Frida Kahlo

Born on July 6th, 1907, Frida Kahlo was introduced to the world in the Mexican city,

Coyoacán. Kahlo had a very unique childhood. When she was only three years old, the Mexican

Revolution began and people from all over came to Mexico City, where she lived just outside.

The revolution was a huge impact on her childhood, as it brought all kinds of people from all

kinds of different cultures, religions, and backgrounds together to express themselves. At age six,

Kahlo was diagnosed with polio in her right leg. She spent nine months ​alone at​ home,

eventually overcoming the sickness with only a slight limp. Once better, she helped her

photographer father with his pictures to pass time and developed a love for sketching and

drawing the world around her.

Swimming, boxing, and wrestling were some unusual activities for growing Mexican

girls that Kahlo participated in. She was known to act and dress more like a boy than a young

lady. At age 15, she was enrolled in one of the finest highschools in Mexico at the time, the

national preparatory school. At that school, she learned three different languages, fell in love

with artists such as ​Walt Whitman ​and ​Leonardo Da ​Vinci, and had the aspiration to become a

doctor. During her education, she became infatuated with a member of the Revolutionary

Syndicate of Technical Workers, Painters, and Sculptures, Diego Rivera, who did a mural at her

school. But he wasn’t to be a huge part of her life until later, after her accident of 1925. On

September 17th, Kahlo was riding a wooden bus with her boyfriend, Alex Gómez Arias. They

got into a crash with a trolley car only a few minutes into the ride. Frida Kahlo’s life was

changed forever, as her spine, pelvis, right leg, collarbone, and three ribs were all broken along

with her foot being completely crushed.

 Because of this accident, Kahlo was restricted to her bed for months. Not having much to

do, she began to sketch, draw, and eventually paint. She had a mirror that hung above her bed so

she could paint self-portraits. But they weren’t normal paintings, they were expressions of her

pain. Kahlo claimed that she wasn’t drawing the supernatural or out-of-this-world; she was

merely showing the world what she saw. She told the people who asked that she saw the world

as one, pleasure, pain, love, sorrow, and everything else.

A few years later, at age 21, Kahlo was finally ready to move around and live her life

normally again. Mexico had become an artistic renaissance by the time she joined society again.

She began to explore the joys of life again, even joining the Mexican Communist. When in town

one day, she met Diego Rivera again. They instantly hit it off and although they were extremely

different in not only appearance but in age, they got married soon after. She did eventually leave

the Communist party when Rivera was expelled from it.

Not even a year into the marriage, though, Rivera began an affair. This was also when

Kahlo realized she was pregnant but unfortunately had to have an abortion since her body wasn’t

strong enough to give birth. So to distract herself from her pain, she cooked, cleaned, and

sometimes accompanied Rivera to paint in the city. Kahlo also painted for herself on

regular-sized canvases all the way down to one-inch canvases of anything from Mexican folk art

to her childhood to the exvotos of people who were said to be saved by miracles. Each of these

depictions was different and peculiar to a stranger’s eye, sometimes even dark and gloomy, but

to her, they were parts of herself and her own personal heartache.

The first time Kahlo visited America was when Diego was invited to paint murals in San

Francisco in 1930. From San Francisco, they also traveled to New York, and finally to Detroit
where Kahlo found out she was pregnant again. The doctor told her she would be ok during this

birth, but one night she began to bleed and didn’t stop. She was transferred to Henry Ford

Hospital where her baby died and she nearly passed. She was left in the hospital for 13 days,

depressed and in immense pain, physically, mentally, and emotionally. During that time, she got

her hands on some paper and a pencil and drew every sorrowful thought she had. A year later, in

1933, she told Rivera she was homesick and wanted to go back to Mexico. Enjoying the fame in

America, Rivera refused at first but realizing they were near broke, they moved back home.

Back in Mexico, Kahlo’s depression increased over the next year. She had another

miscarriage, her right leg had surgery, and Rivera became sickly and furious. He blamed Kahlo

for making him leave America and taking him away from where he wanted to be. Because of

this, he decided to have another affair. In the past, Kahlo told herself that all the women he had

been with were beneath both him and her, so she needn’t worry. But this time, it was her younger

sister, Cristina. Torn apart at the seams, Kahlo cut her hair and changed her style completely. She

stopped wearing the beautiful Mexican dresses she wore to impress Rivera and left to live alone

in an apartment in Mexico City. She spent the next few years having affair after affair, men and

women alike, living life to the fullest she could. But she could never fill the hole Rivera left and

ended up moving into a property that had two houses, one for her and one for him, connected by

a bridge. She became closer to him and her sister again, happy for a while.

In 1938, Rivera convinced Kahlo to submit four of her paintings into a show in Mexico

City. This is when she gained some popularity as someone other than Rivera’s wife. She even

attracted the attention of an artist from outside of Mexico named Andre Breton, who was known
as “The Pope” of surrealism. He got close to Kahlo and expressed his interest, but she simply

told him she didn’t paint surrealism. She painted her own reality.

A gallery owner from New York offered Kahlo a solo exhibition soon after and she flew

back to America on her own to attend in October. By the winter, she was in Paris for another

exhibition. Unfortunately, her gallery opening had some trouble and she became homesick,

having another relapse of depression and chronic back pain, eventually leading to a kidney

infection. After surgery in Paris, a few women took care of her and it is believed that she even

had an affair with one of them.

By April of 1939, Kahlo returned to Mexico where her relationship with Rivera had

completely deteriorated. They decided to get a divorce and again Kahlo changed completely,

cutting her hair once more and changing out of her Mexican apparel. Rivera moved to San

Francisco with his beautiful assistant, who many assumed he wanted to marry. From then on,

Kahlo’s health fell far very fast, and not long after, she was told she needed to have surgery on

her spine. Realizing that he could not live without her, Rivera begged Kahlo to remarry him. She

moved out to San Francisco for more expert advice on her spine and to think over Rivera’s offer.

They remarried on his 54th birthday in 1940 and three months later, they moved back to Mexico

together.

Kahlo was awarded professorship at 'La Esmerelda' school of Art in 1943 and a year later

received a national prize for her painting called 'Moses'. In 1947, she rejoined the communist

party. But through it all, Kahlo’s illnesses overtook her daily life and she steadily declined even

more over the years. She could hardly sit or stand without help and ended up using 24 different

corsets to help her function.

 For most of 1950, Kahlo was confined to a hospital in Mexico City with severe

headaches, fevers, infections, and even gangrene in her foot. She underwent seven procedures

and eventually became addicted to the painkillers the doctors gave her, such as morphine. But to

help her get through the pain and suffering, she kept a diary that was also a long love poem to

Rivera, complete with sketches, poems, watercolors, and more. When she was finally released,

she moved back to her childhood home in a wheelchair. She hated being alone and became

dependent on the people around her. Although she couldn’t go far from her bed, she still

supported Mexico and helped collect signatures for the Mexican Peace Movement.

As she continued to get worse, Lola Alvarez Bravo put on what most considered her last

exhibition in 1953. Held in her own home, people came from all over Mexico and even from

America to see some of the paintings she had done while restricted to her house. The guests

stayed with her all night, crowding around her bed and celebrating her.

Two months later, Kahlo’s doctors decided the bottom of her right leg needed to be

amputated. Many, including Rivera, believed she was going to die during the surgery. She

survived but her spirit had passed on. She no longer spoke of the pleasures of life and she no

longer painted her beautiful expressional pieces. Her last picture was a still life of some

watermelons that she signed and wrote “Long Live Life” on. Frida Kahlo then passed away in

her childhood home on July 13th, 1954 at 47 years old. Her body was wrapped in flowers and

ribbons as people from everywhere came to give their respects before she was buried.

Rivera felt as though he had died right beside her. He claimed he felt empty and should

have appreciated her more while she was alive and able to love him. Three years later, he died,
leaving his last painting of a group of ​watermelons​ still life behind to commemorate the love of

his life.

Kahlo left behind more than her art and her legacy. She left behind an emotion that

nobody else could describe. A feeling that nobody else could recreate. She gave the world a view

of pain beyond belief but wholehearted love and affection throughout all the sorrow. Kahlo is

someone to be looked upon with pride and awe, as she did things not many artists could recreate.

She has definitely left her impact on Mexico, America, and all of Earth, one that is believed to

stay around for the rest of time.