The character arc of Frida Kahlo
Born 6 July 1907 in Coyoacan. Died 13 July 1954 in the same blue house. Between the two sit polio at six, a bus accident at eighteen that ended her plans for medicine, a mirror rigged over a sickbed, the Louvre, and a first Mexican solo show she attended in her own four poster bed, carried in through the door. The line below draws that whole life in order.
Tap the line to pluck it. Hover or tap any mark for its card. Drawn from the public record of her life; the sources are at the foot of the page.
Who was Frida Kahlo?
She painted the truth from a plaster cast.
She was one of the first thirty five girls admitted to Mexico's National Preparatory School, and she planned on medicine. At eighteen a bus and a streetcar collided and a handrail went through her pelvis. The doctors rebuilt what they could; the plans did not survive. Painting began in the body cast, with a lap easel her mother had made and a mirror rigged over the bed so she always had a subject.
I paint myself because I am so often alone, she said, and because I am the subject I know best. The pictures told the truth about pain, about a body under repair, about love with Diego Rivera that broke and remade itself, and they told it in the colours of the markets of Coyoacan. Paris noticed before Mexico did: the Louvre bought The Frame in 1939, the first work by a twentieth century Mexican artist to enter it.
Her first solo show in her own country came the year before the end. The doctors forbade her to stand, so she sent her bed ahead and arrived by ambulance, greeting every guest from inside the exhibition itself. Her line is worth reading for what it does after every drop: it keeps painting.
The moments
Frida Kahlo's timeline.
The 1910s
Polio at six
Setback. It left one leg thinner. She hid it under long skirts and learned to fight anyway.
The 1920s
Into the Preparatoria
Milestone. One of the first thirty five girls admitted. She planned on medicine.
The bus accident
Setback, and it changed everything. A handrail went through her pelvis. She was eighteen, and painting began in the body cast.
Medicine is gone. What now
Crossroads, decided.
The paths laid out: paint from the bed, taken, or wait to walk, then resume school. She said she painted herself because she was the subject she knew best.
The first self portrait
Milestone, and it changed her direction. Painted from bed with a mirror overhead, for the boy she wanted back.
Married Diego Rivera
Everyday. The elephant and the dove, her parents said. Neither party disagreed.
The 1930s
Lost the child in Detroit
Setback. The grief went straight onto tin: Henry Ford Hospital, painted that same month.
First solo show, New York
Milestone, and it changed her direction. Half the pictures sold. She wrote home astonished that they liked her work.
The Louvre bought The Frame
Milestone. The first work by a twentieth century Mexican artist to enter the Louvre.
Divorce from Diego
Setback. The year of the divorce produced The Two Fridas. A year later they married again, on her terms.
The 1940s
Married Diego again
Everyday. On his birthday, with her own conditions written in first.
Taught at La Esmeralda
Everyday. When the stairs became too much, the class moved to the blue house; they called themselves Los Fridos.
The 1950s
Her first Mexican solo show
Milestone, and it changed her direction. Doctors said no. She had her four poster bed carried in and greeted every guest from it.
The line ends 13 Jul 1954, in the blue house where it began. What it set moving has not ended: the museums she never saw now queue around the block for her, and every painter who puts the hard truth on the canvas is borrowing her nerve.
Your turn
Every story draws a unique line.
Hers took forty seven years, most of them uphill. Yours is already further along than you think, and drawing it takes about three minutes.
Sources
- Hayden Herrera, Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo, 1983.
- The Museo Frida Kahlo, Coyoacan.
- The Louvre acquisition record of 1939.
- The Julien Levy Gallery catalogue, New York, 1938.
- The Lola Alvarez Bravo gallery record, Mexico City, 1953.