FRIDA KAHLO'S BIOGRAPHY
By: Hilda Trujillo
FRIDA KAHLO (MAGDALENA
CARMEN FRIDAKAHLO CALDERÓN) was born on July 6, 1907
in Mexico City, in the
house that was owned by their parents since 1904, and that today
It is known as the Blue
House. Daughter of Wilhelm (Guillermo) Kahlo, of Hungarian-German descent,
and Matilde Calderón,
originally from Oaxaca, Frida was the third of four daughters. His two
sisters, Matilde and
Adriana, were the majors and Cristina, the youngest.
At age six, Frida
became ill with polio, causing her right leg to become more
short; This was a
source of ridicule. However, these events did not prevent him from being a
restless and tenacious
student. He studied at the National Preparatory School.
At age 18, on September
17, 1925, Frida had a tragic accident. The bus in the
that he was traveling
was hit by a tram. The consequences for her were serious: fracture
of various bones and
injuries to the spine. Due to the immobility to which she was subjected
several months, Frida
started painting. Thus, it is related to several artists, among them the
photographer Tina
Modotti and the then well-known artist Diego Rivera.
In 1929 Frida married
the muralist. The couple lived in the Blue House, home of the
Frida's childhood, as
well as in Diego's studio in San Ángel. They had short stays in
Mexico City. Kahlo and
Rivera also resided in Cuernavaca and in various cities
of the United States:
Detroit, San Francisco, New York.
In 1930 Frida suffered
her first abortion. In November of that same year and for reasons of
work, the couple
traveled to San Francisco. In this city the painter met Doctor Leo
Eloesser, who would be
one of his family doctors and one of his best friends.
Diego's infidelities
unleashed emotional crises of the artist. Frida divorced
muralist in 1939 to
marry again with him a year later.
Despite her poor health
and having been operated on multiple occasions, Frida was an artist
with intense activity.
Politically, he was a member of the Communist Party and a loyal activist
from left. Along with
Rivera, he upgraded the Blue House to give him asylum for more than two years
Leon Trotsky and
Natalia, his wife. Even, days before she died, Frida participated in a
march of protest
against the overthrow of the Guatemalan Jacobo Árbenz, which
caused a pulmonary
embolism.
She was a teacher of
the National School of Painting and Sculpture "La Esmeralda". Both in
your work
as in her daily life
-language, clothing, and decoration of her house- Frida looked for
Rescue the roots of
Mexican popular art, and that interest is reflected in his work; by
example, the clothing
in their self-portraits as well as the characteristic simple and direct style
of popular votings.
Frida affirmed that,
unlike the surrealist painters, she did not paint her dreams, but
your reality Of his
work, self-portraits influenced by the portrait technique stand out
photographic he learned
from his father, Guillermo Kahlo.
At the end of her life,
the artist's health declined. From 1950 to 51, she remained interned in the
English Hospital. In
1953, before the threat of gangrene, his right leg was amputated.
Frida Kahlo died at the
Blue House in Mexico City on July 13, 1954, when the
National Institute of
Fine Arts prepared him, as a National Tribute, a sample
retrospective
Among the paintings
that make up the work of the painter, some of the most famous are
The two Fridas, Viva la
Vida, A few piquetitos, The broken column and Diego in my
thought.
During her life, the
artist held some exhibitions: one in New York at the Julien Gallery
Levy, another in Paris
in the gallery Rue et Colle and another in Mexico in the gallery of Lola
Álvarez
Bravo. He also
participated in the Collective Exhibition of Surrealism in the famous Gallery
of
Mexican art.
The Louvre Museum
acquired one of its self-portraits. His paintings are in
numerous private
collections of Mexico, the United States and Europe. His personality has
been adopted as one of
the flags of feminism, of disability, of freedom
sexuality and the
Mexican culture. Frida Kahlo has become a benchmark that exceeds the
myth that the painter
created of herself.
