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Despite her life of suffering and pain, Frida Kahlo was a vibrant, extroverted character whose everyday speech was filled with [[Profanity|profanities]]. She had been a [[tomboy]] in her youth and carried her fervor throughout her life. She drank liquor as if it were water, threw wild parties and sang off-color songs and told equally [[ribald]] jokes to her guests.
Despite her life of suffering and pain, Frida Kahlo was a vibrant, extroverted character whose everyday speech was filled with [[Profanity|profanities]]. She had been a [[tomboy]] in her youth and carried her fervor throughout her life. She drank liquor as if it were water, threw wild parties and sang off-color songs and told equally [[ribald]] jokes to her guests.
omg guess what me and judi and whitney are gonna take a mean girls picture on Friday!!!! YAY!!


==Films==
==Films==

Revision as of 08:36, 3 January 2006

Frida Kahlo, Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird - 1940

Frida Kahlo (July 6, 1907 – July 13, 1954) was a Mexican painter of the indigenous culture of her country in a style combining realism and symbolism, an active Communist supporter, and wife of the Mexican muralist and cubist painter Diego Rivera.

Kahlo was noted for her unconventional appearance, including pronounced eyebrows (unibrow) and a thin moustache which she did not remove, and her choice of flamboyantly styled clothing.

Early life

Kahlo was born Magdalena Carmen Frieda Kahlo y Calderón in her parents' house in Coyoacán, which at the time was a small town on the outskirts of Mexico City. Her father, Guillermo Kahlo, was a painter and photographer of German-Hungarian Jewish background, whose family originated from Baden-Baden, Germany. The young Frida suffered a bout of polio at age six, which left her right leg looking much thinner than the other. Still, with the feisty and brash personality that she kept throughout her life, she overcame her disability.

In 1925, a trolley car collided with a bus Kahlo was riding; she suffered a broken spinal column, a broken collarbone, broken ribs, a broken pelvis, 11 fractures in her right leg, a crushed and dislocated right foot, and a dislocated shoulder. Also, an iron handrail had impaled her abdomen, pierced through her uterus. Because of the injuries to her pelvis and uterus, she was unable to bear children, a fact that it took her a long time to accept. She survived her injuries and eventually regained her ability to walk, but she would have relapses of extreme pain which would plague her for life, often leaving her hospitalized and/or in bed for months at a time, agonized and miserable. Frida would undergo as many as thirty-five operations in her life as a result of the accident, mainly on her back and her right leg/foot.

Career as painter

Frida Kahlo with Diego Rivera in 1932
Frida Kahlo (center) and Diego Rivera photographed by Carl Van Vechten in 1932

After the accident, Kahlo turned her attention from a medical career to painting. Drawing on her personal experiences, her works are often shocking in their stark portrayal of pain. Fifty-five of her 143 paintings are self-portraits, often incorporating symbolic portrayal of her physical and psychological wounds. She was deeply influenced by indigenous Mexican culture, which surfaced in her paintings' bright colors, dramatic symbolism, and unapologetic rendering of often harsh and gory content.

Although Kahlo's work is sometimes classified as surrealist and she did exhibit several times with European surrealists, she never considered herself a surrealist. Her preoccupation with female themes and the figurative candor with which she expressed them made her something of a feminist cult figure in the last decades of the 20th century.

Her paintings attracted the attention of fellow artist Diego Rivera, whom she later married. They were often referred to as "The Elephant and the Dove" due to their difference in size. When they first married, he was 42, 6 ft 1 in. (1.86 m) tall, and 300 pounds (136 kg); she was 22, 5'3", and 98 pounds. Their marriage was a stormy one, largely due to Diego's weakness for extramarital flings and their notoriously fiery temperaments also played a part in the storminess, and both had numerous extramarital affairs. Frida was known to take both female and male lovers. The couple divorced, but remarried in 1940, although their union was no less rocky.

Late years

La Casa Azul

An active Communist supporter, Kahlo and Rivera supported Leon Trotsky and he was granted political asylum in Mexico to protect him from Joseph Stalin and his government in Russia. Initially, Trotsky lived with Rivera and then at Frida's home where he and Frida allegedly had an affair. Trotsky and his wife then moved to Cuernavaca, and Trotsky was later assassinated. Sometime after Trotsky's death, Frida denounced her former friend and praised the Soviet Union under Stalin. She spoke favorably of Mao, calling China "the new socialist hope".

Kahlo died on July 13, 1954, supposedly of a pulmonary embolism. She had been ill throughout the previous year and had had a leg amputated owing to gangrene. However, an autopsy was never performed, and many are convinced that she committed suicide. A few days before her death she had written into her diary: "I hope the leaving is joyful; and I hope never to return".

The pre-Columbian urn holding her ashes is on display in her former home La Casa Azul in Coyoacán that has been turned into a museum for a number of her works of art.

Character

Despite her life of suffering and pain, Frida Kahlo was a vibrant, extroverted character whose everyday speech was filled with profanities. She had been a tomboy in her youth and carried her fervor throughout her life. She drank liquor as if it were water, threw wild parties and sang off-color songs and told equally ribald jokes to her guests. omg guess what me and judi and whitney are gonna take a mean girls picture on Friday!!!! YAY!!

Films

A biographical documentary containing archival footage, entitled Frida Kahlo, was released in 1982 in Germany.

In 1984 director Paul Le Duc released the film Frida, naturaleza viva, which stars Ofelia Medina as Frida Kahlo.

In 2002, Miramax released a motion picture titled Frida, starring Salma Hayek in the title role.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Frida Kahlo.

Frida Kahlo

References

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