Frida Kahlo

Frida Kahlo

Briana Zimmermaker

Galen College

Frida Kahlo

           Depression and loneliness often go hand in hand. Frida Kahlo, a famous painter, expressed her feelings of sorrow throughout all of her paintings. One of her famous quotes was "My painting carries with it the message of pain." Kahlo had a very difficult life and had suffered from a great deal of depression, therefore she painted to take away the pain.

          Artist Frida Kahlo was born Magdalena Carmen Frieda Kahlo y Calderón on July 6, 1907, in Coyocoán, Mexico City, Mexico. Considered one of Mexico’s greatest artists, Frida Kahlo began painting after she was severely injured in a bus accident (Biography.com Editors). She often told people she was born in 1910, three years after her actual birth, so that people would directly associate her with the Mexican Revolution that began in 1910. Kahlo grew up in the family’s home where she was born and raised by her father and mother. Her father, Wilhelm (also called Guillermo), was a German photographer who had immigrated to Mexico where he met and married her mother Matilde. Frida had two older sisters, Matilde and Adriana, and her younger sister, Cristina, was born the year after her (Biography.com Editors). Around the age of six, Frida faced her first health issue. She was diagnosed with Polio which caused her right leg to grow much thinner than her left one. She was bedridden for nine months until healthy again. The doctor recommended her to participate in different sports to help regain the strength back in her leg. She got involved in soccer, swimming and even wrestling, which was very unusual at that time for a girl. Frida had made constant efforts to disguise the abnormality of her leg. It just didn't seem to work and she was made fun of. So for the rest of her life she had worn long skirts to cover it up (Anonymous, 2011).

           In 1922, Kahlo enrolled at the renowned National Preparatory School. She was one of the few female students to attend the school. During her first year, famed Mexican muralist Diego Rivera went to work on a project at the school. Kahlo often watched as Rivera created a mural called The Creation in the school’s lecture hall. Frida told a friend that she would someday have Rivera’s baby (Biography.com Editors). While attending the school, Frida hung out with a group of politically and intellectually like-minded students. She happened to fall in love with the leader of the group, Alejandro Gomez. They spent a lot of time together and became romantically involved. One afternoon, Frida was traveling with Gomez on a bus and a tragic accident occurred. The bus collided with a car and Frida was seriously injured. A steel handrail from the bus went through her hip and her spine and pelvis were also fractured. She was injured so badly and was hospitalized for several weeks. She soon returned home for further recovery and had to wear a full body cast for three months. Frida started painting to kill the time since she was bedridden once again. Her parents made her a special easel so she could paint in bed and also gave her brushes and paint. She painted and finished her first self-portrait (Self-Portrait in a velvet dress). Frida gave it to Gomez who left Frida after the accident because he thought she was cheating on him prior to the accident. Frida had to deal with her boyfriend leaving her after such a tragic accident and she also found out she would not be able to have any children. Soon enough she got over Gomez and went back to her normal life.

          In 1928, Frida reconnected with Diego Rivera the Mexican muralist who she had met at school.  She asked him to evaluate her work and he encouraged her to keep painting. They began to fall in love and within the next year Frida and Diego got married. Frida and Diego's marriage was not a usual one (Anonymous, 2011). Melancholia, illness, separation, divorce, and re-marriage marked their relationship; Diego Rivera was a womanizer and their marriage was stormy. They had been keeping separate homes and studios during their marriage. Diego had so many affairs and one of that was with Kahlo's younger sister Cristina. Frustrated by his philandering, Frida (a closet lesbian/bisexual) had affairs with both men and women, including a fling with exiled Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky in 1938. Frida also suffered from multiple miscarriages throughout her marriage. She longed for children but she could not bear one due to the bus accident. Frida was very depressed and became more involved in her paintings and painted frequently. Her paintings would display her feelings or a situation that had taken a toll on her during her lifetime. Kahlo painted images that were emotionally raw and visually disturbing. Her artistic output was dominated by self-portraits that often show the artist suffering. One of her most popular paintings, Me and My Parrots, represented the role the parrots had played in her life. She loved them like the children since she was never able to have any. Frida painted Me and My Parrots right after her father had passed away. The self-portrait also showed that her parrots were all she had left. During Frida's lifetime she created 143 paintings out of which are 55 self-portraits. Each and every painting has a different meaning behind it.