Frida Kahlo - avant-garde artist and passionate woman who survived two accidents

Many have heard about the art of this Mexican artist. Her surrealistic artworks shock some and inspire others, but invariably carry a lot of pain and deep feelings. What did she want to say with her excessive naturalism? Why did she write a lot of portraits surrounded by animals and plants, and why the theme of death is revealed on many of her paintings? Asking these questions, one can come to the understanding that the artist's biography is no less fascinating than her creative heritage

Painting by Frida Kahlo “The Wounded Deer”

Biography

Frida Kahlo, the future famous artist, was born in Mexico — a bright, colorful and sunny country. Mexicans are ardent and sensual people who respect their ancestors and perceive death as an integral part of life. Frida Kahlo especially felt it next to her over the years and put up with and fought with it until the very end.

It is significant that her birth took place in 1907, shortly before the Mexican Revolution. Her father suffered from epileptic seizures, and the girl herself suffered from polio from an early age and limped as a result all her life. In addition, one of her legs was formed smaller than the other. No matter how she tried to hide it with long skirts, her peers still saw in that an opportunity to mock and ridicule her. At school, she communicated exclusively with boys and even joined a gang of intellectual hooligans.

Health problems accompanied her entire adult life. Apparently, on this basis, the girl entered the Mexican high school at the medical University to master the doctor profession.

But at the age of 18, a terrible accident fell on her fate. A bus crashed into the tram, which she was traveling in. Frida received many severe injuries and miraculously survived.

She spent several weeks unconscious, and when she woke up, an inspiration came to her. The girl told her father that she wanted to paint. He bought the necessary supplies and even set up a workplace right in her bed. He placed a mirror over Frida's head, because according to the idea of the novice artist, her image was to appear in the artwork. This is how the first pencil sketch was born, entitled "Accident". In the future, it was painting and relatives who helped her to get on her feet.

Private life

Kahlo said she had two accidents in her life. The first was a collision between a bus and a tram. The second was Diego Rivera.

They met just a few years after that terrible incident. Their age difference was 21 years, but they immediately had mutual feelings. The famous painter highly appreciated Frida's first artworks, and in 1929 he married her.

They looked very extravagant together, they were called "an elephant and a dove". But this marriage turned out to be a test for the girl. If at first they burned with passion for each other, exchanged letters day and night, then over time they began to treat other people, break off relations and rebuild them again.

Diego treated her like a thing, but she continued to love him and hope that everything will work out. Frida brought him lunches to the forest, where he could look for a muse for days on end, denied herself the necessary treatment, while he spent a fortune on his own whims. She was fully engaged in housekeeping and accounts, and even managed to accompany her husband at exhibitions.

Frida most often showed gentleness, although her husband was primarily and to a greater extent distinguished by adventures. Two of his previous marriages were broken up due to infidelity. They were both artists, but in the wedding portrait, Frida depicted only him with brushes and a palette in his hands.

She wore full skirts to please him, creating a particularly sophisticated and unique style that would inspire him. Her images could simultaneously combine Indian and Creole motives, attributes of various social circles and historical eras. She became involved in this process and continued it out of personal interest, reflecting her state of mind not only with the help of painting, but also with clothes. These unimaginable, colorful dresses of the artist became the heroes of her paintings.

Obviously, the married life was reflected in her paintings: the canons of the Renaissance faded into the background, their place was taken by the attributes of real Mexican painting. The revolutionary spirit of this country, Indian motifs, Catholic subjects brought a combination of aesthetics and suffering to Kahlo's work.

From the very beginning, the artist knew about the betrayal of her husband, but dutifully endured it for many years. At some point, either out of a thirst for revenge, or in search of inspiration, she herself was carried away for a long time by the Marxist Leon Trotsky. According to some sources, she also had affairs with the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky and even the singer Chavela Vargas.

Frida dreamed of giving her husband a child, but the pregnancy ended in miscarriage. Soon she lost her mother, and then learned about her husband's romance with her own younger sister. This was a decisive blow — and she filed for divorce. In this regard, the painting "Only a few scratches!" was born. The image of the killer is clearly the image of Diego, and splashes of red paint remained even on the frame. The artwork is saturated with black humor and sarcasm, since the artist clearly saw herself in this sacrifice.

After the divorce, something broke in her. She cut her long black hair and changed her luxurious dress for a man's suit. Her house was full of dogs, monkeys and birds. And of course, they also appeared in self-portraits from time to time.

Since 1940, she again began to fight for life in the hospital. Diego was there at such an important moment and even asked for her hand a second time. She agreed. And it seemed that the emotional wounds healed, but the physical pain only intensified. It got to the point that in 1953 her leg was amputated due to gangrene. In the same year, she held her personal art exhibition in Mexico. A year later, Kahlo died due to pneumonia. And one more year later, a museum was opened in her house, and it receives visitors to this day.

Creative work

Frida Kahlo bequeathed over 150 paintings to the world. There are especially many self-portraits. One of them, "Broken Column", inspired Jean-Paul Gaultier to create the image of the heroine of the film "The Fifth Element".

Painting by Frida Kahlo "Broken Column"

The girl wrote herself because she constantly wandered in the depths of her tortured soul, while she was alone. And there were many such periods. On the artwork "The two Fridas" she depicted herself in two images at once: the one that she loved in herself, and the one that she hated. It also shows the theme of suffering and striving for beauty.

Painting by Frida Kahlo "The two Fridas"

After the loss of her child, the artist threw out her feelings in the painting "Henry Ford Hospital", "My Birth" and in subsequent "bloody" works. The world community has never seen more frank artworks from a physiological point of view. She showed female pain so clearly that even men felt it. And of course, this led to a lot of controversy between those who were shocked and who admired.

Painting by Frida Kahlo "Henry Ford Hospital"

When she came to terms with her childlessness, fruit trees with fruits, stems and roots began to appear on her artworks. Despite the abundance of symbols, Frida has always been straightforward in her work, portrayed things as they are, and combined anatomical accuracy with "unfeminine" humor.

As it was mentioned earlier, the theme of death also prevailed in many of her plots: "Four inhabitants of Mexico", "Girl with Death Mask", "The dream (The bed)". The artist all the time felt that it was somewhere nearby, and therefore escaped by painting from her experiences.

Painting by Frida Kahlo "Girl with Death Mask"

Painting by Frida Kahlo "The dream (The bed)"

Summary

Frida Kahlo's soulful, surreal and "real" artworks brought to art an understanding of what it means to be a woman, to resist suffering, both physical and mental. Whatever trials fell on her fate, she strove for painting, found healing and peace in it. And in the end, her work won worldwide fame.