, and created a legacy in art history that continues to inspire the imagination and mind. Born in 1907, dead at 47, Frida Kahlo achieved celebrity even in her brief lifetime that extended far beyond Mexico's borders, although nothing like the cult status that would eventually make her the mother of the selfie, her indelible image recognizable everywhere.

At the Frida Kahlo Museum in Mexico City, her personal belongings are on display throughout the house, as if she still lived there. Kahlo was born and grew up in this building, whose cobalt walls gave way to the nickname of the Blue House. She lived there with her husband for some years, and she died there. The facility is the most popular museum in the Coyoacan neighborhood and among the most visited in Mexico City.

The Two Fridas

Self-portrait with thorn necklace & hummingbird, viva la vida, watermelons, the wounded deer, self portrait with monkeys, without hope, me and my parrots, what the water gave me, frida and diego rivera, the wounded table, diego and i, my dress hangs there, henry ford hospital, self portrait as a tehuana, fulang chang and i.

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‘Frida’ Review: The Famed Artist’s Life is Explored in Dazzling Color and Animation

Oftentimes, documentaries stand too far away from their subjects so the degrees of separation that come with time aren’t always a negative for the subgenre, but there’s no denying the magic that comes with a first-hand approach. “Frida,” the new documentary by Carla Gutierrez playing in competition at Sundance , proves that the right proximity to the subject can yield magical and exciting results when exploring someone’s real-life story.

“Frida” is a beautifully visceral account of the life and soul of the legendary surrealist artist Frida Kahlo. Using only archival footage, photos, and writings—with a through-line of the narrative directly from Kahlo’s own verse and the voices of those who loved her—the documentary crafts a truly full picture of the painter’s journey, weaving her paintings into the hallmarks of her life.

Gutierrez’s film is the first time Kahlo’s life is narrated by her own writing and the project does an incredible job of combining all of its visual and auditory elements to shape the narrative of the artist’s world, being moved forward much like our own: by triumphs, tribulations, revelations, heartbreak, and curiosity.

The stories and emotions behind her most recognizable—and some of her more obscure—works come clear into view and every thought behind the art is laid bare through the definitive intentions of the artist.

Many of Kahlo’s works are part of the film and in exploring them “Frida” employs stunning animation sequences that quite literally brings the artist’s paintings to life. The works—animated by an all-Latinx crew lead by Renata Galindo and Sofía Cázares—become two-dimensional delights, moving where they otherwise wouldn’t to build the rich inner life of Kahlo’s art.

It’s a lovely touch that deepens the connections between Kahlo’s words and the strokes of her brush. Going a step further, the film takes on a smart use of color strategically placed into black and white footage that immediately invokes painting to the viewer. It’s clear the visual aspects of the doc were crafted with great care for the emotional rollercoaster that was Kahlo’s storied life.

Many of these choices, and why they work so well, are the happy results of strong editing and structure. With Gutierrez in the director’s chair and chief of the editing room, we get a cohesive and tight framework that knows exactly where it wants to go and which tactics it wants to use to get there, whether that be animation, archival material or a combination therein.

Not only does the filmmaker follow Kahlo’s story to the letter—thanks in large part to a detailed map of archival materials sourced specifically for this film—but she finds a way of telling it that feels true to the subject. That feeling is owed to Gutierrez’s strong and assured self-collaboration between her directorial and editing impulses.

Tying the whole vibe of the project together is an undeniably fun score by Mexican composer Víctor Hernández Stumpfhauser. Each selection the musician wrote for the film meets the emotional moment of Kahlo’s story with the right tone, building a soundscape that truly represents the artist in every stage of her journey. Stumpfhauser’s score feels intrinsically Mexican and Latin American, pulling directly from the heritage Kahlo so strongly identified with. The decision to lean into these cultural sounds strengthens the tonal scope of the composer’s music, which in turn helps bolster the emotional core of Kahlo’s life as we see it unfold.

At the same time, the music also fosters a sense of modernity and excitement, suggesting that the composer was also inspired by how forward-thinking Kahlo always was. She was a rule-breaker and a risk-taker, and the film’s bubbly and inviting score mirrors her lust for the world and natural impulse to live a life that was ahead of her time. The film’s score is the final puzzle piece that—along with Gutierrez’s direction and editing, the structural layout of Kahlo’s story, all the archival materials, and the ingenious animation—allows the audience to experience the painter as she truly was, unencumbered by the veil of a private life.

“The art of Frida Kahlo is a ribbon around a bomb,” surrealist Andre Breton famously said after he first encountered the artist’s singular work. It’s certainly true that her art was incendiary, but so was her life, her capacity to feel and her wild heart. Now, with a beautiful and expansive film like “Frida,” the modern world has a chance to get to know her beyond the face value of her art and the images that have come to define her in the zeitgeist.

Even better, the world has a chance to get to know her as she really was, in the way she was known fully by the people who loved her. After all, what more could you want from a documentary than the best view of the intricacies of the subject? In Gutierrez’s vivid and moving film, Kahlo is in no less than full, glorious view.

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• March 3, 2020

FRIDA IN AMERICA The Creative Awakening of a Great Artist By Celia Stahr

It’s said that Frida Kahlo’s status in popular culture resembles a cross between a cult and a brand. At a time when oven mitts stamped with her likeness are found in museum gift shops, and her prosthetic leg is displayed like a saint’s relic in exhibitions , it’s hard to imagine Kahlo as an unknown artist at the start of her career. During the Depression, when she began to invent the flamboyant forms of identification with the Indigenous Mexicanidad for which she became famous, one could not have foreseen the current extent of Fridamania — our fascination with her carefully constructed personal mythos. (At some point she even changed her birth date from 1907 to 1910, the start of the Mexican Revolution, and elided the “e” in “Frieda” to make her name more authentically Mexican.)

It’s intriguing to encounter an artist in the act of becoming herself, and in “Frida in America,” Celia Stahr aims to do just that, returning us to Kahlo’s early days in San Francisco, New York and Detroit in the 1930s, when she and her husband, the artist Diego Rivera, were newlyweds. While Rivera was absorbed in painting large-scale social realist tableaus, Kahlo began fashioning modes of self-presentation in implicit opposition to the capitalist values of their host country , then painting canvases in the same style, marking major steps in her “creative awakening.”

Stahr, who teaches art history at the University of San Francisco, bases her narrative on the diary of Lucienne Bloch, a woman who became Kahlo’s confidante in the United States, as well as on correspondence between Kahlo and her family back in Mexico, beginning her book with the artist’s arrival with Rivera in San Francisco in 1930. There, Frida came to see her mixed heritage (she had a German father and a Mexican mother) as a source of distinction and started to develop the image of the mestiza in her appearance and work as an icon of Mexican national identity.

She did this first in her dress, emphasizing her “outsider status” to distinguish herself from Americans, who incurred her ongoing hostility. (Letters to her mother made an exception for San Francisco’s Chinese: They too were outsiders, their costumes and festivities “ simpáticos .”) In a work from this period, “Portrait of Eva Frederick,” Kahlo painted her African-American subject as both “an independent ‘New Woman’” and a “New Negro,” Stahr writes. Moreover, she had Frederick dress in a “Mexican-looking” garment, suggesting that Kahlo saw something of herself in her model.

Her 1931 canvas “Frieda and Diego Rivera,” often called a wedding portrait, depicts the artist as a diminutive but proud campesina — “a nationalist image,” Stahr notes, intended for an American audience — next to her imposingly large husband. Presenting herself in her painting as the wife of a famous artist, the 23-year-old Kahlo had begun confronting head-on “the complexity of being a stranger in a strange land.”

The complexities of the Riveras’ relations with America intensified when they moved to New York, where the Museum of Modern Art wanted to host a retrospective of Diego’s work. The contrast between the high society with whom they often socialized and the ordinary citizens suffering the effects of the Depression shocked Frida. She complained in a letter to her mother of “the horrible poverty here and the millions of people who have no work, food or home,” adding, of Diego, “Unfortunately, he has to work for these filthy rich asses.”

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Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo by Hayden Herrera – Book Review

I finally got around to reading this excellent biography of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, which I picked up, appropriately enough, during my trip to Mexico almost three years ago.

I’ve been a fan of Frida’s striking, intensely personal paintings for a long time, and during my trip I was lucky enough to visit Casa Azul , the Frida Kahlo Museum in the neighbourhood of Coyoacán in Mexico City. In retrospect, I almost wish I’d read the book and got more insight into Frida’s life before the visit, but ah well.

In the preface, Herrera describes an event that perfectly encapsulated Frida’s qualities as a person and a painter: a year before her early death at the age of forty-seven, Frida made an appearance at her first major exhibition in her native Mexico. With her health badly deteriorated, Frida arrived at the Gallery of Contemporary Art in an ambulance, wearing her favourite traditional Tehuana costume, and received friends and visitors in her four-poster bed, installed earlier. It was a testimony to Frida’s spirit in the face of suffering, her love of drama and spectacle, and an extra reminder of Frida’s central subject as an artist – herself.

I paint my own reality, she said. The only thing I know is that I paint because I need to, and I paint always whatever passes through my head, without any other consideration.

Herrera’s book naturally gives a lot of attention to Frida’s art and I enjoyed the in-depth descriptions and analysis of her paintings, though it’s a tad disappointing that only half of the reproductions are in colour and the rest are black-and-white. Though she was embraced by the European Surrealists, Herrera argues that Frida’s art was far too specific, culturally and individually, to be classified as such. It was a visual diary of her life and emotions, at times full of disturbing violent imagery that reflected her real-life pain, but also displaying sensual vibrancy and even black humour. Along with her Mexican costumes, it also showed her absorption in traditional Mexican culture and folklore. Frida’s creation of her public persona was very much self-aware and knowing (early on there’s an anecdote about how she’s chosen 1910, the year of the Mexican Revolution, as her birth date rather than the 1907 date on her actual birth certificate).

It’s fascinating to think whether Frida would have become an artist at all had it not been for the devastating traffic accident that happened when she was eighteen and left her literally impaled on a metal bar in the wreckage of the bus. She could never have a child, suffering miscarriages because of her broken pelvis, and had to endure endless operations. Prior to the accident, Frida apparently had shown little to no interest in painting and took it up while bedridden afterwards.

Another momentous event in her life was of course Frida’s marriage to muralist Diego Rivera , a tempestuous union that ended in divorce followed by re-marriage. Their marriage often takes centre stage in the biography and you learn a lot about Rivera simply because of how important he was in Frida’s life. Frida’s pain was knowing that she would never come first for Rivera who lived for his work, while Diego was the most important thing in her life. Both had many love affairs; in a typical macho manner Rivera was indulgent towards Frida’s female lovers while jealous of the male ones (which included distinguished men like Leon Trotsky and the artist Isamu Noguchi ). But they were well-matched too, sharing commitment to Mexico and its working people, the Communist Party, deep love and friendship and immense respect for each other’s work. While it took Frida a long time to come out of Rivera’s shadow, he was always supportive of her talent.

Behind her indomitable persona, Frida of course was rather more vulnerable and complicated, a side she only showed to those closest to her and that Herrera doesn’t gloss over. Frida’s personal letters, quoted here in full, provide an insight into her personality and voice (though I also found them a tad maddening to read because Frida often didn’t have much use for punctuation, pouring herself out in a torrent of words).

Some of Herrera’s own interpretations of Frida’s art and life should perhaps be taken with a grain of salt, but then again there’s no such thing as a completely objective biography. Overall it’s a well-written, detailed book that does manage to convey the sheer magnetism of Frida the person and the artist.

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2 thoughts on “ frida: a biography of frida kahlo by hayden herrera – book review ”.

Thank you very much for reviewing and sharing your thoughts about this one. I was teetering on the fence of weather or not to add it to my stack of to-be-reads. I’m now convinced! Thank you again.

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You’re welcome! Hope you enjoy the book as well.

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