Casa Azul (16 page)

“You’ve changed it,” Fulang finally said.

Frida put down her brush. “I finally decided to take my own
advice. The gods demanded it. Like the battle between Quetzalcoatl and Huitzilopochtli, neither death nor life can triumph. There always must be a balance between joy and sorrow. It can never be all or nothing. It is always somewhere in between.”

Frida picked up the canvas and carried it awkwardly into the living room. She replaced the portrait of Dr. Eloesser with it. She moved stiffly as if all her joints needed to be oiled.

“We didn’t need Dr. Eloesser after all,” Chica said to Fulang.

“Well, not the living one at least,” said Fulang. “The portrait helped us.”

“This will be the painting I display at my Cinco de Mayo fiesta,” said Frida.

Fulang felt as if the celebration had already begun. Impulsively she leaped into the garden and found Caimito napping in a tree. She quickly climbed the tree and gave Caimito a peck on the cheek, startling the monkey awake.

F
rida Kahlo’s life was a long struggle between extreme physical suffering and an extraordinary hunger for life. She overcame her physical limitations and pain through sheer will to become one of Mexico’s greatest artists.

Much like the way she painted and lived her life, Frida fabricated her birth date so that it corresponded with how she perceived herself. During her life she claimed that she was born on July 7, 1910, the same year as the beginning of the Mexican Revolution. To her the fact that she was actually born on July 6, 1907, had no relevance. What mattered was how she felt in her heart. She identified with the incredible optimism and hope that the revolution brought to many Mexicans despite the suffering that war also brings. Like the revolution, Frida was full of hope in spite of pain.

At age six, Frida contracted polio. Although she recovered, her right leg never fully developed and always remained thinner than her left. But this setback did not deter her. By the time she entered high school at the prestigious National Prepatory School, she was a
tomboy full of mischief. Despite being one of only thirty-five girls among two thousand boys, Frida quickly became the ringleader of a rebellious and intellectually ambitious group called the
Cachuchas
. They were known to play pranks on teachers at the school. In 1922, while Diego Rivera was completing his mural in the Bolívar Amphitheater at the school, Frida became infatuated with him. Legend has it that at the time she declared to her friends: “My ambition is to have a child with Diego Rivera. And I’m going to tell him someday.” Nothing came of this infatuation at the time, but she did play a few pranks on Diego, such as stealing his lunch, while he was working. So although they had not yet met, he was aware of her.

The accident that would affect the rest of her life occurred three years later, on September 17, 1925. She and a friend spent the day wandering the colorful street stalls that were set up for the Mexican National Day celebration. As evening approached, they boarded a passing bus to return to Coyoacán, the suburb of Mexico City where she lived. As the driver rushed through the city, he tried to pass in front of a turning trolley. The heavy trolley broadsided the bus. The accident left Frida Kahlo with a broken spinal column, a broken collarbone, broken ribs, a broken pelvis, and eleven fractures in her right leg. In addition, her right foot was dislocated and crushed, and her left shoulder was out of joint. For a month Frida was forced to stay flat on her back, encased in a plaster cast and enclosed in a boxlike structure. During her convalescence from the accident she began painting because she was bored. This became her lifelong profession.

To her doctor’s surprise, Frida regained her ability to walk. However, for the rest of her life she lived in tremendous pain and suffered
debilitating fatigue. She was sometimes hospitalized for long periods of time or bedridden for months, and thirty-five operations were performed over the last twenty-nine years of her life. To manage the pain, she turned to alcohol, drugs, and cigarettes, none of which helped much.

It was painting that sustained her and provided entrée into the artistic scene of Mexico, where she met Diego Rivera again. She took four little paintings to Diego, who was painting on scaffolds at the Ministry of Public Education. Diego liked her work and encouraged her. Soon they became involved and were married on August 21, 1929. Over the next eleven years, their marriage was a tumultuous relationship that took them to Detroit, New York, and France, among other places. Though deeply in love, both had affairs with other people; and they fought ferociously. Their marriage has been called the union between an elephant and a dove, because Diego was huge and very fat, and Frida was small (a little more than five feet) and slender.

Despite Diego’s affairs with other women (one with Frida’s sister), he supported Frida’s art completely and was a dogged promoter of her work. He recommended that she begin wearing traditional Mexican clothing, which consisted of long, colorful dresses and exotic jewelry. These garments, along with Frida’s thick, connecting eyebrows, became the trademark of her self-portraits. Frida in turn was Diego’s most trusted critic and the love of his life.

What carried Frida through her constant pain was her indomitable spirit. She was outgoing and witty. She liked to sprinkle her conversation with vivid expletives. She loved to drink tequila and
sing off-color songs to guests at the crazy parties she hosted. Men were fascinated by her, and because of this Frida had numerous, scandalous affairs. Frida was a bisexual and also had affairs with many women.

In 1937 she had an affair with the Communist leader Leon Trotsky. Both Frida and Diego were committed communists who participated in numerous protests. This was why Trotsky had come to stay at her home, along with his wife. Frida was later arrested for his murder but was released. Diego was also under suspicion. Several years after Trotsky’s death, Diego and Frida enjoyed telling people that they invited him to Mexico just to get him killed, but no one knows if they were telling the truth or not. They were fantastic storytellers.

All over the world people loved Frida. In 1938, when she went to France, she became the darling of the French surrealist movement. Pablo Picasso became so enamored of her that he made her a pair of earrings. During her visit, she even appeared on the cover of the French magazine
Vogue
. Her work was included in shows in the United States and in Mexico.

In 1940 Frida and Diego divorced but remarried within a year. It was during the year of the divorce, however, that Frida was able to step out from behind Diego’s shadow and find herself as an artist. Frida painted the world as she experienced it, not as it was. Her canvases recorded her emotional reality, which did not always correspond to physical reality. Using jarring colors and odd spatial relationships, she painted the anger and hurt over her stormy marriage, the painful miscarriages, and the physical suffering she underwent
because of the accident. Many of her pictures include startling symbolic images and elements from Mexican history.

Even after they remarried, Frida continued living at Casa Azul, the home in which she was born; Diego would visit and occasionally spend the night. After the divorce Frida tried to be independent of Diego. Perhaps as a result, the five years after their remarriage were the most serene of their married life.

In 1943, at Diego’s suggestion, Frida began teaching at the Ministry of Public Education’s experimental new School for Painting and Sculpture. Shortly after starting to teach, Frida’s health made it impossible for her to travel to the school, so her students came to Casa Azul. Despite her failing health, Frida continued to paint. These years were her most productive.

With Frida’s health getting worse, by 1950 her doctor thought a bone graft might decrease her pain. This operation proved disastrous. The implanted bone caused a severe infection, and Frida spent the next nine months in the hospital.

Frida only had one exhibition in Mexico, and it was in the spring of 1953. Her health was very bad by this time. She had recently had her right leg amputated below the knee because of the gangrenous condition of her foot. In her diary she wrote the poignant phrase, “
Pies para qué los quiero, si tengo alas pa’ volar?
” (“Feet—why do I need them if I have wings to fly?”)

Her doctors advised that she not attend her solo exhibition. Minutes after guests were allowed into the gallery, sirens were heard outside. The crowd went crazy when they saw an ambulance accompanied by a motorcycle escort. Frida Kahlo had arrived. She was
placed in the middle of the gallery in her bed, Frida told jokes, entertained the crowd, sang, and drank the whole evening. The exhibition was an amazing success.

Over the next few months, however, Frida’s health deteriorated quickly. On July 13, 1954, Frida died. On her death certificate her doctor wrote that the cause of death was a pulmonary embolism. Her death might have been the result of an accidental drug overdose or suicide, but no autopsy was performed. Her last words in her diary read, “
Espero alegre la salida—y espero no volver jamás
.” In English that means, “I hope this exit is joyful—and I hope never to return.”

1907   On July 6, Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo Calderón is born in Coyoacán, Mexico, the third of Matilde Calderón and Guillermo Kahlo’s four daughters.

1910   The Mexican Revolution begins. Later in life Kahlo claimed

1910   1910 was the year of her birth.

1913   Frida suffers an attack of polio, permanently affecting the use of her right leg.

1922   Fifteen-year-old Frida enters the National Prepatory School, where she plays pranks on Diego Rivera, who is painting his mural Creation at the school. Though she does not actually meet Rivera, her jokes make an impression on him. She is one of thirty-five girls in a student body of two thousand.

1925   On September 17, Frida nearly dies in a trolley accident. Her spinal column is broken in three places. Her collarbone is broken, and also her third and fourth ribs. Her right leg has eleven fractures,
and her right foot is dislocated and crushed. Her left shoulder is out of joint and her pelvis is broken in three places. The steel handrail of the trolley goes straight through her abdomen. She will never fully recover from these injuries.

1926   Frida begins to paint while convalescing at home.

1929   On August 21, Frida marries Rivera. She is twenty-two (nineteen, to those who think she was born in 1910) and he is forty-three.

1931   In San Francisco, Frida meets Dr. Leo Eloesser, who becomes her physician for the rest of her life.

1934   Frida and Diego live in adjoining houses with a bridge between them. Frida has three operations, one to have her appendix removed, one for an abortion, and one because of foot problems.

1935   Frida and Diego separate. Frida moves to an apartment in Mexico City. In July she travels to New York. When she returns, the couple reconcile. She has a foot operation. Her foot takes six months to heal.

1936   Frida experiences intense back pain and has another foot operation.

1937   On January 9, Leon Trotsky and his wife, Natalia Sedova, arrive in Mexico and stay at Casa Azul. (Trotsky was one of the founders of the Soviet Union but had to flee his country when he came under disfavor with the Soviet leadership.) Like Trotsky, Frida and Diego are ardent communists.

1938 French surreallist André Breton visits Mexico and meets Frida. American collector and actor Edward G. Robinson purchases four works, her first significant sale.

From October 25 to November 14, Frida has her first solo exhibition in New York, at the Julian Levy Gallery.

1939   Frida travels to Paris for Mexique, an exhibition curated by André Breton that included her paintings. The Louvre purchases her self-portrait
The Frame
.

Frida returns in April, when Diego begins divorce proceedings against her. The divorce is finalized in November.

1940   In January
The Two Fridas
and
The Wounded Table
are exhibited in the International Surrealism Exhibition organized by the Gallery of Mexican Art. Her
Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird
is sold to photographer Nicolas Munay, who had previously purchased her work.

Frida goes to San Francisco for medical treatment by Dr. Eloesser. She shows her work in the San Francisco Golden Gate International Exhibition.
The Two Fridas
is shown in New York at the Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition Twenty Centuries of Mexican Art.

On December 8 Frida remarries Diego in San Francisco.

1942   Frida’s
Self-Portrait with Braid
is included in the exhibition Twentieth-Century Portraits at the Museum of Modern Art.

1943   One of her paintings is exhibited at the Benjamin Franklin Library in Mexico City in the group show, A Century of Portrait in
Mexico (1830-1942). Her work is also exhibited in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

Frida begins teaching at the Ministry of Public Education’s School of Painting and Sculpture, La Esmeralda.

1946   Frida goes to New York for surgery on her spine. She paints
The Wounded Deer
and
Tree of Hope, Stand Fast
.

1947   Her Self-Portrait as a Tehuana is exhibited at the National Institute of Fine Arts, Mexico City.

1949   Frida writes the essay “Portrait of Diego” and paints
Diego and I
and
The Love Embrace of the Universe, the Earth (Mexico), Me, Diego, and Mr. Xólotl
, which is exhibited at the Salon de la Plástica Mexicana in Mexico City.

1950   Frida is hospitalized for nine months because of recurring spinal problems.

1953   From April 13 to 27, Frida’s only individual exhibition in Mexico is held at the Galería de Arte Contemporáneo in Mexico City.

In July her leg is amputated below the knee because of gangrene.

1954   Frida is hospitalized in April and May. On July 2, convalescing from bronchial pneumonia, she takes part in a demonstration protesting United States intervention in Guatemala. On the night of July 13, she dies. Her doctor determines she died of pulmonary embolism, but rumors persist that her death was a suicide.