« Feet, what do I have need for you if I have wings to fly?”
This quote encapsulates Frida Kahlo, the artist who showed such wonderful strength to make the most of what was a truly painful life. Born in Coyoacán, Mexico City, in 1907, during the Mexican revolution, Kahlo succeeded in channelling that pain into art. The daughter of a German photographer and a well-to-do Mexican mother of Spanish origins, Kahlo turned to painting during a tragic period in her life.
The accident
When Kahlo was 18, the bus she was travelling in hit a tram and crashed into a wall, leaving her with devastating injuries, her spine shattered into three pieces and many other bones broken. Kahlo later revealed that, during the impact, she screamed with such force and desperation that death – who had come to claim her – went away again, leaving her in limbo.
From that day – 17 September 1925 – Kahlo was forced to give up her body and heal her soul through painting. It was during her convalescence in bed, trapped in casts of plaster and iron, that she began to paint. Kahlo began producing self-portraits, as her own body was the only thing that she could see nearby. Kahlo regained the ability to walk after her plaster casts were removed, but she would live in pain for the rest of her life.
Her great love
“There have been two great accidents in my life. The first was the tram, the other was Diego,” Kahlo once said about her lover. She met Diego Rivera for the first time in 1922, as Rivera was painting a mural under the scaffolding of the National Preparatory School in Mexico City. There were married seven years later. Their relationship has gone down in history for the way they shared their art, their intensity and their bizarreness. In fact, Kahlo and Rivera actually got married twice. Kahlo left Rivera in 1939 after discovering his latest infidelity, this time with her sister Cristina. Yet one year later they tied the knot against in San Francisco.
During this time, in order to get back at Rivera for his betrayals, Kahlo engaged in several relationships both with men (including Leon Trotsky and Nickolas Muray) and women (including possibly the Italian photographer Tina Modotti). Yet she never stopped loving Diego, her sickness and her cure.
Illness and death
In 1950, Kahlo underwent seven operations on her spine and from 1951 was no longer able to work without the use of painkillers. In 1953, Kahlo attended her first personal exhibition whilst laying on a bed – it was Rivera’s idea to take Kahlo’s large four-poster bed to Mexico City. In August of the same year, her right leg was amputated at the knee.
Frida Kahlo died on 13 July 1954, a few days before her 47th birthday. The artist was looking forward to the end having suffered physically to such an extent, formulating these thoughts in the final pages of her diary. Her one consolation – on her death bed – was her love for life and Diego Rivera: « I am to be envied, because Diego’s love is something unique and unrepeatable, despite everything. And I’ve had everything, despite myself. »
Frida Kahlo: the exhibition
The Frida Kahlo. Oltre il mito [Frida Kahlo. Beyond the myth] exhibition at MUDEC in Milan is the result of six years of study and research and aims to present the artist from a new perspective through surprising, unusual archive material. The exhibition is running until 3 June 2018.