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Frida Kahlo (July 61907 – July 13, 1954) was a Mexican painter who depicted the indigenous culture of her country in a style combining Realism, Symbolism and Surrealism. An active communist supporter, she was the wife of Mexican muralist and cubist painter Diego Rivera. She is widely known for her self-portraits often expressing her physical pain and suffering through symbolism. In recent years she has gained admiration in Europe and the US resulting in the 2002 movie about her life starring Salma Hayek, which sparked even further interest in the life and arts of Frida Kahlo. Her house in Coyoacán, Mexico is a museum and visited by large numbers of tourists every year.
Childhood and family
Kahlo's mother, Matilde Calderón y Gonzalez, was a devout Catholic of primarily indigenous descent mixed with Spanish. Matilde frowned upon the wild games Frida and her younger sister Cristina played. Frida's parents were married shortly after the death of Guillermo's first wife during her second childbirth. Their marriage was largely unhappy. Guillermo and Matilde gave birth to four children (where Frida was the third of their four girls) and having two older half sisters, Frida grew up in a world surrounded by females. Throughout most of her life, Kahlo was close to her father. The Mexican Revolution began in 1910 when Kahlo was three years old. In her writings, she recalled that her mother would usher her and her sisters inside as gunfire echoed in the streets of her hometown which was extremely poor at the time. Men would occasionally leap over the walls into her backyard and her mother would sometimes prepare a meal for the hungry revolutionaries. Later, Kahlo would claim that she was born in 1910 so people would directly associate her with the revolution. Kahlo contracted polio at age six, which left her left leg looking thinner sometimes than the other (a deformity Kahlo hid by wearing long skirts). As a girl, she participated in boxing and other sports. In 1922, Kahlo was enrolled in the Preparatoria, one of Mexico's premier schools, where she was one of only 35 girls. Kahlo joined a gang at the school and fell in love with the leader, Alejandro Gomez Arias. During this period, Kahlo also witnessed violent armed struggles in the streets of Mexico City as the Mexican Revolution.
Career as painterImage:Frida Kahlo Diego Rivera 1932.jpg Frida Kahlo with Diego Rivera in 1932 After the accident, Kahlo turned her attention away from the study of medicine to begin a full-time painting career. The accident left her in a great deal of pain while she recovered in a full body cast; she painted to occupy her time during her temporary state of immobilization. Drawing on personal experiences including her troubled marriage, her painful miscarriages, and her numerous operations, Kahlo's works are often characterized by their stark portrayals of pain. Fifty-five of her 143 paintings are self-portraits, which frequently incorporate symbolic portrayals of her physical and psychological wounds. Kahlo was deeply influenced by indigenous Mexican culture, which is apparent in her paintings' bright colors and dramatic symbolism. Christian and Jewish themes are often depicted in her work as well; she combined elements of the classic religious Mexican tradition--which were often bloody and violent--with surrealist renderings. While her paintings are not overtly Christian--she was, after all, an avowed communist--they certainly contain elements of the macabre Mexican Christian style of religious paintings. Stormy marriageImage:Block Kahlo Rivera 1932.jpg Frida Kahlo (center) and Diego Rivera photographed by Carl Van Vechten in 1932 As a young artist, Kahlo approached the famous Mexican Diego Rivera, whom she had previously admired, and asked him for his advice on pursuing art as a career. He immediately recognized her talent and her unique expression truly special and uniquely Mexican. He encouraged her development as an artist, and began an intimate relationship with Frida. They were married in 1929, to the disapproval of Frida's mother. They were often referred to as "The Elephant and the Dove." The nickname originated when Kahlo's father noticed their extreme difference in size. Their marriage was often tumultuous. Both Kahlo and Rivera had notoriously fiery temperaments and both had numerous extramarital affairs. The openly bisexual Kahlo had affairs with both men and women; Rivera knew of and tolerated her relationships with women, but her relationships with men made him jealous. For her part, Kahlo was outraged when she learned that Rivera had had an affair with her younger sister, Cristina. The couple eventually divorced, but remarried in 1940; their second marriage was as turbulent as the first. Late yearsImage:The Blue House 7.jpg La Casa Azul Active communist sympathizers, Kahlo and Rivera befriended Leon Trotsky as he sought political sanctuary from Joseph Stalin's regime in the the Soviet Union. Initially, Trotsky lived with Rivera and then at Kahlo's home, where he and she allegedly had an affair[citation needed]. Trotsky and his wife then moved to another house in Coyoacán where he was later assassinated. Sometime after Trotsky's death, Kahlo denounced her former friend and praised the Soviet Union under Stalin. She spoke favorably of Mao Zedong, calling China "the new socialist hope"[citation needed]. Kahlo died on July 13, 1954, supposedly of a pulmonary embolism. She had been ill throughout the previous year and had a leg amputated owing to gangrene. However, an autopsy was never performed. A few days before her death she had written in her diary: "I hope the exit 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 (The Blue House) in Coyoacán, today a museum housing a number of her works of art. Films and pop culture references
References
Other Kahlo Web SitesFor a complete bio, photos, paintings, chronology, books and films visit: Frida Kahlo swicki - community search site:
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