Self-Portrait, 1941

Keywords:  Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, Leon Trotsky, Crossroads, Lenin, Lenin in 1922

Frida by Kahlo:  A story in Self-Portraits

On the afternoon of September 17, 1925, Frida and her friend Alex was involved in a severe Bus vs. Streetcar crash, and Frida was damaged very severely.  A metal rod had made a very deep abdominal wound, and her third and fourth lumbar vertebrae were fractured.   Frida had received many more wounds too, and she ended up trapped in a body cast for months, as her illustration shows:

The Accident, 17 September 1926

While Frida was confined to her bed, her mother brought her a small lap easel, and Frida started to paint.  She had studied art before, at the National Preparatory School, where she had met Diego Rivera when he was painting the Creation mural, but Frida had never worked on paintings before.  Over her bed, Frida had a mirror so she could see herself, and this was the beginning of her focus on self portraits.

Self-Portrait, 1929

The Bus, 1929

Frida was a close friend of Tina Modotti, who modelled for Diego Rivera, and through her Frida and Diego met again, and fell in love.  They married August 21st, 1929.

Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, 1930

Self-Portrait, 1930

Frida and Diego Rivera, 1931

In the fall of 1930 Frida traveled with Diego to San Francisco, where Diego worked on murals at the Pacific Stock Exchange and the California School of Fine Arts, and in the summer of 1931 they went to New York where Diego had a major exhibition of his work.   Then, in the spring of 1932, they moved to Detroit, where Diego worked on a series of murals at the Detroit Institute of Arts.  At this time Frida had become pregnant, however, after the bus accident in 1925 she could not have children, and complications arose.  Frida's trauma in the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit is illustrated in her painting below:

Henry Ford Hospital, 1932

After the murals in Detroit were completed, Frida and Diego moved back to New York, where Diego was painting the Man at the Crossroads mural in the Rockefeller Center.  This mural included a portrait of Lenin, the founder of the Soviet Union, and such a portrait was politically incorrect.  Ultimately the Crossroads mural was chipped to dust and destroyed.

The Lenin portrait was a reflection of both Diego and Frida being communists, and active in the revolution movement in Mexico, where they returned late in 1933.  Diego was a supporter of Leon Trotsky, who Stalin had ousted from the Soviet Union, a few years after the death of Lenin, and Diego helped Trotsky move to Mexico early in 1937.  There Leon and his wife Natalia got to stay in Frida's house in Coyoacan, the Casa Azul.  Frida was very fond of Trotsky, and they had a very brief affair.  For Leon's birthday November 7th, Frida painted the Between the Curtains portrait for him:

Self-Portrait Dedicated to Leon Trotsky (Between the Curtains), 1937

In 1939 Diego and Frida divorced, and Frida felt very sad and distraught by this.   She produced many fine paintings in this period, but being devastated by the divorce, she consumed a lot of liquor, and her health deteriorated rapidly.  She had circulatory and other problems associated with the incidents she had had before.

The Two Fridas, 1939

Frida's health was poor, and she moved back with Diego, who was painting a mural in San Francisco.  There Frida got proper medical treatment and rest, and she recovered rapidly.  December 8, 1940, Diego and Frida married again.

Self-Portrait with Monkey and Parrot, 1942

Diego and Frida, 1944

The Broken Column, 1944

The Broken Column, done in 1944, may be the one of Frida's paintings that show the pain she was feeling the most.  The Column itself, which is broken, shows one of the sources of her pain, the nails in her body show in a physical way the pain she was enduring, and the tears in Frida's eyes show that her pain was excruciating.  Frida's face shows both courage, and resignation; Frida's nudity may suggest that she felt she could do little about her situation.  But in spite of all her pain, Frida kept on expressing herself by making outstanding paintings...

Diego and I, 1949

The Love Embrace of the Universe, the Earth (Mexico), Me, Diego, and Mr. Xolotl, 1949

Martha Zamora, FRIDA KAHLO the Brush of Anguish, Chronicle Books, p81, p36, p45, p55, p65, p121, p90, p92, p128,  1990

Erika Billeter, The Blue House   The World of Frida Kahlo, Univ. of Washington Press, p75, p87, p86, p93, p131, p141, 1993

Jane Anderson Jones, FRIDA KAHLO, Rourke Publications, Inc., p52, 1993

Frida and Stalin, 1954

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