Frida Kahlo, the splendor of scars and the eternity of colors

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In the deep blue of Coyoacán, south of Mexico City, a child was born in 1907, destined to be reborn a thousand times from her ashes. Her name: Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón. She was born in the Casa Azul, the Blue House, which she would never truly leave, even after death: a sanctuary of sorrows and joys, the matrix of an identity woven of light and shadow. Her father, Guillermo Kahlo, was a German photographer who had emigrated to Mexico, stern and fragile, but modestly tender. Her mother, Matilde Calderón, was a pious and firm woman, haunted by domestic demands. In this contrasting home, Frida learned very early on to walk between shadow and fire.

At the age of six, polio struck her. Her right leg remains thinner, weaker: the other children nickname her "the lame one." But already, she responds with defiance, redoubling her vitality, riding horses like a man, trying sports reserved for boys, refusing to be a prisoner of a disability. The brilliant teenager pursues her studies at the prestigious Escuela Nacional Preparatoria. In a Mexico ravaged by the Revolution, she thrives on debates and reading, and learns about political thought. She dreams of medicine, scientific exploration, perhaps of a future outside the arts. But fate, sometimes cruel, chooses another path for her. September 1925. A bus is taking her home when tragedy strikes: a tram rips the bus open, shattering her life. A metal bar pierces her body from side to side. Fractures in her pelvis, back, and ribs. Dozens of bones are pulverized. Blood becomes her horizon. She brushes with death but clings to life with an already characteristic rage. Doctors believe she is condemned to lifelong immobility. Lying for months in a bed of pain, she demands a mirror above her and begins to paint to survive. She paints her face because she is the only available model, captive in her room transformed into a workshop of despair. The intimate then becomes the universe.

From these years, Frida's first self-portraits are born, in which she depicts herself with fierce intensity, surrounded by plant and animal symbols. What would become her signature is already evident: an art without detours, a radical immersion into the body and soul, a mirror of transcended suffering. Her encounter with Diego Rivera, the famous Mexican muralist, marked another turning point. Twenty years her senior, Diego was already a respected, adored, and controversial artist, immense in both body and talent. Their union, celebrated in 1929, seemed improbable: she, tiny, resplendent, and fragile; he, a disorderly and unfaithful giant. But between them, love was a hurricane. Together, they traveled to the United States: San Francisco, Detroit, New York. Frida discovered a cold, modern world that both fascinated and rejected her. It was there, in Detroit, that she poured onto canvas the pain of her miscarriages, the drama of impossible motherhood, a consequence of her body devastated by the accident. Henry Ford Hospital (1932), with its bloody bed floating in the middle of a metallic desert, is both a cry of pain and a hymn to the courage to bear witness. In her travels, she also saw the contrasts between opulence and poverty, capitalism and revolutionary ideals. Frida felt uprooted, embodying the Mexican land in every fiber.

When she returned, she returned to the colors of her country, to her indigenous traditions, to the Mexico she made her emblem. Her Tehuana clothes—the traditional dresses of the Mexican isthmus, with their wide skirts and flowery tunics—became her armor and her standard, displaying a cultural affiliation that was as political as it was artistic. Frida's art evolved into a painting that blended brutal realism and symbolic dreaminess. She stood at the intersection of surrealism and raw autobiography, even though she rejected the surrealist label, stating: "I never painted my dreams. I painted my reality." Her reality was that of a broken body, a passionate heart, and an unfettered mind. Frida and Diego welcomed the great figures of the time into their circle. Their home became a hive of artists and revolutionaries: the couple rubbed shoulders with European surrealists, including André Breton, who quickly recognized Frida's genius. In 1939, in Paris, she exhibited at the Louvre—the first Mexican artist to have a work included in the prestigious collection. There, she rubbed shoulders with Picasso, Kandinsky, and Duchamp. But while Europe greeted her enthusiastically, she held deep within her the untamed soul of Mexico.

The following years were marked by painful separations from Diego, multiple infidelities, but also by passionate reunions: an impossible love, necessary and destructive. Over time, the illness gnawed away at her more. Surgeries accumulated, her body became covered in scars, metal corsets, or plaster casts that she adorned with drawings and flowers, transforming constraint into a work of art. Even her leg amputation in 1953 did not silence her. A few months earlier, she had braved the pain to attend, lying on a bed carried to a gallery, her major solo exhibition in Mexico City: her ultimate triumph, her revenge against fate. She died in 1954, at just forty-seven years old. On her deathbed, a mysterious smile adorning her weary face, she left behind approximately 150 paintings, a flamboyant universe, and a legend. Her time was brief, but incandescent: today, she has become a universal icon of resilience, freedom, and indomitable femininity. Frida Kahlo was never just another painter: she was an intimate revolution made visible. In her flayed flesh, she gave birth to unprecedented visual worlds. In her pain, she sowed immortal flowers. She tells us, again and again, that art can save, that the truth of the body is poetry, and that, even broken, a human being can shine brighter than a whole star.

Major Works by Frida Kahlo

Here is a list of her most famous paintings:

• Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird (1940)

• The Two Fridas (1939)

• The Broken Column (1944)

• Henry Ford Hospital (1932)

• The Wounded Deer (1946)

• What the Water Gave Me (1938)

• Self-Portrait as a Tehuana (1943)

• The Wounded Table (1940)

• Roots (1943)

• Self-Portrait Dedicated to Leon Trotsky (1937)

• The Frame (El marco) (1938)

References

– Frida Kahlo – Biographie courte, dates et citations, L’Internaute.
– Le rapport de Frida Kahlo à son corps, Google Arts & Culture.
– Qui est Frida Kahlo ? Vie et œuvre de cette artiste incontournable, Carré d’artistes.
– Frida Kahlo, Encyclopédie Wikipedia.
– Delphine Crenn, « Frida Kahlo et l’engagement politique », Clio. Femmes, Genre, Histoire (OpenEdition Journals).
– Frida Kahlo, sur France 4 : portrait intime de la femme et de la peintre, Le Monde, 13 juillet 2024.

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