translated from Spanish: Today, Frida Kahlo would turn 113: a review of her life

This July 6th the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo would be 113 years old and, almost 66 years after her departure, we took the opportunity to review her life and work. Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo Calderón was born in Coyoacán on July 6, 1907. She was the third daughter of photographer Guillermo Kahlo, a German immigrant who was nationalized mexican and Matilde Calderón, Mexico. Throughout his life he went on to create 150 works, mainly self-portraits, in which he reflected his life and sufferings.

As a child she began to develop diseases: as early as 1913 she contracted polyomelitis, which led to other conditions, various injuries, accidents and operations. After staying in bed for 9 months he was left with a permanent sequel: the right leg much thinner than the left. But it was an accident that changed his life in 1925: when he returned from school, the bus he was travelling on was hit by a tram and ended up crushed against a wall. In the sinister he fractured his spine, two ribs, collarbone, pelvic bone and his right leg, among other things. Frida went on to undergo 32 operations due to this accident. Prior to this fact he had never shown any special interest in painting, but due to the time he had to stay in bed, he ended up becoming a central part of his life. In September 1926 she painted her first self-portrait in oil that she dedicated to Alejandro Gómez Arias, her boyfriend at the time.

One of his self-portraits

In 1927 his painting became more complex. It was a time when he began to frequent political, artistic and intellectual spaces. In this area frida met the Italian photographer Tina Modotti, who brought her to know the meetings of the Communist Party of Mexico and through whom she met Diego Rivera, an activist of the Party since 1922.La artist married him in 1929: both maintained a relationship of love-hate, infidelities and constant exchange of art. In 1931 they decided to move to the United States (New York and Detroit were the cities they frequented the most) because with Plutarco Elijah Streets in power, the thing for left-wing militants was not easy. By 1933 they managed to return to Mexico.Another of the highlights of Frida’s life was the time he had as a refugee in his home the revolutionary Leon Trotsky (between 1937 and 1939), with whom he would also maintain an affair.

1939 was the year he went on to exhibit his works in Paris; also the one who divorced Rivera although in 1940 they would remarry. He began his time of greatest artistic recognition, especially in the United States: there he participated in collective exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston and at the Museum of Art of Philadelphia.Only in 1953 in Mexico City the only solo exhibition in his country was organized during the artist’s life. Having been hospitalized for a whole year during 1950, her health was no longer the same: although doctors advised her not to attend the event, she arrived in an ambulance and witnessed her on a stretcher.

Frida’s last painting.

But things didn’t work out: that year they had to amputate his leg below his knee due to a gangrene infection. Plunged into depression, Frida began to have suicidal ideas, about which she wrote in her diary. He died in Coyoacán on July 13, 1954. His last painting was an oil on Masonite in which he painted several watermelon cuts in bright colors. In one of them, the phrase “Long live life” is read.

Original source in Spanish