▲ Frida Caro
(Frida Kahlo 1907-1954)
PART
01
Frida's story
The Mexican painter Frida Caro was one of the world's leading female artists of the 20th century.
Light brown complexion, black eyebrows like birds, large and bright flowers between black hair braids, intricate Azquet jade beads on the neck, exquisite embroidered national costumes... Frida conquered the American fashion scene in the 1930s and 1940s with her sharp personality and unique exoticism, becoming the darling of many top photographers in the spotlight.
In addition to the most banal label of "wife of mexican painter Diego Rivera", artists, feminists, nationalists, celebrities, bisexuals, women printed on national banknotes... These all represent her more multifaceted, incomprehensible and divergent identities, and her works are among the highest prices in the world for female painters.
She has a glorious appearance, but illness, pain, and emotional torment always accompany her like a nightmare.
Frida was born on July 6, 1907, in a blue house in the small town of Coyoacán, Mexico City. His father is of German descent and his mother is of Indian descent.
Frida was frail from an early age, and at the age of 6, she suffered from polio, which caused her right leg to deform slightly, shorter than her left leg, so she had to wear thick-soled shoes and a long, brightly colored skirt to cover up.
At the age of 15, she entered the Youth National School in Mexico City to prepare herself for her future medical studies.
Frida is smart, rebellious, and naturally loves extraordinary things. In this school of more than 2,000 students but only 35 girls, Frida and the boys play pranks and create chaos; they also read extensively and in large quantities in the library, and then compete in wisdom. She joined a student political club called "Kachuchas" and began her first love.
▲ Frida dressed in men's clothes on the left in the back row
However, a car accident changed her fate.
On September 17, 1925, Frida was riding on a bus that crashed into a tram whose metal handrail penetrated her pelvis, causing multiple comminuted fractures of the spine, collarbone and coccyx, dislocation of the left shoulder, eleven fractures of the right leg, crushing of the right foot, and three fractures of the pelvis, resulting in lifelong infertility.
▲ Stills from the frida movie
After a tragic car accident, Frida had to recuperate in bed at home. To get her daughter to spend time in her hospital bed, Frida's parents prepared drawing boards and paints for her, and Frida began her painting career.
The car accident deeply affected Frida's life. She gave up studying medicine and began to learn the Mexican altar decoration style, telling her story in small-size and miniature detail paintings.
In 1928, when Frida regained her ability to walk, she began socializing with like-minded old classmates at the preparatory high school, discussing art and politics. At a gathering, Frida met Diego Rivera, a famous Mexican muralist and communist activist at the time, and asked him questions about art. In fact, she had admired him since she was a student and had told her classmates that she planned to marry him later.
Rivera immediately discovered her talent and encouraged her to continue creating. They quickly started the relationship. A year later, Frida firmly married Rivera, despite her mother's objections.
Frida and Diego Rivera
This marriage is unconventional from any point of view. Diego was tall and fat, frida was weak and petite; Diego was not only twenty-one years older than Frida, but had already been married twice.
And the marriage was very turbulent.
Both Rivera and Frida have eccentric temperaments and have cheated on them several times. Frida had many affairs with many women, and some of her female lovers had slept with Rivera. Rivera can tolerate her affair with women, but will be jealous of her relationships with men.
The couple are celebrities and are highly sought after by the rich, celebrities, especially artists and leftist politicians.
Although Diego and Frida's lovers have never been, they cannot be replaced. They are not only comrades and friends, but also soul mates.
She wrote in her diary:
"Diego, my beginnings and builders, my children, my boyfriend, the painter, my lover, my husband, my friends, my mother, myself, the whole universe."
It wasn't until Rivera began to have an affair with Frida's sister Christina that their relationship was severely damaged.
In 1939, Diego and Frida divorced, but remarried at the end of 1940. This time, they remained separated, but the quarrel never stopped.
A car accident at the age of 18 left Frida's body traumatized for life. In her short life, Frida has undergone more than 30 surgeries, large and small, toe amputation, amputation, and physical pain has always accompanied her.
In 1944, to support her spine, Frida was wrapped in a tight steel waistline that could only stand upright if she was tied to the back of a chair.
From 1946 to 1951, Frida underwent eight spinal surgeries. After that, she was trapped in a wheelchair.
"I tried to drown my grief," she wrote, "but these muggy eggs [referring to sadness] have now learned to swim and it's my turn to be overwhelmed by this 'decent and good feeling.'" ”
Her paintings are also pouring out the pain of her life, Frida once said: "The message in my paintings is pain, completely painting my life, I believe this is the best work." 」
Painting enriches her days lying in her hospital bed, but her broken body does not allow her to support painting for a long time. She used all kinds of equipment to fix her body and paint at the risk of death. The painful experience of illness and the torment of fate became the inspiration for all her creations.
Even lying in her hospital bed, Frida painted herself in traditional Mexican national costumes, almost dramatic attire, making her a muse in the fashion world.
Her characteristic line of eyebrows is still the object of emulation by beautiful women. Her beautiful appearance and glowing eyes leave an unforgettable impression through the works, and at the same time express her unyielding attitude towards life.
And her talent has allowed her to fly across the Mexican border and gain admirers all over the world. In 1939, she was featured on the cover of vogue magazine, the world's premier magazine.
▲ Cover of VOGUE magazine
▲ Frida was printed with Mexican banknotes
In the last years of her life, as the pain intensified, Frida became depressed and relied on analgesics such as piperidine and morphine. In 1953, she developed gangrene in her right leg and had to amputate her knee. This caused her great pain and suicidal tendencies.
Realizing that she was leaving, her friends helped her organize her only solo exhibition in her hometown. At that time, her health was really bad, and the doctor warned her not to go, but she was still lying in bed and was carried into the Museum of Modern Art in Mexico City, where she sang, drank, and laughed with everyone one night, and she told reporters: "I'm not sick, I'm just broken, but as long as I can paint, I will be very happy." ”
On July 2, 1954, she took part in a march against the CIA conspiracy to overthrow Jacob Abanz's regime, and died a few days later at the age of 47.
Frida Carlo and Diego Rivera participating in the demonstration
On the day Frida died, Diego was heartbroken, and friends described him as "like a soul cut in half."
Just a few days before her death, Frida wrote her last words in her diary:
"I want to die happily, I don't want to come back."
02
Frida's paintings
Picasso said, you and I can't paint a self-portrait as good as her. As he said this, he was looking into Frida's self-portrait eyes.
Frida spent her life painting Frida. The weeping Frida, the bleeding Frida, the crippled marble pillar as the spine of Frida — the car accident that shattered her pelvis as a teenager, so she painted the miscarriage of Frida, the broken flower, the baby rising into the sky. She painted Frida in men's clothing, thickening her eyebrows and accentuating the beard on her lips; she painted Frida with long hair, rich colors, hairpins and flowers. She painted her own wedding, beside tall Diego, tilting her head like a little girl. She paints Frida embraced by Mother Earth and the cosmic flood, and the giant baby in her arms grows with Diego's face. In the last years of her life, she was bedridden, so she painted the bed floating with the skeleton, the thorny and tangled bed, and painted the calm Frida on the bed. Diego said that her paintings are cold and hard as steel, delicate as butterfly wings, and sour as life.
She is a person who cries out for the whole world. Drink water when you are thirsty, sleep when you are sleepy, and paint when you are in pain.
Picasso could not paint such a self-portrait. A self-portrait of only one person is equally undisguised. His name was Vincent van Gogh.
Author: @SweetPoison
Frida's work is very personal, often drawing on her own marriages, miscarriages, and surgeries. She was one of the few artists who dared to show off her naked, morbid body. Her art form, which is filled with pain and painful experiences, brings difficulty to categorization, and she seems to belong neither to Expressionism nor to Surrealism.
Frida says I paint myself because I'm often alone, and I'm the subject I know best.
Self-portrait in velvet suit (1926)
This is Frida's first oil painting, Self-Portrait, given to her first love, Goris Areas. The painting shows Frida's very feminine side: feminine lines, slender fingers, gentle gaze.
▲On the bus (1929)
Heavily influenced by Rivera, Frida was a communist and had joined the Mexican Communist Party. This painting depicts the different class divisions of Mexican society. From left to right: petty bourgeois women, proletarian workers, Indian women at the bottom of society, capitalists with money bags, rich girls. Breastfeeding Indian women barefoot, portrayed as the Virgin Mary. Frida loved Indian culture and had a deep sympathy for the Indians at the bottom of society. Her dress is completely Indianized, like a spokesperson for Indians around the globe.
Frida and Rivera (1931)
Frida's union with Rivera is called "the love of an elephant and a dove". The painting was created in 1931, shortly after their marriage, and is now in the collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Frida is dressed in a tender green luo skirt with tonal accessories, an orange shawl makes her look charming and petite; Rivera next to her holds a paintbrush and palette in one hand, and holds his wife in the other. A couple walked into the marriage hall and should have been elated. However, the female protagonist put one hand on the male protagonist's hand insincerely, and the other hand nervously tightened the cloak with national characteristics. Obviously, the heroine is panicked. Even if they have a ribbon of peace on the top of their heads, the words of blessing: "As you can see, Frida Carlo will always stand shoulder to shoulder with her beloved husband, Diego Rivera".
Self-portrait of the border line between Mexico and the United States (1932)
From 1931 to 1933, Rivera was commissioned by different institutions in the United States to make murals for them, and Frida accompanied her husband on visits to the United States, but she missed Mexico so much. On one side are ancient Temples of Mexico, idols, the sun and moon, and thriving tropical plants; on the other side are American skyscrapers, industry, and smog. Frida holds a cigarette in one hand and a Mexican flag in the other. If there had been a Great Wall on the border between the United States and Mexico, she would no doubt have chosen its southern side. Frida never hid her dislike of America: "A paradise for the rich, a hell for the poor."
Abortion in Detroit (1932)
The painting is also known as Henry Ford Hospital. Frida had three miscarriages in her life, each time leaving her desperate, and she laid the image of her naked lower body bleeding from her hospital bed on the horizon in Detroit. It was her first true and sensitive self-portrait, and since then Frida has embarked on a series of art forms never before seen in history that solemnly express the true, realistic, cruel, and painful qualities of women. No one had ever written such a painful experience on the canvas of an oil painting like Frida had ever done before.
My Birth (1932)
The picture is not only lonely and lonely, but also cruel, and even a little scary. In the center of the picture, a virgin-like face looks at all this helplessly, as if to say: Dear child, this is the beginning of the journey of life, painful and lonely. Frida later talked about the painting, covering her mother's head with a cloth because her mother died in the year of the painting. The interweaving of life and death, and the birth and death, are the themes that Frida has expressed many times.
Self-portrait with a choker (1933)
It is a standard portrait of Frida. A word eyebrow, upper lip with hair, jet black glitter bun, a necklace made of stone or some kind of fruit. Then there is the painter's contemptuous eyes. She was only 26 years old.
▲ Just a few small pinches (1935)
The Fridas returned to Mexico from the United States in 1935, after which Diego and Frida's sister began an affair. A pained Frida painted a picture of a man killing a woman and saying "I just stabbed her a few times". Their marriage broke up after several extramarital affairs in Diego, especially after Frida discovered that he was in a relationship with his own sister. This became a turning point in the relationship between the two, Diego never fell in love with any woman, and Frida began a complex relationship with many men and women.
Grandparents, Parents and Me (1936)
Frida painted an oil painting of her own family in 1936, her grandparents floating in the clouds with large portraits, and she herself appeared in three places: a fertilized egg, a fetus tied to the belt of her mother's white-trimmed wedding dress, and a child, holding a rope in her hand, tying the family of 7 tightly together.
▲Wet Nurse and Me (1937)
After Frida was born, her mother soon became pregnant with her sister, stopped breastfeeding prematurely, and found an Indian nurse to be her nurse. This nurse was in her prime, and her plump milk spilled out to feed little Frida. But the nurse put on a mask of Indians attending the funeral and dealt with the errands coldly, so that little Frida could not feel enough love.
The Little Monkey and Me (1937)
Frida and one of her pets. Typical of her: two almost connected eyebrows, exaggerated lip hair, masculine beauty on her face. At this time Frida was at the peak of her life, full of sexy charm. She constantly conquers new lovers, shows her charm and confirms her existence.
The Gift of Water (1938)
The painting depicts many of the major events in Frida's life. As the painting goes, she enters the canvas, her legs soaked in the bathtub that occupies the entire picture, and leans down to see the reflections of her various life stages emerging from the water. All the scenes in the water are not unfamiliar, frida took many of her previous paintings, as well as parts of other painters' works as symbols, and combined them in this painting, telling the story of her life. Some parts of the painting were later separated and painted separately.
▲ The Little Girl in the Mask (1938)
Mexican culture has never been a taboo against death. On the annual "Day of the Dead", adults and children wear skull masks and celebrate their dead relatives with songs and dances. But this little girl was playing alone in the wild wilderness, and the sky was gloomy and creepy.
The Dog and Me (1938)
In 1938, the surrealist painter Breton came to Mexico, he was surprised by this country, calling it a "natural surrealist country", and was surprised by Frida's paintings, and naturally became a member of Frida's lover team. Thanks to his help, Frida attended an exhibition in New York in late 1938, and Breton wrote the foreword himself, which was a huge success and half of the works sold.
Two Fridas (1939)
Frida divorced Diego in 1939 and moved to Paris for a time, where she became good friends with Duchamp and Picasso, during which time she created her most famous self-portrait, The Two Fridas. The work depicts two sides of the artist himself, sitting hand in hand, two hearts exposed and connected to each other. The one on the right, dressed in traditional Mexican aboriginal costumes, is the one that Rivera loves, and the fragile blood vessels loop around her right arm and are connected to the amulet she holds in her hand, which contains a portrait of Rivera's infancy, which is the source of her love and life. Frida, another in a European-style dress, had lost her love, lost part of herself, her heart was only half left, her blood vessels had just been cut, blood was dripping helplessly, and she could only hold the surgical forceps to control it. This abandoned European Frida is likely to bleed to death. Ominous clouds hung over the two Fridas, a cold painting that stated the warmest love and tribulations of her life. Frida said: "I have had two accidents in my life, one is a car accident, the other is Diego, and the latter is more serious. ”
▲Cut hair (1939)
The painting was created by Frida after divorcing Diego in 1939. Distinctly different from other self-portraits, she dressed in men's clothes and cut long hair that fascinated Diego. The lyrics sing "If I love you, it's because of your long hair; now that you comb your short hair, I don't love you anymore." "The painting was highly admired by the feminist movement of the 1970s, and the value of women is not to please men, but to be self-reliant. Although the two remarried a year later, Frida retained her independence and lived by painting. Today, if it weren't for Frida Caro, how many people would know that there was once a muralist named Diego in Mexico?
▲ Necklace with barbs and hummingbird (1940)
Frida used this self-portrait to express her inner emotions when she was in a crisis of emotion. The barbed necklace around her neck penetrates deep into her body, symbolizing the pain of the cone brought to her by Rivera.
▲Self-portrait Yoko (1940)
The painting contains the characteristics of Frida's typical self-portrait: the strong color use, the clothing and background of the characters are full of Mexican atmosphere. Although the monkey is a symbol of desire in Mexican mythology, in Frida's eyes it is a gentle and spiritual animal; in the painting, the human lips are plump, the eyebrows are like gulls, and the eyes seem to be somewhat sharp, and you can imagine how keenly and almost cruelly the author sees himself in the process of painting, looking at himself in the painting. The painting was bought by Madonna for $1 million in 1989 and was rented by Madonna for exhibition at Tate Modern in London when it held a retrospective of Frida Carroll's work in 2001.
▲Root (1943)
"You are dust, but you will return to dust." Mother Earth nurtures the plant and its children, and the material elements of man will still return to the earth. Is it the subject she wants to express?
Self-portrait with monkeys (1943)
Frida is always surrounded by animals, and her family zoo includes macaws, monkeys, Mexican hairless dogs, and eagles. Many of her self-portraits have images of animals, and the car accident at the age of 18 left her infertile for life, and these animals became her children and spiritual comfort.
▲ Broken Spine (1944)
As her deteriorating health pushes Frida to the brink of a hell of pain, her self-portraits freeze one by one, filled with the tension of despair and sorrow. By the time Frida appears in the painting as a body full of nails, the pain in her flesh has reached its peak. It was 1944, and Carol's health couldn't have been worse, the doctor had replaced her weak spine with a steel orthodontic, and she was locked in a circle of hard and cold steel rings, and every activity was a desperate struggle with pain. Therefore, she is painting almost with residual vitality, and at the same time, she becomes a third party through creation, coldly watching the misery that fate has given her. In the painting, she stands alone in a desolate landscape, her face covered with teardrops, nails even piercing into her skin through the cloth, from her forehead to her thighs, her body is in pain. Frida's eyes were in tears, but there was only indifference in her eyes, as if she were defying pain and fate.
▲ Despair (1945)
In 1945, Frida became bedridden due to illness. Due to her weakness after the operation, the doctors stipulated that she should eat a meal every 2 hours, and she had no appetite and was forced to eat. She imagined that these disgusting foods were poured into her mouth on a wooden shelf, and the desert in the background symbolized despair.
Wounded Deer (1946)
Still painful. In 1946, Frida underwent an operation to relieve back pain. However, the operation was unsuccessful and she was very disappointed. There are many different interpretations of the painting, physical pain, spiritual pain, or both? Others believe the painting expresses her and Diego's complex love-hate relationship.
Tree of Hope (1946)
The painting, also known as Moses, won the Grand Prize at the Biennale of the Palacio des Arts in Mexico. Moses depicts the root of life, the fetus on the river is Moses in the book of Exodus, flanked by great men from ancient times to the present, and the sun shines on everything, nourishing the fetus in conception. This is her reflection on the origin of life and history.
▲Self-portrait (1948)
In 1948, Frida's health deteriorated. This self-portrait is a reflection of her mood. Picasso told Diego: Frida's self-portrait is extraordinary; you look at those eyes, so evocative, you and I can't paint such a good self-portrait. Frida also said to her girlfriend: "When I'm away, when you see my self-portrait, you will think of me". Those eyes will not forget it when they see it.
Diego in the Mind (1949)
In the self-portrait, Frida has Rivera's head painted on the door of her head, suggesting that feelings for her husband linger in her mind, showing how much she values Rivera in her heart. The hair on her neck was messy, and the side reflected Frida's heart at that time because of her husband's emotional betrayal, which made Frida heartbroken and complicated.
The Embrace of Love (1949)
In this painting, husband Diego becomes the child in her arms. Diego was always in her heart, in her arms, no matter what happened, even if it gave her countless tears.
▲ Long Live Life (1954)
This is Frida's last painting, in which she writes her name, date and place of death on the subject watermelon (which is the symbol of the day of death in Mexico), as well as the capital "Long live life" in capital letters. At this time, Frida already has a premonition that her life is coming to an end, and when it is really time to leave, does she miss the excitement of life?
03
Frida's later influences
Frida left behind more than 150 paintings, more than 50 of which are self-portraits. Frida in the self-portrait is either rosy and full of spirits; or full of tears, sad and desperate; or facing the audience, untamed, etc., these different images record the various emotional experiences of her life stage. This is Frida's interpretation of the value of her life as a female artist.
Her themes have long since transcended the personal level and risen to the height of human beings, so that her works can shock the soul and endure.
Now when people talk about Frida, whether it is about herself or about her works, they will emphasize feminism, in fact, these are more interpretations of posterity.
Frida did not deliberately do something to pursue feminism before her death, but this did not affect the respect and admiration of feminists.
▲ The re-creation of his image by later generations
Both her paintings and her experiences continue to inspire and imagine, just as she never intentionally influenced the fashion industry, but invisibly became inextricably linked to the fashion industry.
Jean Paul Gautier saw Frida as his eternal muse and in the spring/summer of 1998 designed a series of ready-to-wear garments inspired by her personal style and paintings, modeled on Frida's appearance to maximise her signature thick eyebrows.
In the Spring/Summer 1998 collection, one ready-to-wear was directly inspired by Frida's famous self-portrait "Broken Spine", and 2007 was the thirtieth anniversary of Jean Paul Gautier's eponymous label, which was recreated on the runway as a tribute to Frida.
▲ 1998
▲ 2007
Frida is indeed a goddess in the hearts of many people, and her own diversity has made her admired in all kinds, she is like a bomb, waking people from the appearance of calm, aware of the different side of the world, aware of their own innermost pursuits.
Frida movie poster, 2002
The film won best makeup and hairstyle at the 75th Academy Awards
Best Original Score at the 75th Academy Awards
Nominated for Best Art Direction at the 75th Academy Awards
Frida may be a romantic in a way, inadvertently rebelling against reality and society, and her bravery and her unique insights make her stand out and awaken people's inner vitality.
Life itself is painful, and the cries of a person's life may be reflected. However, it is artists like Frida who are able to see and express the torrents that flow under the calm life, waking up people who are sleeping or pretending to be asleep.
Art is always associated with pain, and the sublime is always associated with pain; whether it is ultimately tragedy or comedy, in short, Frida's life is a drama like no other.