PERSONAL OPINIONS

It took me some time to think about a painting since the first thing that came to my mind was to talk about Frida Khalo and to be honest it was not easy to me to choose just one painting!

So at the end I have decided to talk about her, so then I can include a couple of paintings  and not just one J

Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo Calderón  was born on July 6, 1907 in Coyoacan, Mexico City, Mexico.  Talking about her parents now, well his father was a German descendant and a photographer. He immigrated to Mexico in this country he met Matilde and they got married.

Matilde was  half Amerindian and half Spanish.  They had 4 children.  Frida had 2 older sisters and one younger sister.  Her younger sister was someone who caused her pain in her life. I will talk about this later.

Well when Frida was about 6 years old she contracted polio, because of this she had to be bedridden for nine months. Her right leg and food grew much thinner than her left one because of this disease. This explains why she always wore long skirts, it was to cover her legs. To recover from this disease his father encouraged her to do lots of sports. Those sports were soccer, swimming, wrestle (this one was very unusual at that time for a girl). She had a really close relationship with her father.

Frida attended the renowned National Preparatory in 1922, here she met Diego Rivera who was working on a mural called The Creation on the school campus.  It was love at first sight, actually it is been said that she told a friend that one day she would marry that man.  Khalo joined a gand of students which shared the similar political and intellectual views. 

When she was about 16 years old she had a terrible accident.  This happened on a September afternoon when she traveled on a bus with the gang´s leader, Alejandro Gomez Arias.  The bus collided with a streetcar and Frida Kahlo was seriously injured. A steel handrail impaled her through the hip. Her spine and pelvis are fractured and this accident left her in a great deal of pain, both physically and physiologically.

She had to stay for several weeks in the Red Cross Hospital in Mexico City. She had to wear full body cast for three months. This was the time when she started painting and finished her first self-portrait  the following year.  "I paint myself because I am often alone and I am the subject I know best" Frida Khalo.  Her parents encouraged her to paint and made a special easel made for her so she could paint in bed. They also gave her brushes and boxes of paints.

Frida Kahlo reconnected with Rivera in 1928. She asked him to evaluate her work and he encouraged her. The two soon started the romantic relationship. They had a really unusual relationship even though they got married they lived in separate houses.  Well remember I said something about Frida’s youngest sister? Well this is what it happened. Diego painted Cristina in the nude and these two had an affair. Diego Rivera and Frida Khalo used to cheat eachother.

Frida Khalo died on July 13, 1954 at the Blue House.