"Magdalena Frida Kahlo y Calderón"
Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón was a Mexican painter known for her self-portraits.
Kahlo's life began and ended in Mexico City, in her home, which is known as "La Casa Azul," the Blue House. Her work has been celebrated internationally as emblematic of Mexican national and indigenous traditions, and by feminists for its uncompromising depiction of the female experience and form.
Mexican culture and tradition are important in her work, which has been sometimes characterized as naïve art or folk art. Her work has also been described as surrealist, and in 1938 André Breton, principal initiator of the surrealist movement, described Kahlo's art as a "ribbon around a bomb". Frida rejected the "surrealist" label imposed by Breton, as she argued that her work reflected more of her reality than her dreams.
Kahlo had a volatile marriage with the famous Mexican artist Diego Rivera. She suffered lifelong health problems, many of which were caused by a traffic accident she survived as a teenager. Recovering from her injuries isolated her from other people, and this isolation influenced her works, many of which are self-portraits. Kahlo suggested, "I paint myself because I am so often alone and because I am the subject I know best”.
Alejandro and Frida had a forbidden relationship. When They studied at the High School They had to hide their love from Frida’s parents because They didn’t accept the relationship. After break, Frida gave him a self-portrait to conquer him again but it didn’t happen.
When Frida suffered the accident with the tram on September 17 in 1925, Alejandro was his couple yet.
Kahlo and Modotti were artists working in Mexico in the aftermath of the Revolution. In spite of her romantic relationship with Diego Rivera, Modotti maintained a close friendship with his wife –the legendary painter in her own right- Frida Kahlo. (In a bizarre twist of fate, it’s storied that Modotti in fact introduced Kahlo and Rivera during a party hosted at Modotti’s Mexico City home).
Álvarez Bravo is probably best known however for the photographs she took in the 1940s of her close friend, Frida Kahlo. In the adjacent image, Álvarez Bravo depicts the pain Kahlo suffered after she was in a bus accident and in her relationship with Diego Rivera.
Lola was the director of photography at the National Institute of Fine Arts. She opened an art gallery in 1951 and was the first person to exhibit the work of Frida Kahlo in Mexico City.
Trotski and Frida had a romance while He was hosted at her house in Coyoacan (Mexico) with Diego. In 19378 Frida gave Leo a portrait to his studio. Thus, that their romance began by ways, the first, a revenge of the artist because Diego Rivera had slept with Frida’s sister and the second, his great intelligence and political stance. In 1939, Diego known the romance, in that moment He threatened and forbid Trotski to stay in his house. In this way, Trotski moved to Churubusco (Mexico).
Chavela and Frida Kahlo had great friendship many years. Frida wrote to Carlos Pellicer a letter referring to her new friend:
"I met Chavela Vargas today. Extraordinary, lesbian, also I thought her erotically. I don’t know if She felt the same that me. But I think She is a liberal woman who She ask me, I would not hesitate a second to undress in front of her. "
Chavela lived with the marriage of the artists during one year, at the residence of Coyoacan. They never denied their romance. Chavela Vargas told newspaper “La Jornada” about Frida:
"She teach me many things, and without boasting anything, I grabbed the sky with my hands, with each word, every morning."
Diego was the greatest love of Frida Kahlo and with whom She spent almost every day of her life. In 1928, a schoolmate, Germán del Campo introduced her to a group of Young people who were in contact with communist Julio Antonio Mella. His lover was the photographer Tina Modotti and it was through her that’s Frida would met Diego Rivera.
Frida has previously met Rivera at the National High school where He had painted a mural in 1922. Seven years later, they married. She was 22 years old and He 42.
The couple bought a house in San Angel although in 1935 Frida discovered Diego had a romantic relationship with sis sister Cristina.
Their relationship was full of infidelities, these were part of their dynamics and in 1939 they divorced, however the following year They remarried.
At the death of Kahlo in 1954, Diego wrote:
“I’ve realized that the most wonderful thing that I have been my love for Frida”.
Frida met photographer Muray in Mexico in 1931 but many times they meet again in San Francisco and New York and They had an intermittent relationship for ten years and She posed for him many times.
Frida wrote him from Paris in 1939:
“My lovely Nick, this morning, after many days waiting, the letter arrived. I felt so happy that, before I started reading it I started to cry. My love, really I can’t complain about anything in this life while you love me and me too. It’s so real and beautiful that it makes me forget all my pains and problems, even that makes me forget the distance.”
In her diaries, Frida describes Guillermo (William) as an interesting and mysterious man from who she inherited his dark eyes and desolate look. He was present during several important episodes in the life of the artist. From the first moment, he showed the craft of photograph until that time when he warned Diego Rivera to marry with his daughter.
In 1951, Frida honours the memory of her father painting a portrait with a legend that read:
“Here I painted my father Wilhelm Kahlo, artist-photographer, generous, intelligent, good character and brave because he suffered for sixty years of epilepsy but never gave up working and fought against Hitler. With adoration, his daughter Frida Kahlo".