Frida Kahlo

Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo Calderón or Frida Kahlo (July 6th 1907 - July 13rd 1954) is a Mexican artist painter . Born in 1907, she played a big role for the Mexican artistic movement of the time.

Biography

Family

The mother of the artist, Matilde Calderón there González, it also painter of profession (" El condabrebbra" , attached to the surrealist movement) (1876 - 1932) was born with Mexico City. It was the third girl of Isabel González there González and the Photographe Antonio Calderón of origin indigenous. The father of Frida, Wilhelm Kahlo (1872 - 1941) wire of the jeweller and goldsmith Jakob Heinrich Kahlo and of Henriette Kaufmann, was born with Pforzheim in Bade-Wurtemberg (Germany). At 19 years, the Wilhem young person accepted financial aid necessary to carry out the crossing to Mexico in 1891. He then exchanged his first name against his Spanish equivalent (Guillermo) and earned his living in various stores as an employee. After the death of his first wife, he married in 1898 Matilde Calderón and learned at once the trade from photographer near his father-in-law.

Frida Kahlo will paint in 1936 My Grandparents, My Parents and Me where she tells the history of her origins, a such family tree. She symbolized her Mexican maternal grandparents by the German ground, and her paternal grandparents by means of the ocean. She is the little girl of the garden of the “Blue Maison” where she was born and died. Above, his/her parents in the installation of their photograph of marriage.

Childhood

Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo Calderón is born the July 6th 1907 in the “Blue House”, current Musée Frida Kahlo, in the middle of popular quarters of Coyoacán in the south of Mexico City. It is the third of the four girls of Matilde and Guillermo Kahlo.

As of the 8 years age (or 6 years according to the sources), Frida is reached by the Poliomyélite: its right leg is thinned and the foot does not grow as it should, which will be worth the nickname of “Frida to him estropiée” by his/her classmates.

In 1922, whereas it was 15 years old, it integrates Escuela Nacional Preparatoria, regarded as the best educational establishment of Mexico. At this age, she wished to become doctor; in spite of the interest which it carried to the fine arts, it did not consider an artistic career at that time. Frida starts brilliant studies and is interested quite naturally in the policy and seeks, like many people, to define a Mexican heart in the lately independent country.

The September 17th 1925, Frida takes the bus to return to it after its courses. But the bus leaves the road and strikes a tram. Several people found death on the place even of the accident. Frida was transpierced on the level of the abdomen by an iron stem to the vagina, the right foot was crushed, the left leg in thousand pieces (11 fractures). The basin, the coasts and the spinal column were also broken. The shoulder was only dislocated. It was nailed with the bed for three months and spent one month to the hospital. Approximately a year after the accident, it had to turn over to the hospital and one noted that a lumbar vertebra was fractured. It had to carry various corsets plasters some for nine months to cure. It is at this time there that it started to paint: one placed a baldachin on his bed under which one put a mirror over the entire length so that it can make use of its reflection like model. It was the beginning of long series of self-portraits, among 150 paintings which it will achieve in its life. It will have to undergo very many surgical operations during its life, remainder often lying in its bed of hospital.

Artistic beginnings

In 1928, Frida Kahlo is registered with the Mexican Communist party (PCM). It is interested particularly in the emancipation of the woman in the Mexican company which is still very machist. It decides as of its young age, that it does not want to follow the same course as the other Mexican women. It has a desire of voyage, to study, it wants freedom and the pleasure. Thanks to the photographer Tina Modotti, Frida meets Diego Rivera (1886 - 1957).

She admired much this painter and asked him its opinion about its tables to know if he found it gifted. The muralist was impressed by work of the Mexican young person: “ the fabrics revealed an extraordinary force of expression, a precise description of the characters and real serious. They had a fundamental plastic sincerity and a clean artistic personality. They conveyed a vital sensuality still enriched by a faculty of pitiless observation, though significant. For me, it was manifest that this young girl was a true artist. ” Frida Kahlo and Diego Will rivet, 21 years its elder, marry the August 21st 1929. They settle together in Mexico City in a workshop but this last did not delay to mislead it.

In November 1930, they move in with San Francisco because Rivera had been charged to carry out murals for San Francisco Stock Exchange and California School off Fine Art, current San Francisco Art Institute. Over there, Frida became acquainted with artists, silent partners and patrons of which Albert Bender. This one had managed to obtain an authorization of entry in the United States for Diego Rivera. In thanks, Frida carried out in 1931 the double portrait of Frida Kahlo there Diego Rivera inspired of their photograph of marriage.

In 1930, it undergoes its first abortion. After the accident, one had however said to him that it could not never have of child, that its basin, which had been fractured in three places, prevented a normal position for the child and a childbirth in the standards. But it was again pregnant at the time of their stay with Détroit. At the beginning of this second pregnancy, Frida thus went to see a doctor in Henry Ford Hospital. He tells him “ which in his opinion it was better that guard the baby instead of stopping the pregnancy and that, in spite of bad physical condition, the small fracture of the basin, of the spinal column, could have a child by Cesarean without too many difficulties”. In spite of the forecasts of the doctor, it made another miscarriage the July 4th 1932. It reflects its feelings, its impression of loneliness and abandonment after the loss of the child in table Henry Ford Hospital or the Bed Stealing . We can see in the center of this table, an oversize male fetus in embryonic position: it is the child lost at the time of the miscarriage, “small Diego” which she had so much hoped to carry until the term of her pregnancy.

After this painful episode, Frida Kahlo painted especially paintings which translated its lassitude and its dislike of the United States and the Americans whereas her husband, it, were fascinated always as much by this country and did not want to leave it. It clearly expressed its point of view on the country “of the gringos” in Autoportrait at the border between Mexico and the United States and in My dress is suspended over there . In spite of his admiration for the industrial progress of the United States, the Mexican nationalist felt badly at ease of the other with dimensions of the Río Grande. Meanwhile, the mother of Frida dies in 1932.

In the Thirties with the come to power of the Nazis in Germany, Frida writes its name " Frieda" , of Frieden, peace in German.

In December 1933, Diego Rivera yielded and returned with his pretty wife to Mexico. They moved into a house with San Angel, built by a friend architect and painter, Juan O' Gorman. Difficulties of health obliged Frida to turn over to the hospital and it had to undergo another termination of pregnancy.

In 1935, it carried out only two tables of which Some small punctures . This table evokes a murder by jealousy perpetrated on a woman. Like the majority of its works, this representation must be put in connection with its personal situation. Indeed, Diego Rivera, which had had several relations extraconjugales, had an adventure with Cristina, the sister of Frida Kahlo, which had often been used to him as model. One is brought to believe that this table is the illustration of its emotional wound. Deeply wounded, it will leave the common hearth a few months to insulate itself and settles in an apartment in the center of Mexico City. For this period, it also had several relations extraconjugales, in particular with women. In the middle of 1935, it left with two friends for New York and will return only when the connection between his/her sister and Rivera was finished. At the end of 1935, it returned to San Angel.

The January 9th 1937, president Lazaro Cardenas LED Rio acorde in accordance with its constitutional capacities the political asylum with Leon Trotski which is accommodated with his wife in the “Blue House” where Frida and Diego lived two years, until April 1939. A short connection which one says impassioned developed between Trotski and Frida. At the end of this adventure, the artist offers to him “affectionately” for his birthday, the November 7th 1937, Autoportrait dedicated to Leon Trotski where it is shown under its best day with a dedication: “ For Leon Trotski, I dedication this painting with all my love… ”. He will be assassinated two years later.

André Breton and Jacqueline Lamba arrived at Mexico in April 1938 and lived in the house of the couple Kahlo-Will rivet in San Angel. For Breton, leader of the Surréalisme, Mexico was the incarnation and he interpreted works of Frida Kahlo as surrealist even if she did not think of belonging to this style. “ One took to me for surrealist. It is not right. I never painted dreams. What I represented was my reality ”.

At the beginning of the month of October 1938, Frida Kahlo presents its works in the gallery of Julien Levy. It was its first individual exposure. Half of twenty-five works presented there was sold. During its stay, which she only undertook, in New York, she had a connection very tender and impassioned with the photographer Nickolas Murray who made splendid photographs of her. In March 1939, Frida went to Paris to expose its works to it to Renou & Colle.

On its return, its relation with Diego Rivera was animated more and more and in December, it is the divorce. At this same period, it again had great pains in the spinal column as well as an acute mycosis, infection of the skin, with the right hand. Frida went to San Francisco in September 1940 to be neat by Doctor Eloesser, whom she knows since good a long time. To thank it for its care, it painted for him Autoportrait dedicated to Dr. Eloesser . In bottom of this table, on a streamer is a dedication “ I painted my portrait in 1940 for Dr. Eloesser, my doctor and better friendly. With all my affection, Frida Kahlo ”. Its ashes rest in its house has Coyoacan, known as " Azul" Put; (The blue house), on its bed, in a ballot box which with the shape of its face.

Works

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