Last week I spent two amazing days in Brussels. As the weather was surprisingly beautiful, warm and sunny, I didnt plan any cultural program. Just wanted to stroll the streets in a slow relaxing way, enjoing the architecture of the city which I have missed so much. One morning walking those streets, my attention attracted the ad about Frida Kahlo exhibition. I have heard about the icon when I was in my teens and since then I didnt miss any opportunity to learn more about this unprecedented personality.
Those few hours I spent in the Gallery where the exhibition is organized, have touched my memories and returned me back to Mexico. And inspired me to get my hands, my head and my heart into the life facts and details of Frida. I decided to share some of them with you here.
As a visual person, I have been impressed by the collections of historical photographs, original films, digital environments, art installations, collectibles and newly created music that recreate the most significant moments of her life, discovering the incredible story behind the legendary artist. Digital art and its 360º 3D projections take you on a journey through the life of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo. An immersive and colorful adventure, which uses the latest technologies to make your visit a truly unique experience. A whole new way to educate yourself and learn more about the artist’s incredible life. Her life captivates and inspires through a biography that reveals a woman capable of overcoming adversity thanks to her perseverance, strength, rebellion and talent. With an incomparable personality, Kahlo was ahead of her time.
We can say we know Frida Kahlo. But, do we understand her ? What lies behind her way to create, dress, love and live ? Why is she after so many years, a world icon more in force than ever ?
childhood
Daughter of Wilhelm Kahlo, a German who made his millions as a photographer in Mexico, and of his second wife, Matilde Calderon, an uneducated, very religious Mexican, Frida Kahlo was born in Coyoacan at turbulent time for Mexican society. Apart from the financial problems caused to her family by more than ten years of civil war, when she is 6 years old she develops poliomyelitis, which atrophies the muscles of her right leg.
In 1922 Frida starts her study at the National Preparatory High School before entering University for becoming a doctor. Three years later, the girl who had arrived with plaits and a german secondary school uniform becomes a cultivated young lady, with clearly defined ideas, very popular among her peers.
the accident
17 September, 1925. After a rainy day, when she is returning by bus to Coyoacan after her lessons, she realizes she has forgotten her umbrella. She gets out of the vehicle to look for it (together with her boyfriend Alejandro). After a while, they both take another bus. After only a few minutes of travel in that second bus, a tram smashes into them. Due to that damned umbrella, she has to give up being a doctor to become a patient for the rest of her life. And she will turn constant pain into art.
passions
Frida has three great passions: painting, political activism and love. And the three of them gravitate around a very powerful figure: Diego Rivera.
He was twice her age and was divorced for the second time. After less than a year, they get married for the first time (they will divorce and get married again thirteen month later in 1939). Even though they spent their life between fights and reconciliations, their mutual loyalty will be eternal. Diego will always admire Frida, personally and as a painter, he will encourage her to trust her talent and will take care of her physical health, but he will never give up having affairs with artists, models and helpers, no matter how painful this is for his wife. She will also go from lover to lover, men and women, sometimes to diminish pain from Diego’s absence and other times to celebrate life.
icon
There is no possible mistake: we see the silhouette of eyebrows framed by a bun decorated with flowers, and we know it is her. Frida Kahlo is nowadays an icon in all corners of the planet.
For her attitude before adversity: painting stretched out on her bed, with her body immobilized by a plaster corset, but with her mind moving in search of freedom.
For her ideological commitment: to Mexican Zapatistas and Spanish Republicans.
For her transgression of conventions.
Frida knew how to be unique. She made traditional costumes, eyebrows and mustaches a very seductive sign of self confidence and an identity signal sting enough to evacuate all of her with a single trace. Like a logotype.
Frida’s complex personality, the internal struggle between constant pain and her desire to live, the need to seem composed outside, although she is broken inside, generate the symbolic language that defines her.
Pain expressed in Frida’s work through sharp objects: necklaces of thorns, nails, arrows, knives, which cause bloody cuts and holes, also linked to femininity. These symbols often appear in self portraits where Frida stoically lives with her wounds, accepting that suffering is inseparable from living. Dualities are very present in her work, where the sun shares space with the moon. A face can be half Frida, half Diego; and two Frdas, one her heart intact and the other one with a broken heart. And fruit: watermelons, pomegranates, papayas…. opened, fleshy and juicy, evidently refer to sexuality and fertility, imperfect but desirable, and in several stages of freshness and ripening, as if they were people, as if they were Frida herself.
Frida Kahlo 1944
Self Portrait in a Velvet Dress, is one of Frida Kahlo’s early portraits. This painting she used as a token of love to regain the affection from her lover. She sent this portrait to Alejandro when he left to Europe and wrote: “Alex, your ‘Boticeli’ has also become very sad, but I told her that until you come back, she should be the ‘sound asleep one’; in spite of this she remembers you always.” It was obvious Frida was hoping her self-portrait has the magical power that can win back her love.
The Broken Column is considered by many to be Frida Kahlo’s most important painting. It is hard to imagine any scene that better captures her internal and external turmoil, whilst also providing the reasons for that.
Frida paints herself , she says, because its the subject she knows best. Thats something what everyone of us should learn – to get to know our own self as much as possible. And this is the answer to the question most of us are asking nowadays: what is my calling. Once you find out your true self, the question is answered.
In the second part I will talk about Frida as a fashion icon.
