S T A T S

A B O U T

Frida Kahlo is a well-known folkloric artist of Mexican extraction. She was born on July 6th, 1907, but often gave 1910 as her birth date so that people would associate her with the Mexican Revolution. She was the third child of four in her father's second marriage, and she was closest to him in the family.

After surviving a childhood bout with polio, she attended Colegio Aleman, then the National Prepatory School, an elite academy. She became involved in revolutionary politics and was romantically involved with Alejandro Gómez Arias. It was on September 17th, 1925 that she was severely injured when a trolly she was riding in collided with a bus, an incident that would shape her life for years to come.

Frida suffered greatly in the accident, incurring a broken spinal column, a broken collarbone, broken ribs, a broken pelvis, eleven fractures in her right leg, a crushed and dislocated right foot, and a dislocated shoulder. An iron handrail impaled her abdomen, piercing her uterus. She would walk again, but she never completely recovered. The pain was intense and often left her confined to a hospital or bedridden for months at a time. She would undergo as many as 35 operations in her life as a result of the accident, mainly on her back and her right leg and foot.

The accident encouraged Frida's interest in painting; it forced her to spend hours on her back lying still, a condition ideal for the study required in portraiture. She initially painted mostly her own face, and eventually began to branch out, painting family members. She quickly developed a unique, surrealistic style that was utterly honest and yet imaginitive. Her first serious painting "Self-Portrait In a Red Dress", was an attempt (which failed) to win Alejandro back.

The other major shock to Frida's system came in the form of muralist Diego Rivera, with whom she had a tempestuous relationship but married in 1929 - Frida's mother dissaproved of this, feeling that Rivera was too old for her (Rivera was in fact twenty years older than Frida). Their first marriage was plagued by affairs, both his and hers. They spent time in San Francisco while Rivera painted murals in the Luncheon Club of the San Francisco Stock Exchange and the California School of Fine Arts. They moved from Phillidelphia to Detriot, where Frida suffered her first misscarriage in 1932; it resulted in the brutaly honest painting "Henry Ford Hospital".

They moved to New York in 1933; Rivera painted a mural in the RCA Building in Rockefeller Center. All the while, Frida expressed her ambivilance about America and life in Diego's shadow in such paintings as "My Dress Hangs There" and "What the Water Gave Me".

Though Frida discovered that Rivera was having an affair with her younger sister Christina, they were united in their support of the Republican army during the Spanish Civil War. The year after the war broke out, Frida had an affair with Leon Trotsky; on September 23rd, four of her paintings were included for the first time in an exhibition.

In October of 1938, Frida had her first solo exhibition in New York; while there, she met Nikalus Murray, with whom she would have an on-and-off affair for ten years.

In 1939, her works were exhibited in Paris for the first time; only two of her eighteen paintings were showcased because they were deemed to be too shocking for consumption; "The Frame" was purchased by the Louvre, the first piece of Mexican art aquired by the museum.

Rivera and Kahlo divorced on November 6th 1939.

In 1940, Frida showed paintings in San Francisco and in the International Surrealism Exhibition. Frida consulted with Dr. Eloesser, who also brought about Rivera and Kahlo's coming back together. In November of that year, Frida and Diego reconciled. They were re-married on December 8th of that year, Rivera's birthday.

In 1941, her father died of a heart attack, sending Frida into a deep depression, despite being chosen for Ministry of Education to be founders of the Seminar of Mexican Culture. Frida's art was also displayed in Boston for the first time that year.

From 1941 to 1942, Frida's art was displayed all over the world, but she and Rivera were intensely foccused on building a musem for Rivera's pre-columbian art collection. She eventually sold her appartment to fund its building.

By 1943, Frida had joined the facculty of Education Ministry's School of Painting and Sculpture, but by the year's end she was so ill that she couldn't come to the school. The class dwindled down to four students: Arturo Garcia Bustos, Guillermo Monroy, Arturo Estrada and Fanny Rabel, known as "Los Fridos".

Frida's health began to decline, but she still taught, and encouraged her students to take on mural assignments, kept a diary and painted her own mural, La Rosita, near her home the Blue House in Coyoacán, Mexico. A bone graft opperation in 1946 left her dependent on morphine.

By 1952 Frida was bound to a wheelchair, drawing mostly still-life portraits of fruit. She and Diego became Stalinists after years of Trotskysm at this point.

There were still high notes: in 1953, Frida's work was exhibited for the first time in Mexico. Her doctor instructed her not to go, but she decided to attend anyway- her bed was loaded onto the back of a truck and driven to the exhibition opening, with Frida following in an ambulance. Upon arrival, Frida returned to her bed and four men carried her inside to greet her friends.

Four months later, her right leg was amputated below the knee.

In 1954, she was hospitalized repeatedly, her health worsening. She appeared in public for the last time on July 2nd at a protest against the North American invasion of Gueatamala. The doctors called it a pulminary embolism when she died on July 14th, but some believe it was suicide.

Frida Kahlo was cremated on July 14th: her ashes reside in a pre-columbian urn in The Blue House, which is now a Museum that houses her belongings and many of her paintings; Rivera re-married, and when he died of cancer years later his second wife interred him elsewhere, against the wishes that his ashes be mingled with Frida's.

Since Frida Kahlo's death, she's become an iconic painter, especially to feminists. Such prominant women as Madonna collect her work, And her paintings hang in museums across the world. She was the subject of Hayden Herrera's best-selling biography, which was turned into a motion picture, Frida, starring and produced by Salma Hayack. It won Oscars, fittingly, for Best Art Direction and Best Visual Effects.

Quotes:"I have suffered two grave accidents in my life, one in which a streetcar knocked me down... The other accident is Diego."

"They thought I was a Surrealist, but I wasn't. I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality."

"I am not sick. I am broken. But I am happy to be alive as long as I can paint."

"I hope the exit is joyful and I hope never to return."

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