Frida Kahlo: life, art, and cultural legacy

Frida Kahlo

If it can be said that a bomb is free when it explodes, Frida Kahlo was most free when the explosive power of her artistry allowed her to be herself. She was born in 1907, just a few years before the 1910 revolution in Mexico that would bring about major social and political disorder (Gonzalez, 2005). She developed a deformed foot from polio, which earned her an early childhood nick-name of peg-leg Frida -- something she very much wanted to overcome. It could well have been these circumstances and her youthful streak of independence and determination that would lead her toward being a young communist and a financial, sexual and physically free artistic spirit (FANS, 2011).

She thrived on cultural and intellectual stimulation, something that came to her early on as well with a creative father. In a strange mix of fates, she would ultimately die of a number of medical conditions, including alcoholism, which today might be linked to the fact that her mother was not available to her so she not only didn't bond with her, but she was wet nursed by an Indian woman who drank while feeding Frida. While it is never certain how such early incidents come together, Frida readily talked across her life about two accidents in her life. One was a trolley accident that did severe damage to her hips and body, compounding her other food problems -- an accident which covered her and others in spilled gold paint! But the other great accident was her marriage (or at least her first marriage) to Diego Rivera. Tough enough as the first one was, the conditions she specifically required for the second go round was that there would be no sex or money entanglements. Though she desperately wanted his baby from early on, she would ultimately begin to want to be free of being "the wife of Rivera."

Her biography tells us a good deal about the importance of her artistry in her personal revolutions. The opening quotes range from how she painted herself and her identity, not of real or even surreal interests. She was the subject she knew best and that she wanted mostly to express to the world. "The only think that I know & #8230; is that I paint because I need to." Painting gave her ultimately the resources and the personal conviction to overcome the colonization that many women of her time period lived with. Men, money and the physical constraints of her broken body held her back; artistry gave her the ability to compensate and express herself as daringly as she demanded of her own talents.

Frida started painting early in life and never really stopped. She went to school early to study to be a doctor. Others told her that was not proper for young women. She had already started, however, to partner and learn from the associations she made with other intelligence people, many of whom were beginning to form the foundations for Mexico's political revolutions. When her trolley accident happened, she found herself trapped in bed again with a mirror to her side. It was from this experience that she put her own image on canvas. Notable figures praised her talent, including Diego Rivera, the big bellied old artisan that many revered. They quickly married in a drunken ceremony and not long after headed to the United State where Rivera would both advance and damage his career because of his admiration for Joseph Stalin -- something that did not go over well with people like the American Rockefeller millionaires who would have otherwise funded his works. Frida hated America and, though she would return later for her own painting career, expressed gratitude in being able to return to Spain and Mexico to continue their revolutionary works.

In the 1930s and 1940s, the artistic community of Mexico was highly political (Gonzalez, 2005). Several major artists, including Rivera, where commissioned to incorporate mural artistry into Mexico's turbulent public spaces. As Gonzalez said about this experience: "Although all three leading Muralists were powerful personalities, their artistic practice was rooted in an idea of collective creation - and an equally powerful insistence that art was work, labour, and that artists were in that sense workers." The communist roots that both Rivera and Kahlo shared would find their expressions here and he and others would literally incorporate her likeness into their works.

Sexuality was also a major and often downplayed part of Frida's search for freedom. Early on, just like her husband, she would have affairs with other men. Some of these were important political and community leaders. But she also evolved from passing off occasional sexual relationships with women -- which she said meant nothing more than a handshake -- to stronger sexual lesbian liaisons (FANS, 2011). It could well have been this transformation as well as her struggle to not be colonized by any for the restrictions she put on her second marriage -- not to mention the fact that he had had an affair with her sister during their first marriage.