Who is Frida Kahlo? Frida Kahlo Kahlo, Frida

Story Frida Kahlo- these are 2 big tragedies, 33 operations and 145 paintings.

Today, some people buy the works of the legendary artist for record amounts of money, while others criticize them for being too cruel. AiF.ru tells who she is - the most famous Mexican artist.

Frida Kahlo is working on the painting “The Two Fridas”. Photo: www.globallookpress.com

Rebel

As a child, the legendary artist was given the nickname “Frida the Wooden Leg” by her peers; after suffering from polio at the age of 6, she was forever left lame. But the obvious physical disability only strengthened the girl’s character: Frida practiced boxing, swam a lot, played football, and easily entered a prestigious school in Mexico to study medicine.

At the Preparatory (National Preparatory School), lame Frida was one of 35 girls who received an education along with thousands of boys. But not only in this respect, Frida was not like typical Mexican girls: she always preferred to spend time in male company (which was courage in those days), smoked a lot and positioned herself as an open bisexual.

"Little doe."

Martyr

The most terrible tragedy happened in Frida’s life when she was barely 18 years old. The girl was injured in a brutal accident: the bus on which the future celebrity was traveling collided with a tram. The result was a leg broken in eleven places, a triple fracture of the pelvis, a dislocation of the left shoulder, a fracture of the femoral neck and a triple fracture of the spine in the lumbar region. Thirty-two operations and two years of immobility in a plaster corset, but the worst thing was that Frida learned that now she would never be able to have children.

Just a couple of months after the accident, Frida wrote: “One good thing: I am beginning to get used to suffering.” Until the end of her days, the famous Mexican woman did not get rid of the excruciating pain that she tried to drown out with drugs and alcohol. And shortly before her death, which occurred only at the age of 47, she left a note: “I am cheerfully waiting to leave and hope never to return.”

"Broken Column"

Artist

Most of Frida's paintings are self-portraits, in which she never smiles - and this is not an accident. Bedridden girl persuaded her father photographer Guillermo Calo screw a special easel to the bed so you can draw while lying down, and nail a mirror to the wall opposite. For many months, Frida's world shrank to one room, and she herself became the main subject of study.

"Mirror! The executioner of my days, my nights... It studied my face, the slightest movements, the folds of the sheet, the outlines of bright objects that surrounded me. For hours I felt it on me gaze. I saw myself. Frida from the inside, Frida from the outside, Frida everywhere, Frida without end... And suddenly, under the power of this all-powerful mirror, an insane desire came to me to draw...,” the artist recalled.

Shocking and instilling confidence in the almost limitless potential of man, Frida surprised her contemporaries. She was never afraid to expose her pain, suffering or horror, and almost always framed her self-portraits with national symbols.

"Thinking about death."

Wife

“There have been two tragedies in my life,” said Frida. “The first is the tram, the second is Diego.”

In the illustrious artist Diego Rivera Frida fell in love at school, which seriously frightened her family: he was twice as old and was known as a notorious womanizer. However, no one could stop the determined girl: at the age of 22 she became the wife of a 43-year-old Mexican man.

The marriage of Diego and Frida was jokingly called the union of an elephant and a dove (the famous artist was much taller and fatter than his wife). Diego was teased as the “toad prince,” but no woman could resist his charm. Frida knew about numerous love affairs husband, but only one of them she could not forgive. When, after ten years of so-called married life, Diego cheated on Frida with her younger sister Christina, she demanded a divorce.

Just a year later, Diego proposed to Frida again, and the still loving artist set the conditions: marriage without intimacy, living in different parts of the house, financial independence from each other. Their family was never exemplary; the only thing that could correct the situation was not given to them - Frida became pregnant three times and suffered miscarriages three times.

"Frida and Diego"

Communist

Frida was a communist. She joined the Mexican Communist Party back in 1928, and a year later left it following the expulsion of Diego. Ten years later, still remaining true to her ideological convictions, the artist re-entered its ranks.

In the couple's house, the bookshelves were filled with volumes that had been read to holes. Marx, Lenin, works Stalin and journalism Grossman about the Great Patriotic War. Frida even had a short affair with a Soviet revolutionary figure Leon Trotsky, who found refuge with Mexican artists. And shortly before her death, the communist began working on a portrait of the leader Soviet people, which remained unfinished.

"Frida in front of Stalin's portrait."

“Sometimes I ask myself: weren’t my paintings more likely to be works of literature than of painting? It was something like a diary, correspondence that I kept all my life... My work is the most full biography, which I was able to write,” Frida left this entry in her famous diary, which she kept for the last ten years of her life.

After the artist's death, the diary came into the possession of the Mexican government and was kept under lock and key until 1995.

Legend

Frida's work became popular during her lifetime. In New York in 1938, the first exhibition of the outrageous artist’s works was held with stunning success, but in her homeland the first exhibition of Frida’s paintings took place only in 1953. By this time, the famous Mexican woman could no longer move independently, so she was carried into the vernissage on a stretcher and laid in a pre-prepared bed in the center of the hall. Shortly before the exhibition, part of his right leg had to be amputated due to gangrene: “What are my legs when I have wings behind my back!” Frida wrote in her diary.

The brilliant Mexican artist Frida Kahlo was often called a female alter ego. Critics classified the author of the work “Wounded Deer” as a surrealist, but throughout her life she disowned this “stigma”, declaring that the basis of her work is not ephemeral allusions and a paradoxical combination of forms, and the pain of loss, disappointment and betrayal, passed through the prism of personal worldview.

Childhood and youth

Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo Calderon was born three years before the Mexican Revolution, on July 6, 1907, in the settlement of Coyoacan (a suburb of Mexico City). The artist's mother Matilda Calderon was an unemployed fanatical Catholic who kept her husband and children strictly, and her father Guillermo Calo, who idolized creativity and worked as a photographer.

At the age of 6, Frida suffered from polio, as a result of which her right leg became several centimeters thinner than her left. Constant ridicule from her peers (in her childhood she had the nickname “wooden leg”) only strengthened Magdalena’s character. To spite everyone, the girl, who was not used to being depressed, overcame pain, played football with the guys, went swimming and boxing classes. Kahlo also knew how to competently disguise her flaw. Long skirts, men's suits and stockings worn on top of each other helped her in this.

It is noteworthy that in her childhood Frida dreamed not of becoming an artist, but of becoming a doctor. At the age of 15, she even entered the National Preparatory School “Preparation”, where the young talent studied medicine for a couple of years. Lame-footed Frida was one of 35 girls who received an education along with thousands of boys.

In September 1925, an event occurred that turned Magdalena’s life upside down: the bus on which 17-year-old Kahlo was returning home collided with a tram. The metal railing pierced the girl’s stomach, pierced the uterus and came out in the groin area, the spine was broken in three places, and even three stockings could not save the leg, crippled by a childhood illness (the limb was broken in eleven places).

Frida Kahlo (right) with her sisters

The young lady lay unconscious in the hospital for three weeks. Despite the doctors' statements that the injuries received were incompatible with life, the father, unlike his wife, who never came to the hospital, did not leave his daughter a single step. Looking at Frida’s motionless body wrapped in a plaster corset, the man considered her every breath and exhalation a victory.

Contrary to the predictions of medical luminaries, Kahlo woke up. After returning from the other world, Magdalena felt an incredible craving for painting. The father made a special stretcher for his beloved child, which allowed him to create while lying down, and also attached a large mirror under the canopy of the bed so that his daughter could see herself and the space around her while creating works.

A year later, Frida made her first pencil sketch, “Crash,” in which she briefly sketched the disaster that crippled her physically and mentally. Having firmly found her feet, Kahlo entered the National Institute of Mexico in 1929, and in 1928 became a member communist party. At that time, her love for art reached its apogee: Magdalena sat at an easel in an art studio during the day, and in the evenings, dressed in an exotic outfit that hid her injuries, she went to parties.

Graceful, sophisticated Frida certainly held a glass of wine and a cigar in her hands. The obscene witticisms of the extravagant woman made guests of social events laugh non-stop. The contrast between the image of an impulsive, cheerful person and the paintings of that period imbued with a sense of hopelessness is striking. According to Frida herself, behind the chic of beautiful clothes and the gloss of pretentious phrases hid her crippled soul, which she showed to the world only on canvas.

Painting

Frida Kahlo became famous for her colorful self-portraits (70 paintings in total), distinctive feature which was a fused eyebrow and lack of a smile on the face. The artist often framed her figure with national symbols (“Self-portrait on the border between Mexico and the USA”, “Self-portrait as Tehuana”), which she was extremely knowledgeable about.

In her works, the artist was not afraid to expose both her own (“Without hope”, “My birth”, “Just a few scratches!”) and the suffering of others. In 1939, a fan of Kahlo’s work asked her to pay tribute to the memory of their mutual friend, actress Dorothy Hale (the girl committed suicide by jumping out of a window). Frida painted The Suicide of Dorothy Hale. The customer was horrified: instead of a beautiful portrait, a consolation for her family, Magdalena depicted a scene of a fall and a lifeless body bleeding.

The work entitled “Two Fridas,” which the artist wrote after a short break with Diego, is also worthy of attention. Kahlo’s inner self is presented in the painting in two guises: Mexican Frida, whom Rivera madly loved, and European Frida, whom her lover rejected. The pain of loss is expressed through the image of a bleeding artery connecting the hearts of two ladies.

World fame came to Kahlo when the first exhibition of her works took place in New York in 1938. However, the artist’s rapidly deteriorating health also affected her work. The more often Frida lay on the operating table, the darker her paintings became (“Thinking of Death”, “Mask of Death”). In the post-operative periods, canvases were created, replete with echoes of biblical stories - “The Broken Column” and “Moses, or the Core of Creation.”

By the opening of an exhibition of her work in Mexico in 1953, Kahlo could no longer move independently. The day before the presentation, all the paintings were hung, and the beautifully decorated bed where Magdalena lay down became a full-fledged part of the exhibition. A week before her death, the artist painted the still life “Long Live Life,” which reflected her attitude towards death.

Kahlo's paintings had a huge influence on modern painting. One of the exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago was dedicated to Magdalena's influence on the art world and included works by contemporary artists for whom Frida became a source of inspiration and role model. The exhibition was titled “Footloose: Contemporary Art after Frida Kahlo.”

Personal life

While still a student, Kahlo met her future husband, Mexican artist Diego Rivera. In 1929, their paths crossed again. The following year, the 22-year-old girl became legal wife 43-year-old painter. Contemporaries jokingly called the marriage of Diego and Frida the union of an elephant and a dove (the famous artist was much taller and fatter than his wife). The man was teased as a “toad prince,” but no woman could resist his charm.

Magdalena knew about her husband's infidelity. In 1937, the artist herself began an affair with, whom she affectionately called “the goat” because of gray hair and beards. The fact is that the couple were zealous communists and, out of the kindness of their hearts, sheltered a revolutionary who had fled from Russia. It's all over loud scandal, after which Trotsky hastily left their house. Kahlo was also credited with an affair with a famous poet.

Without exception, all Frida's amorous stories are shrouded in mystery. Among the artist's alleged lovers was singer Chavela Vargas. The reason for the gossip was candid photographs of girls in which Frida, dressed in men's suit, drowned in the artist’s arms. However, Diego, who openly cheated on his wife, did not pay attention to her hobbies for representatives of the weaker half of humanity. Such connections seemed frivolous to him.

Despite the fact that the married life of the two stars visual arts was not exemplary, Kahlo never stopped dreaming of children. True, due to injuries, the woman was never able to experience the happiness of motherhood. Frida tried again and again, but all three pregnancies ended in miscarriage. After another loss of a child, she took up a brush and began to paint children (“Henry Ford Hospital”), mostly dead ones - this is how the artist tried to come to terms with her tragedy.

Death

Kahlo died a week after celebrating her 47th birthday (July 13, 1954). The cause of the artist's death was pneumonia. At Frida's funeral, which took place with all pomp at the Palace of Fine Arts, in addition to Diego Rivera, there were painters, writers and even ex-president Mexico Lazaro Cardenas. The body of the author of the painting “What the Water Gave Me” was cremated, and the urn with the ashes remains to this day in the Frida Kahlo House Museum. Last words in her diary were:

“I hope that leaving will be successful and I will not return again.”

In 2002, Hollywood director Julia Taymor presented the autobiographical film “Frida” to film lovers, the plot of which was based on the story of the life and death of the great artist. The role of Kahlo was played by an Oscar winner, theater and film actress.

Literary writers Hayden Herrera, Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio and Andrea Kettenmann have also written books about the fine art star.

Works

"My Birth"
"Mask of Death"
"Fruits of the Earth"
“What did the water give me?”
"Dream"
“Self-Portrait” (“Diego in Thoughts”)
"Moses" ("Core of Creation")
"Little Doe"
"Embrace of Universal Love, Earth, Me, Diego and Coatl"
"Self-portrait with Stalin"
"Without hope"
"Nurse and Me"
"Memory"
"Henry Ford Hospital"
"Double Portrait"

Attempts to tell about this extraordinary woman have been made more than once - voluminous novels, multi-page studies have been written about her, opera and dramatic performances have been staged, feature films and documentaries have been made. But no one managed to unravel and, most importantly, reflect the mystery of her magical attractiveness and amazingly sensual femininity. This post is also one of such attempts, illustrated quite rare photographs great Frida!

FRIDA KALO

Frida Kahlo was born in Mexico City in 1907. She is the third daughter of Gulermo and Matilda Kahlo. Father is a photographer, Jewish by origin, originally from Germany. Mother is Spanish, born in America. Frida Kahlo contracted polio at the age of 6, which left her with a limp. “Frida has a wooden leg,” her peers cruelly teased her. And she, in defiance of everyone, swam, played football with the boys and even took up boxing.

Two-year-old Frida 1909. The picture was taken by her father!

Little Frida 1911.

Yellowed photographs are like milestones of fate. The unknown photographer who “clicked” Diego and Frida on May 1, 1924, hardly thought that his photograph would become the first line of their general biography. He captured Diego Rivera, already famous for his powerful “popular” frescoes and freedom-loving views, at the head of a column of the union of revolutionary artists, sculptures and graphic artists in front of the National Palace in Mexico City.

Next to the huge Rivera, little Frida with a determined face and bravely raised fists looks like a fragile girl.

Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo at the May Day demonstration in 1929 (photo by Tina Modotti)

On that May day, Diego and Frida, united by common ideals, stepped into future life- to never be separated. Despite the enormous trials that fate threw at them every now and then.

In 1925, an eighteen-year-old girl was struck new blow fate. On September 17, at an intersection near the San Juan market, a tram crashed into the bus in which Frida was traveling. One of the iron fragments of the carriage pierced Frida right through at the level of the pelvis and exited through the vagina. “That’s how I lost my virginity,” she said. After the accident, she was told that she was found completely naked - all her clothes were torn off. Someone on the bus was carrying a bag of dry gold paint. It tore, and golden powder covered Frida's bloody body. And from this golden body protruded a piece of iron.

Her spine was broken in three places, her collarbones, ribs, and pelvic bones were broken. The right leg is broken in eleven places, the foot is crushed. For a whole month, Frida lay on her back, encased in plaster from head to toe. “A miracle saved me,” she told Diego. “Because at night in the hospital death danced around my bed.”

For another two years she was wrapped in a special orthopedic corset. The first entry she managed to make in her diary: “ Good: I'm starting to get used to suffering.". In order not to go crazy from pain and melancholy, the girl decided to draw. Her parents put together a special stretcher for her so that she could draw while lying down, and attached a mirror to it so that she would have someone to draw. Frida could not move. Drawing fascinated her so much that one day she confessed to her mother: “I have something to live for. For the sake of painting."

Frida Kahlo in a men's suit. We are used to seeing Frida in Mexican blouses and colorful skirts, but she also loved to wear men's clothing. Bisexuality from her youth encouraged Frida to dress up in men's costumes.

Frida in a man's suit (center) with sisters Adriana and Cristina, as well as cousins Carmen and Carlos Verasa, 1926.

Frida Kahlo and Chavela Vargas with whom Frida had a connection and quite a non-spiritual one, 1945

After the artist’s death, more than 800 photographs remained, and some of them show Frida naked! She really enjoyed posing nude, and being photographed in general, the daughter of a photographer. Below are nude photos of Frida:

At the age of 22, Frida Kahlo entered the most prestigious institute in Mexico (national preparatory school). Out of 1000 students, only 35 girls were accepted. There Frida Kahlo meets her future husband Diego Rivera, who has just returned home from France.

Every day Diego became more and more attached to this small, fragile girl - so talented, so strong. On August 21, 1929 they got married. She was twenty-two years old, he was forty-two.

Wedding photograph taken on August 12, 1929, in the studio of Reyes de Coyaocan. She sits, he stands (probably in each family album There are similar photographs, only this one shows a woman who survived a terrible car accident. But you can’t guess about it). She is wearing her favorite national Indian dress with a shawl. He is wearing a jacket and tie.

On the wedding day, Diego showed his explosive temper. The 42-year-old newlywed drank a little too much tequila and began firing a pistol into the air. The exhortations only inflamed the wild artist. The first family scandal occurred. The 22-year-old wife went to her parents. After waking up, Diego asked for forgiveness and was forgiven. The newlyweds moved into their first apartment, and then into the now famous “blue house” on Londres Street in Coyaocan, the most “bohemian” area of Mexico City, where they lived for many years.

A romantic aura surrounds Frida’s relationship with Trotsky. The Mexican artist admired the “tribune of the Russian revolution”, was very upset about his expulsion from the USSR and was happy that, thanks to Diego Rivera, he found shelter in Mexico City.

In January 1937, Leon Trotsky and his wife Natalya Sedova went ashore in the Mexican port of Tampico. They were met by Frida - Diego was then in the hospital.

The artist brought the exiles to her “blue house”, where they finally found peace and quiet. Bright, interesting, charming Frida (after a few minutes of communication no one noticed her painful injuries) instantly captivated the guests.
The almost 60-year-old revolutionary was carried away like a boy. He tried in every possible way to express his tenderness. Sometimes he touched her hand as if by chance, sometimes he secretly touched her knee under the table. He wrote passionate notes and, putting them in a book, handed them over right in front of his wife and Rivera. Natalya Sedova guessed about the love affair, but Diego, they say, never found out about it. “I’m very tired of the old man,” Frida allegedly said one day in a circle of close friends and broke off the short romance.

There is another version of this story. The young Trotskyist allegedly could not resist the pressure of the tribune of the revolution. Their secret date took place at the country estate of San Miguel Regla, 130 kilometers from Mexico City. However, Sedova kept a vigilant eye on her husband: the affair was nipped in the bud. Begging his wife for forgiveness, Trotsky called himself “her old faithful dog.” After this, the exiles left the “blue house”.

But these are rumors. There is no evidence of this romantic connection.

ABOUT love affair Frida and the Catalan artist Jose Bartley are known a little more:

“I don't know how to write love letters. But I want to say that my whole being is open to you. Since I fell in love with you, everything has been mixed up and filled with beauty... love is like a scent, like a current, like rain.”, wrote Frida Kahlo in 1946 in her address to Bartoli, who moved to New York to escape the horrors of the Spanish Civil War.

Frida Kahlo and Bartoli met while she was recovering from another spinal operation. Returning to Mexico, she left Bartoli, but they secret romance continued at a distance. The correspondence lasted for several years, affecting the artist’s painting, her health and relationship with her husband.

Twenty-five love letters written between August 1946 and November 1949 will be the top lots at Doyle New York auction house. Bartoli kept more than 100 pages of correspondence until his death in 1995, then the correspondence passed into the hands of his family. Bid organizers expect proceeds of up to $120,000.

Even though they lived in different cities and saw each other extremely rarely, the relationship between the artists continued for three years. They exchanged sincere declarations of love, hidden in sensual and poetic works. Frida wrote the double self-portrait “Tree of Hope” after one of her meetings with Bartoli.

“Bartoli - - last night I felt as if many wings were caressing me all over, as if the tips of my fingers became lips that kissed my skin”, Kahlo wrote on August 29, 1946. “The atoms of my body are yours and they vibrate together, that’s how much we love each other. I want to live and be strong, to love you with all the tenderness you deserve, to give you everything that is good in me, so that you don’t feel alone.”

Hayden Herrera, Frida's biographer, notes in her essay for Doyle New York that Kahlo signed her letters to Bartoli "Maara". This is probably a shortened version of the nickname "Maravillosa". And Bartoli wrote to her under the name “Sonia”. This conspiracy was an attempt to avoid Diego Rivera's jealousy.

According to rumors, among other affairs, the artist was in a relationship with Isamu Noguchi and Josephine Baker. Rivera, who endlessly and openly cheated on his wife, turned a blind eye to her entertainment with women, but reacted violently to relationships with men.

Frida Kahlo's letters to José Bartoli have never been published. They reveal new information about one of the most important artists of the 20th century.

Frida Kahlo loved life. This love magnetically attracted men and women to her. Excruciating physical suffering and a damaged spine were constant reminders. But she found the strength to have fun from the heart and enjoy herself widely. From time to time, Frida Kahlo had to go to the hospital and almost constantly wear special corsets. Frida underwent more than thirty operations during her life.

The family life of Frida and Diego was seething with passions. They could not always be together, but never apart. They shared a relationship that, according to one friend, was “passionate, obsessive and sometimes painful.” In 1934, Diego Rivera cheated on Frida with her younger sister Cristina, who posed for him. He did this openly, realizing that he was insulting his wife, but did not want to break off relations with her. The blow for Frida was cruel. A proud woman, she did not want to share her pain with anyone - she just splashed it out on the canvas. The resulting picture is perhaps the most tragic in her work: a naked female body is dissected with bloody wounds. Next to him, with a knife in his hand, with an indifferent face, is the one who inflicted these wounds. "Just a few scratches!" - the ironic Frida called the painting. After Diego's betrayal, she decided that she also has the right to love interests.
This infuriated Rivera. Allowing himself liberties, he was intolerant of Frida’s betrayals. The famous artist was painfully jealous. One day, having caught his wife with the American sculptor Isama Noguchi, Diego pulled out a pistol. Fortunately, he didn't shoot.

At the end of 1939, Frida and Diego officially divorced. “We haven’t stopped loving each other at all. I just wanted to be able to do what I wanted with all the women I liked.", Diego wrote in his autobiography. And Frida admitted in one of her letters: “I can’t express how bad I feel. I love Diego, and the torment of my love will last a lifetime..."

On May 24, 1940, a failed attempt on Trotsky took place. Suspicion also fell on Diego Rivera. Warned by Paulette Goddard, he narrowly escaped arrest and managed to escape to San Francisco. There he painted a large panel on which he depicted Goddard next to Chaplin, and not far from them... Frida in Indian clothes. He suddenly realized that their separation was a mistake.

Frida had a hard time with the divorce and her condition deteriorated sharply. Doctors advised her to go to San Francisco for treatment. Rivera, having learned that Frida was in the same city as him, immediately came to visit her and stated that he was going to marry her again. And she agreed to become his wife again. However, she set conditions: they would not have sexual relations and they would conduct financial affairs separately. Together they will only pay for household expenses. So strange marriage contract. But Diego was so happy to have his Frida back that he willingly signed this document.

Text: Maria Mikhantieva

A Frida Kahlo retrospective is being held in St. Petersburg until the end of April.- a great Mexican artist who became the soul and heart of women's painting throughout the world. It is customary to tell Frida’s life through the story of overcoming physical pain, however, as is usually the case, this is only one aspect of a complex and multifaceted path. Frida Kahlo was not just the wife of the renowned painter Diego Rivera or a symbol of mental and physical strength - all her life the artist wrote, starting from her own internal contradictions, complex relationships with independence and love, talking about the one she knew best - herself.

The biography of Frida Kahlo is more or less known to everyone who watched Julie Taymor's film with Salma Hayek: carefree childhood and youth, terrible accident, an almost accidental passion for painting, meeting the artist Diego Rivera, marriage and the eternal status of “everything is complicated.” Physical pain, mental pain, self-portraits, abortions and miscarriages, communism, romance novels, worldwide fame, slow fading and long-awaited death: “I hope that my departure will be successful and I will not return again,” the sleeping Frida flies into eternity on the bed.

We don’t know whether the departure itself was successful, but for the first twenty years after it it seemed that Frida’s wish had been fulfilled: she was forgotten everywhere except her native Mexico, where a house-museum was opened almost immediately. In the late 1970s, in the wake of interest in women's art and neo-Mexicanism, her works began to appear occasionally at exhibitions. Nevertheless, in 1981, in the dictionary of modern art, The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Art, she was given only one line: “Kahlo, Frida. See Rivera, Diego Maria.”

“There were two accidents in my life: one was when a bus crashed into a tram, the other was Diego,” said Frida. The first accident made her start painting, the second made her an artist. The first one felt physical pain all my life, the second caused mental pain. These two experiences subsequently became the main themes of her paintings. If there really was a car accident fatal accident(Frida was supposed to be on another bus, but got off halfway to look for a forgotten umbrella), the difficult relationship (after all, Diego Rivera was not the only one) was inevitable due to the contradictions of her nature, in which strength and independence were combined with sacrifice and obsession.

"Frida and Diego Rivera", 1931

I had to learn to be strong as a child: first by helping my father survive attacks of epilepsy, and then by coping with the consequences of polio. Frida played football and boxing; at school she was part of a gang of “cachuchas” - hooligans and intellectuals. When management educational institution invited Rivera, then already a recognized master, to do the mural painting, she rubbed soap on the steps of the stairs to see how this man with the face of a toad and the physique of an elephant would slip. She considered girls' company banal, preferred to be friends with boys and dated the most popular and intelligent of them, who was also several grades older.

But having fallen in love, Frida seemed to lose the mind that she so valued in people. She could literally pursue the object of her passion, bombarding her with letters, seducing and manipulating - all in order to then play the role of a faithful companion. This was how her marriage to Diego Rivera was at first. They both cheated, separated and got back together, but, if you believe the memories of friends, Frida more often gave in, trying to preserve the relationship. “She treated him like a beloved dog,” one friend recalled. “He’s with her like he’s with his favorite thing.” Even in the “wedding” portrait of “Frida and Diego Rivera” only one of the two artists is depicted with professional attributes, a palette and brushes - and this is not Frida.

While Diego painted frescoes for days on end, spending the night on scaffolding, she brought him lunch baskets, took care of bills, saved on much-needed medical procedures (Diego spent a lot of money on his collection of pre-Columbian statues), listened attentively and accompanied him to exhibitions. Under the influence of her husband, her paintings also changed: if Frida painted her very first portraits, imitating Renaissance artists from art albums, then thanks to Diego, the national traditions of Mexico glorified by the revolution penetrated into them: the naivety of the retablo, Indian motifs and the aesthetics of Mexican Catholicism with its theatricalization of suffering, combining image of bleeding wounds with a splendor of flowers, lace and ribbons.

"Alejandro Gomez Arias", 1928

To please her husband, she even changed her jeans and leather jackets to full skirts and became a “tehuana.” This image was completely devoid of any authenticity, since Frida combined clothes and accessories from different social groups and eras, she could wear an Indian skirt with a Creole blouse and earrings by Picasso. In the end, her ingenuity turned this masquerade into a separate form of art: after starting to dress for her husband, she continued to create unique images for her own pleasure. In her diary, Frida noted that the costume is also a self-portrait; her dresses became characters in paintings, and now accompany them at exhibitions. If the paintings were a reflection of the inner storm, then the costumes became its armor. It is no coincidence that a year after the divorce, “Self-portrait with cropped hair” appeared, in which a men’s suit took the place of skirts and ribbons - Frida once posed in something similar for a family portrait long before meeting Diego.

The first serious attempt to get out of the influence of her husband was the decision to give birth. Natural childbirth was impossible, but there was still hope for C-section. Frida was rushing about. On the one hand, she passionately wanted to continue the family line, to extend further that red ribbon, which she would later depict in the painting “My Grandparents, My Parents and Me,” to get “little Diego” at her disposal. On the other hand, Frida understood that the birth of a child would tie her to home, interfere with her work and alienate her from Rivera, who was categorically against children. In her first letters to family friend Dr. Leo Eloisseur, pregnant Frida asks which option would cause less harm to her health, but without waiting for an answer, she decides to continue the pregnancy and does not back down. Paradoxically, the choice that is usually imposed on a woman “by default”, in Frida’s case, becomes a rebellion against her husband’s guardianship.

Unfortunately, the pregnancy ended in miscarriage. Instead of “little Diego”, “Henry Ford Hospital” was born - one of the saddest works, which began a series of “bloody” paintings. Perhaps this was the first time in the history of art when an artist spoke with extreme, almost physiological honesty about women’s pain, so much so that men’s legs gave way. Four years later, the organizer of her Paris exhibition, Pierre Collet, did not even immediately decide to exhibit these paintings, considering them too shocking.

Finally, that part of a woman’s life that had always been bashfully hidden from prying eyes was revealed
in a work of art

Misfortunes haunted Frida: after the death of her child, she experienced the death of her mother, and one can only guess what a blow Diego’s next affair was for her, this time with her younger sister. She, however, blamed herself and was ready to forgive, just not to become a “hysterical” - her thoughts on this matter are painfully similar to the age-old thesis that “”. But in the case of Frida, humility and the ability to endure went hand in hand with black humor and irony.

Feeling her inferiority, the insignificance of her feelings compared to men’s, she brought this experience to the point of absurdity in the film “A Few Small Pricks”. “I just poked her a few times,” said a man who stabbed his girlfriend to death in court. Having learned about this story from the newspapers, Frida wrote a work full of sarcasm, literally drenched in blood (spots of red paint “splashed out” even onto the frame). A calm killer stands above the bloody body of a woman (his hat is a hint of Diego), and above, like a mockery, floats the name written on a ribbon held by doves, so similar to a wedding decoration.

Among Rivera's fans, there is an opinion that Frida's paintings are “salon painting.” Perhaps, at first, Frida herself would have agreed with this. She was always critical of her own work, did not seek to make friends with gallerists and dealers, and when someone bought her paintings, she often complained that the money could have been spent more profitably. There was some coquetry in this, but, frankly speaking, it is difficult to feel confident when your husband is a recognized master who works all day long, and you are a self-taught person who can hardly find time for painting between housework and medical operations. “The works of the aspiring artist are definitely significant and threaten even her crowned laurels famous husband", was written in the press release for Frida's first New York exhibition (1938); “little Frida” - that’s what the author of the TIME publication called her. By that time, the “beginner” “little one” had been writing for nine years.

"Roots", 1943

But the lack of high expectations gave complete freedom. “I write myself because I spend a lot of time alone and because I am the topic that I know best,” Frida said, and in addressing this “topic” there was not only subjectivity, but also subjectivity. The women who posed for Diego turned into nameless allegories in his frescoes; Frida has always been the main character. This position was strengthened by doubling the portraits: she often painted herself simultaneously in different images and hypostases. The large canvas “Two Fridas” was created during the divorce proceedings; on it, Frida wrote herself “beloved” (on the right, in a Tehuan costume) and “unloved” (in a Victorian dress, bleeding), as if declaring that she was now her own “other half.” In the painting "My Birth", created shortly after her first miscarriage, she depicts herself as a newborn, but obviously also associates with the figure of the mother, whose face is hidden.

The New York exhibition mentioned above helped Frida become freer. For the first time, she felt independent: she went to New York alone, met people, received orders for portraits and started affairs, not because her husband was too busy, but because she liked it that way. The exhibition was generally received favorably. Of course, there were critics who said that Frida’s paintings were too “gynecological,” but this was rather a compliment: finally, that part of a woman’s life, which theorists of “female destiny” had been talking about for centuries, but which was always bashfully hidden from prying eyes, was revealed in a work of art.

The New York exhibition was followed by a Paris exhibition, organized with the direct participation of Andre Breton, who considered Frida a prominent surrealist. She agreed to the exhibition, but carefully rejected surrealism. There are many symbols on Frida’s canvases, but there are no hints: everything is obvious, like an illustration from an anatomical atlas, and at the same time flavored with excellent humor. The dreaminess and decadence inherent in the surrealists irritated her; their nightmares and Freudian projections seemed like childish babble compared to what she experienced in reality: “Ever since [the accident], I have been obsessed with the idea of depicting things as my eyes see them, and nothing more". “She has no illusions,” Rivera chimed in.

roots, stems and fruits, and in the diary entries the refrain is “Diego is my child.”

It became impossible to be a mother to my husband after a series of spinal surgeries and amputations: first, a couple of fingers on right leg, then - the entire lower leg. Frida habitually endured the pain, but was afraid of losing her mobility. Nevertheless, she was brave: when preparing for the operation, she put on one of the best dresses, and for the prosthesis she ordered a red leather boot with embroidery. Despite serious condition, an addiction to narcotic painkillers and mood swings, was preparing for the 25th anniversary of her first wedding and even persuaded Diego to take her to a communist demonstration. Continuing to work with all her strength, at some point she thought about making her paintings more politicized, which seemed unthinkable after so many years spent depicting personal experiences. Perhaps, if Frida had survived the illness, we would have gotten to know her from a new, unexpected side. But pneumonia, caught at that very demonstration, ended the artist’s life on July 13, 1954.

“For twelve years of work, everything was excluded that did not come from the inner lyrical motivation that made me write,” Frida explained in an application for a Guggenheim Foundation grant in 1940, “Because my themes were always my own feelings, the state of my mind and responses to what life put into me, I often embodied all this in the image of myself, which was the most sincere and real, so I could express everything that was happening in me and in the outside world.”

"My Birth", 1932

She is credited with having affairs with Trotsky and Mayakovsky, she is ugly, vulgar, and can rightfully be considered one of the most fatal women of the 20th century. But the work of Frida Kahlo, which everyone knows today, is nothing more than an endless dialogue with her husband, only love, monstrous pain - Diego Rivera.

“For me, living means rejoicing, and I don’t know how to rejoice alone. I need everyone around me to be happy. All my people. All the people on earth"- Rivera.

It was odd love. Strange for ordinary people. Even outwardly they were so different - the huge, massive Rivera, full of vitality, and the small, thin Frida, as if woven from excruciating pain. “The Dove and the Elephant,” they said about them, but this couple was least interested in what was said about them. Their violent passions, betrayals, and jealousy became the subject of novels. There was probably no other pair of talented people in the world who, even when they could no longer live together, could not exist without each other.

“There have only been two disasters in my life - the tram and Diego” - Frida Kahlo.

She was born in 1907 in Mexico, suffered a serious illness in childhood, as a result of which she was left with a lifelong limp, and eighteen years later she was in a terrible accident that turned the artist’s whole life upside down. On September 17, 1925, in Mexico City, at an intersection near the San Juan market, a tram crashed into the bus in which Frida was traveling. One of the iron fragments of the carriage pierced Frida right through at the level of the pelvis and exited through the vagina.

"That's how I lost my virginity" “,” she said later, clutching an eternal cigarette in her teeth.

Two years after the collision between the tram and the bus in which Frida was, Kahlo spent in bed without the slightest hope of ever getting back on her feet - a serious spinal injury left the girl no chance. To forget about the endless pain and melancholy, Frida took up her brushes and paints. It was then that her passion for self-portraits arose. It happened by the only reason– the artist had no opportunity to go outside to see anything other than herself. Lying in bed and looking into a mirror specially installed near the pillow, she recreated her face over and over again. One day, the work of the young self-taught artist was seen by a fairly famous communist artist, Diego Rivera. Frida's canvases captivated the eminent master. From that moment on, the fate of the Mexican woman was predetermined - Diego would become eternal companion Frida until her death, and probably for many centuries after. Ironically, Rivera, who once revealed Frida Kahlo to the world, is now practically forgotten, but Frida’s fame lives on and seems to be growing every year.

“I tried to drown my sorrows, but these bastards learned to swim.” - Frida Kahlo.

Frida's future husband, Diego Rivera, was in his own way similar to his beloved woman in the striking difference between his external appearance and the depth and breadth of his personality. Huge in stature, completely awkward, with protruding different sides hair, but unusually infectious in his charm and sensuality. By the time he met Kahlo, Diego was already known as a muralist. He received private commissions for his work and carried out public contracts from the Mexican government.

Besides successful career in the field of art, Rivera was a member of the Communist Party since 1922, visited several times Soviet Union and was an ardent supporter of the ideas of communism. His personality level is political sphere so noticeable that his social circle includes venerable contemporaries, such as, for example, Vladimir Mayakovsky, who visited his house more than once.

“This girl is an artist from birth, unusually sensitive and capable of observation.” - Rivera.

Two years after the collision between the tram and the bus in which Frida was, Kahlo spent in bed without the slightest hope of ever getting back on her feet - a serious spinal injury left the girl no chance. To forget about the endless pain and melancholy, Frida took up her brushes and paints. It was then that her passion for self-portraits arose. This happened for the only reason - the artist had no opportunity to go outside to see anything other than herself. Lying in bed and looking into a mirror specially installed near the pillow, she recreated her face over and over again. One day, the work of the young self-taught artist was seen by a fairly famous communist artist, Diego Rivera. Frida's canvases captivated the eminent master. From that moment on, the fate of the Mexican woman was sealed - Diego would become Frida's eternal companion until her death, and probably for many centuries after. Ironically, Rivera, who once revealed Frida Kahlo to the world, is now practically forgotten, but Frida’s fame lives on and seems to be growing every year. Despite the disappointing diagnosis, Kahlo still stood on her feet, which now, in addition to her limp, were “decorated” by numerous scars - it would seem, who would look at such a beauty? But Diego, far from Apollo himself, saw in Frida something other than earthly traits. In 1929, Frida and Diego got married.

Frida did not come to the wedding dressed up, as if she was proud of her unattractive appearance. Her only decoration was a flower carelessly stuck in her hair. Then, on the first day of family life, Diego showed his far from angelic character. The 42-year-old newlywed, having had too much alcohol, suddenly grabbed a pistol and began firing it into the air. The exhortations only inflamed the wild artist. The first family scandal occurred. Frida went to her parents. True, then the lovers finally reunited. The newlyweds moved to their first apartment, and then to the Blue House, which later became the Frida Kahlo Museum, on Londres Street in Coyaocan, the most bohemian district of Mexico City, where they lived for many years.

“I paint self-portraits because I am alone so often, and also because I am the person I know best.”- Frida Kahlo.

Rivera, despite the impressive age difference, to family values was more than indifferent - he happily walked to the left, changing lovers like gloves. Frida did not lag behind him - her love stories significantly inferior to Rivera in quantity, but superior in quality: during her short life, Kahlo managed to charm Trotsky and begin an affair with the Spanish artist Jose Bartoli.

Frida Kahlo and Bartoli met in Spain when she was recovering from another spinal operation. Returning to Mexico, she broke off the physical relationship with Bartoli, but their secret romance continued at a distance. The correspondence lasted for several years, affecting the artist’s painting, her health and relationship with her husband. More recently, more than 100 pages of love correspondence were sold at auction in New York for fabulous money - Frida's admirers valued the letters at 137 thousand dollars.

“I don't know how to write love letters. But I want to say that my whole being is open to you. Since I fell in love with you, everything has been mixed up and filled with beauty... love is like a scent, like a current, like rain.”, wrote Frida Kahlo in 1946 in her address to Bartoli.

To this day, Frida is credited with another novel: with Vladimir Mayakovsky. True, according to historians, the version of possible love between the poet and the artist is not viable. The trouble is that the two greats most likely never met, despite the photo of them together circulating on the Internet. Experts are sure that the photo is fake. Although, given the similarity of views of Frida and Vladimir, as well as the passionate nature of both, it is quite possible to assume that they would not have met without an affair.

Without exception, all of Frida’s love stories are shrouded in mystery - none of them could be proven; we can only guess with whom the brilliant Kahlo sought solace. Among her lovers, there is also traditionally only one woman - singer Chavela Vargas. The reason for the gossip was the candid photographs of the girls, where Frida, dressed in a man’s suit, was drowning in the arms of Chavela. However, Diego, who openly cheated on his wife, did not pay attention to her hobbies with women; such connections seemed frivolous to him, which cannot be said about Frida’s relationships with men. Over and over again, huge scandals broke out in the house with bright blue walls, each time ending in the same way: Diego and Frida made peace, realizing the complete impossibility of parting with each other, and went in search of new love adventures.

However, not even the strongest psychological attachment can withstand the onslaught of external obstacles, and every year they only became more numerous. She is tired. In 1939, Kahlo and Rivera officially divorced. Just one year later, Diego, suddenly realizing his fatal mistake, found Frida and declared that he wanted to marry her again. She agreed without further hesitation. The truth put forward the conditions: they will not have sexual relations, and they will conduct financial affairs separately. Together they will only pay for household expenses. This is such a strange marriage contract. But Diego was so happy to have his Frida back that he willingly signed this document.

“Legs - why do I need them, since I have wings to fly?” - Frida Kahlo.

For the last ten years of her life, Frida kept a diary, completely covering the pages with her husband’s name and drawings. “I only want one thing: that no one would hurt him... If I had health, I would give it entirely to Diego,” Kahlo wrote on one of the last sheets. Throughout her entire adult life, spent near her husband, Frida could not express in words what she felt for her lover. Her love arose and dissolved again in pictures, screamed, cried and could not break out - we always lack words to tell everything about our love. Happy is the one who only needs to say “I love you” to remain satisfied.

Shortly before her death, Frida wrote down on a piece of paper something that had haunted her for many years: “In saliva, in paper, in eclipse, in all the lines, in all the colors, in all the jugs, in my chest, outside, inside... DIEGO in my mouth, in my heart, in my madness, in my dreams, in blotting paper, in the tip of a pen, in pencils, in landscapes, in food, in metal, in imagination, in illnesses, in shop windows, in his tricks. , in his eyes, in his lips, in his lies.”