Frida Kahlo

Frida Kahlo, a light skin woman with thick eyebrows and dark hair pulled back. She stares into the camera.

“I never paint dreams or nightmares. I paint my own reality.”
– Frida Kahlo

Frida Kahlo's life seems best encompassed by three themes: her art, her politics, and her love. To explore these themes properly, however, we must look at where she came from. Frida herself states that she was born in La Casa Azul, just outside of Mexico City. Her parents were Matilde Calderon y Gonzalez and Guillermo Kahlo. Guillermo was a photographer who had spent part of his life in Germany but emigrated to Mexico due to Jewish ancestry.

Her childhood was spent dealing with the consequences of a bout of polio, which caused damage to one of Frida’s legs. This lent to Frida’s intense and life-long battle with pain, in addition to the bus accident that damaged the lower half of her body.

It was after her bus accident in 1925 that Frida began to focus on her artwork. Her first recorded painting is one entitled Self Portrait in a Velvet Dress, painted in 1926. This portrait places the artist against a background of waves and is said to be based on Italian Renaissance paintings that came before it. Frida continued to paint self-portraits throughout her life, most notably A Few Small Nips, Self-Portrait With a Monkey, and The Broken Column.

Frida used both A Few Small Nips and The Broken Column to display the intense pain she endured throughout her life. When her reproductive organs were damaged courtesy of her bus accident, she could not carry a child and endured many miscarriages throughout her life. A Few Small Nips displays her anguish after the loss of one of her children. The Broken Column, in turn, displays her frustration with her spine. Though she underwent many surgeries throughout her life, none seemed to lessen her pain. This portrait is a genuine expression of the aids Frida used throughout her life.

Frida also used her to discuss her politics—as did her husband, Diego Rivera. Rivera defined himself as a communist and caused a stir in the United States when he painted his Man at a Crossroads on the wall of the Rockefeller Center, displaying Vladimir Lenin at a Soviet May Day Parade. In her youth, Frida joined an intellectual group called Los Cachuchas and eventually associating herself with socialism. She would later identify herself as a communist, eventually housing Leon Trotsky in her house when he was expelled from Soviet Russia. The painting Marxism Will Give Health to the Sick was painted in 1954 and is possibly Frida’s most obvious artistic statement of her political opinions. The painting is once again a self-portrait, but Marx's figure is pictured above Frida’s head. To her left is a globe that is covered by the wings of a dove. Not only does this painting display Marx as an arguably deified figure, but it implies that Marxism will provide health for the sick and peace for the world.

If this does not paint a controversial enough picture, the curious can direct themselves to Frida’s love life. There are numerous sources which only mention the male lovers that Frida took during her life—unfortunate, but not surprising. Those sources that mention Frida’s female lovers are far more satisfying to read and are arguably truer to Frida’s person.

Diego Rivera was not a man who confined himself to monogamy either. In several interesting twists of fate, however, the women whom Rivera bedded often found their way to Frida's bed as well. According to Kathy Belge, Frida’s lovers included Dolores del Rio, Paulette Goddard, and Maria Felix. Readers and listeners of Making Queer History also know that Frida and Josephine Baker had an affair. It's been suggested that Frida and Georgia O’Keefe spent time getting to know one another—not just exchanging artistic advice, of course. The painting Two Nudes in a Forest, painted in 1939, depicts two women lying close to one another in a forest. This, Belge suggests, was one artistic way in which Frida expressed her love of women.

Frida was free with her love, of course, giving it to both men and women. There are quotes in the 2002 movie Frida, which implies a thematic distaste and distrust for marriage within Frida and within her society; however, it’s unclear whether or not these quotes are the work of fact fiction. It is clear, though, that Frida found her love unconfined by marriage or gender.

Frida Kahlo’s legacy can be grandiose or small, depending on who is telling the story. She can be reduced to the wife of Diego Rivera or exalted as a goddess of art and love. Whichever the case, it is worth looking into her story to know more about her as a person and not a product of one or two extremes.

It is said that Frida ended her life in La Casa Azul, effectively bookending herself in her home near Mexico City. While this may be a work of fancy, it is worth noting Frida’s quest to understand her own identity. Her numerous self-portraits, her willingness to explore her attraction, and her unwavering determination in the face of politics and years of pain exhibit a woman who, small or large, endured all that the world thrust upon her and then some. Why, if this is the case, should anyone try and reduce her?

[Disclaimer: some of the sources may contain triggering material]

Belge, K. Bisexual Painter Frida Kahlo. ThoughtCo. Retrieved from thoughtco.com/bisexual-painter-frida-kahlo-2170989

Herrera, H. (2003). Kahlo (y Calderón), (Magdalena Carmen) Frida. The Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (5th ed.). doi.org/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.T045455

Oles, J. (2013, July 18). At the Café de los Cachuchas: Frida Kahlo in the 1920s. Hispanic Research Journal, 8(5). https://doi.org/10.1179/174582007X24531