Frida Kahlo's birthday
Description:
Frida Kahlo was born on July 6, 1907 in the family of a German immigrant and a Mexican Indian. From early childhood, the girl was plagued by hardships. At age 6, she suffered polio, and since then her right leg has been shorter and thinner than her left. Peers mocked her with childish cruelty, teased: "Frida is a wooden leg." But to hide her physical disability, she wore pants. Stretched on the sore leg 3-4 stockings, so that it did not differ from the healthy, and against everything swim, played football with the boys and even boxed.
On September 17, 1925, a car in which Frida was driving with her school friend collided with a tram. The broken iron rod of the tram's current collector stuck in her stomach and went out into her groin. The hip bone is crushed, the spine is damaged in three places, two hips and a leg are broken. In order not to go crazy with boredom in the hospital, Frida asked for a brush and paint. I paint myself because I spend so much time alone and because I am the subject I know best.
Her husband, Diego Rivera, was twenty years her senior. Talented, temperamental, with a huge belly - Rivera served as an excellent target for jokes: at the Academy he was nicknamed Puzan, and Maximilian Voloshin - "Good Man-Eater." Meanwhile, Diego enjoyed great success with women and was married several times. His first wife was a Russian artist from St. Petersburg, Angelina Belova, then Rivera became interested in another Russian, and no one even counted his Mexican mistresses. At 42, he married 22-year-old Frida Kahlo.
On the wedding day, the newlywed appeared in a long national dress, which is still worn in Oaxaca. The wedding was bohemian noisy: it was fun, with various cute jokes, not very ceremony. One of Rivera’s former passions at all lifted the bride’s skirt and, pointing at Frida’s legs, drunkenly shouted: “Look at this, and Diego exchanged my delightful legs for these matches.”
In 1934, Diego Rivera cheated on Frida with her younger sister Christina, who posed for the artist. The blow was brutal. Frida didn’t want to share her pain with anyone, she just threw it on the canvas. After the betrayal of Diego, she decided that she too had the right to love hobbies. It pissed Rivera off. Once, after catching his wife with the American sculptor Isama Noguchi, Diego grabbed a gun. Fortunately, he didn't.
Frida's life with Diego, by her own admission, was her greatest joy and greatest test. The end of 1939 became critical in their relationship - they divorced and quickly realized that they could not without each other, and less than a year later they remarried.
She dreamed of having a child, but the terrible trauma prevented her from having children. Three pregnancies – and this was a real feat with her health – ended tragically. And then she started drawing children. Mostly dead. Although most of her paintings, still lifes, landscapes are permeated with sun and light.
The damaged spine constantly reminded of itself. In 1950, she underwent 7 spinal surgeries and spent 9 months in a hospital bed. Two years later, another tragedy: Frida's right leg is amputated to the knee. And as a consolation - in the same 1953, the first solo exhibition of Frida Kahlo takes place. She's happy. She's always laughing. And he's teasing himself a little. That's how famous I am. No worse than Rivera...
Frida Kahlo died of pneumonia a week after celebrating her 47th birthday on Tuesday, July 13, 1954. The next day, her loved ones collected her favorite jewelry, including an old, pre-Columbian necklace and cheap things made of shells, which she especially loved, and put it all in a gray coffin installed in the "Bellas Artes" - the Palace of Fine Arts. The coffin was covered with a black blanket, which descended to the very floor, strewn with red roses. Frida was then cremated in the civilian Dolores Pantheon. An urn with ashes was placed in an ancient Indian vase depicting a pregnant woman.
In her diary before her death, she wrote, “I am looking forward to leaving.” And I hope never to come back... Frida. But she's back. With my art. Back in the late 30s, one of her paintings was bought by the Louvre - it was the first work of a Mexican author, which got into the famous museum in the XX century. Her famous self-portrait with a monkey and a parrot, written in 1929, broke all records: it was purchased at Sotheby’s auction in New York by an unknown collector for $ 5 million. Jean-Paul Gaultier dedicated his clothing collection to her. Salma Hayek terrorized Hollywood producers, wanting to play the role of Frida Kahlo in the film.