Gerry Souter

by Frida Kahlo

  By 1928, Frida had recovered enough to set aside her orthopaedic corsets and escape the narrow world of her bed to walk out of La Casa Azul once again into the social and political stew that was Mexico City. She began re-exploring the heady world of Mexican art and politics. She wasted no time in hooking up with her old comrades from the various cliques at the Preparatory School. Soon, as she drifted from one circle to another, she fell in with a collection of aspiring politicians, anarchists and Communists who gravitated around the American expatriate, Tina Modotti. Tina was a beautiful woman who came to Mexico in 1923 to study photography with her lover, the artistically ascetic American photographer Edward Weston. When he returned to California in 1924, she remained behind to begin a short storied life as an excellent photographer in her own right and companion to an assortment of revolutionaries. During the First World War and the early 1920s, many American intellectuals, artists, poets and writers fled the United States to Mexico and later to France in search of cheap living and political idealism. They banded together to praise or condemn each other’s works and drafted windy manifestos while participating in one long inebriated party that lasted several years, lurching from apartment to salon to saloon and back.

  21. The Broken Column, 1944. Oil on canvas,

  mounted on masonite, 40 x 30.7 cm.

  Museo Dolores Olmedo, Mexico City.

  Letter to Alejandro Gómez Arias

  May 31, 1927

  I’m almost finished with Chong Lee [Miguel Lira]’s portrait; I’m going to send you a photograph of it. [...] This gets worse and worse every day. I’ll have to convince myself that it is necessary, almost for sure, to be operated on. Otherwise, time goes by and suddenly you’ve wasted a hundred pesos, given away to a pair of thieves – that’s what most doctors are. The pain continues exactly the same in my bad leg and sometimes the good one hurts too; so I’m getting worse and worse, and without the least hope of getting better, because for that I need the most important thing: money. The sciatic nerve is damaged, as well as another nerve – whose name I don’t know – that branches into the genitals. I don’t know what’s wrong with two vertebrae and there’s buten other things that I can’t explain to you because I don’t understand them myself, so I don’t know what the operation will consist of, since nobody can explain it. You can imagine, from what I am telling you, the hope I have of being, if not well, at least better, by the time you arrive. I understand that it is necessary in this case to have a lot of faith, but you can’t imagine, not even for a moment, how much I suffer with this, precisely because I don’t think I’m going to recover. A doctor with some interest in me could possibly make me feel better, at least, but all these doctors who have been treating me are meanies who don’t care about me at all and who spend their time stealing. So I don’t know what to do and to despair is useless. [...] Lupe Vélez is shooting her first movie with Douglas Fairbanks, did you know that? How are the movie theatres in Germany? What other things about painting have you learned and seen? Are you going to go to Paris? How is the Rhine; German architecture? Everything.

  Letter to Alejandro Gómez Arias

  July 23, 1927

  My Alex:

  I just received your letter…You tell me that you will be taking a boat to Naples and that it is almost certain that you will go to Switzerland too. Let me ask you a favour: tell your aunt that you want to come back, that you don’t want to stay there after August under any circumstances... you can’t imagine what every day, every minute without you means to me...

  Cristina [her younger sister] is still very pretty, but she is very mean to me and to my mother.

  I did a portrait of Lira because he asked me to, but it is so bad that I don’t understand how he can tell me that he likes it. Buten horrible. I am not sending you the photograph since my dad doesn’t have all the plates in order yet because of the move; but it’s not worth it, since it has a very corny background and he looks like a cardboard figure. I only like one detail (one angel in the background), you’ll see it. My dad also took pictures of the others, of Adnana, of Alicia [Galant] with the veil (very bad), and of the one who aimed to be Ruth Quintanilla and that Salas likes. As soon as my dad makes me more copies I will send them to you. He only made one of each, but Lira took them away, because he says he is going to publish them in a magazine that is going into circulation in August (he must have already talked to you about it, hasn’t he?). It will be named Panorama, and the contributors for the first issue will be, among others, Diego, Montenegro (as a poet), and who knows how many others. I don’t think it will be anything very good. I already tore up Rios’s portrait, because you can’t imagine how it still annoyed me. Flaquer wanted to keep the backdrop (the woman and the trees) and the portrait ended its life as Joan of Arc did. Tomorrow is Cristina’s saint’s day. The boys are going to come over and so are the two children of Mr. Cabrera, the lawyer. They don’t look like him (they are very stupid) and they barely speak Spanish, because they have lived in the United States for twelve years and they only come to Mexico for vacations. The Galants will come too, la Pinocha [Esperanza Ordonez], etc... Only Chelo Navarro is not coming as she’s still in bed because of her baby girl; they say she’s very cute. This is all that is going on in my house, but none of this interests me.

  Tomorrow it will be a month and a half since I got the cast, and four months since I last saw you. I wish that next month life would start and I could kiss you. Will this come true?

  Your sister,

  Frieda

  22. Thinking about Death, 1943. Oil on canvas,

  mounted on masonite, 44.5 x 36.3 cm.

  Museo Dolores Olmedo, Mexico City.

  23. Self-Portrait with Monkey, 1938.

  Oil on masonite, 40.6 x 30.5 cm.

  Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo.

  24. Self-Portrait with “Bonito”, 1942.

  Oil on canvas, 55 x 43.5 cm. Private collection.

  25. Self-Portrait with Monkey and Parrot, 1942.

  Oil on masonite, 54.6 x 43.2 cm. Private collection.

  While most were a motley collection of exiles who skipped across the border just ahead of bankruptcy and bad debts, some genuine talents added their luster to Mexican society. John Dos Passos lived for some periods in Mexico City as did Katherine Anne Porter and poet Hart Crane.[5] These expatriates fashioned a sentimental vision of the noble peasant toiling in the fields and promoted the Mexican view of life as fiestas y siestas interrupted by the occasional bloody peasant revolt and a scattering of political assassinations.

  Into this tequila-fueled debating society stepped the formidable presence of Diego Rivera, the prodigal returned home from 14 years abroad and having been kicked out of Moscow. Despite his rude treatment at the hands of Stalinist art critics and the Russian government’s unveiled threats of harm if he did not leave, Diego embraced Communism as the world’s salvation. Soon after his return to Mexico in 1921, he sought out pro-Mexican art movements, Mexican muralists and easel painters, photographers, and writers. Within this deeply Mexicanistic society, Tina Modotti’s circle of expatriates and fellow travellers fit right in to the party circuit. Diego also went to work on another series of murals for the government ministry of education.

  Frida drifted into this stimulating circle. She and Tina Modotti became friends. Possessing similar incendiary personalities and sensual vitality, they drank and danced deep into the hot Mexican nights at the moveable salons. In the sweltering rooms, crowded with drunken eccentrics and oblivious hangers-on, political rhetoric or denunciations of artistic merit often took on an edge. Challenges sometimes required redress by gunplay. Gulping down a quart of tequila did not enhance marksmanship and usually, when the smoke cleared, the only casualties were the furniture, walls, streetlamps and at one particular salon, a record player. As Frida recalled her first meeting with her future husband:

  We got to know each other at a time when everybody was packing pistols; when they felt like it, they simply shot up the street lamps i
n Avenida Madero. “Diego once shot a gramophone at one of Tina’s parties. That was when I began to be interested in him although I was also afraid of him”.[6]

  So, the small and still physically frail Frida Kahlo had a chance to see old soft Panzón in a different light, gripping a smoking Colt revolver in a crowded room suddenly fallen silent. The chubby muralist had hidden layers to him as well as a manly set of cojones. And Diego saw the same flash in the school girl who had stood eye to eye with his now ex-wife, Lupe Marín, and held her ground. This was more than a spoiled child of the bourgeoisie who smiled back at him through the cigar smoke, punctuating her intelligent vocabulary with vulgar street slang for effect. She challenged him and Diego Rivera, ever the swordsman, never refused a challenge. The actual point of their first meeting is difficult to discover since they were both elaborate story tellers who often bent the truth to fit the moment. There’s a charming tale that has Frida rising from her bed, tucking some of her work under her arm and hobbling with a cane to where Diego worked on the ministry of education murals. She calls to him high on the scaffolding:

  “Diego, come down!”

  He peers into the courtyard at this young girl wearing a blue and white European school costume, long braids and leaning on a cane. It was his curse to be easily distracted from his work so he lumbers down the rickety stairs.

  26. Self-Portrait with Velvet Dress (detail), 1926.

  Oil on canvas, 79.7 x 60 cm. Private collection, Mexico City.

  27. Portrait of Engineer Eduardo Morillo.

  Oil on masonite, 39.5 x 29.5 cm.

  Dolores Olmedo Collection, Mexico City.

  “But I haven’t come here to flirt”, she says, “even though you’re a notorious ladies’ man. I just want to show you my pictures. If you find them interesting, tell me; if not, tell me anyway because then I’ll find something else to do to support my family”.

  The big man with the shaggy head of hair and paint-smeared apron wrapped around his girth looks at each painting. He separates one from the other three and looks at it for a longer time.

  “First of all, I like the self-portrait. That is original. The other three pictures seem to have been influenced by things you must have seen somewhere. Now, go home and paint another picture. Next Sunday I’ll come and tell you what I think of it”.

  Frida finishes her tale, “He did just that and concluded that I was talented”.[7]

  If this romantic story is to be believed, Diego Rivera concluded more than the depth of her talent. His original interest in the cheeky young girl, whose feisty attitude had charmed him, turned to a deeper respect, an appreciation of her as a fellow artist to whom he could relate on many different levels. It wasn’t long before he dusted off his brown Stetson hat, shook out his sagging jacket, polished the toes of his boots on the backs of his pant legs and began showing up at La Casa Azul every Sunday. Diego had become a courting suitor. Frida’s mother was against the match. She likened Diego to a big toad standing in the doorway. Guillermo Kahlo took Diego aside, steering him into the central courtyard. Diego may have looked like a fat toad. He may have been twenty years her senior. He was divorced – twice – and an atheist, and a Communist to boot, but he was also a famous painter who had commissions and money and the respect of both the government and the artistic community to which Guillermo Kahlo aspired.

  Guillermo leaned close. “Do you realise she’s a little devil?”

  Diego nodded, “I know”.

  Guillermo made a final appeal, “She is a sick person and all her life she will be sick. She is intelligent, but not pretty. Think it over if you want, and if you wish to get married, I give you my permission”.

  Diego nodded again, “Gracias”.

  Guillermo nodded. “All right, you’ve been warned”.[8]

  Letter to Alejandro Gómez Arias

  April 31 [1927], Sunday Labour Day

  My Alex,

  I just got your letter of the 13th, and this has been the only happy moment in all this time. Even though thinking of you always helps me to feel less sad, your letters help even more. How I wish I could explain to you, minute by minute, my suffering. Since you left, I’ve gotten worse and I cannot for a moment either console myself or forget you. Friday, they put the plaster cast on me, and since then it’s been a real martyrdom that is not comparable to anything else. I feel suffocated, my lungs and my whole back hurt terribly; I can’t even touch my leg. I can hardly walk, let alone sleep. Imagine, they hung me by just my head for two and a half hours, and then I stood on my tiptoes for more than one hour while [the cast] was dried with hot air; but when I got home, it was still completely wet.

  They put it on me at the Hospital de las Damas Francesas, because at the Hospital Frances it would have been necessary to stay at least a week, as they wouldn’t do it otherwise. At the other hospital they started to put it on me at 9:15 A.M. and I was able to leave at approximately 1 P.M. They didn’t let Adriana [her sister] or anybody else in, and I was suffering horribly, all by myself. I’m going to have this martyrdom for three or four months, and if I don’t get well with that, I sincerely want to die, because I can’t stand it anymore. It’s not only the physical suffering, but also that I don’t have the least entertainment. I never leave this room, I can’t do anything, I can’t walk. I’m completely desperate and, above all, you’re not here. On top of that, I only hear bad news. My mother is still very sick, she’s had seven strokes this month, and my father is the same, and broke. There’s something to be completely desperate about, don’t you think? I lose weight every day, and nothing amuses me anymore. The only thing that makes me happy is that the boys visit me; last Thursday Chong, el Güero Garay, Salas, and Goch came, and they’re going to come back on Wednesday. Nevertheless, this makes me suffer too because you’re not with us.

  Your little sister and your mum are doing well, but I’m sure they would give anything to have you here; do everything you can to come back soon. Don’t doubt, even for a moment, that I’ll be exactly the same person when you come back. And you – don’t forget me and write to me a lot. I look forward to getting your letters almost with anguish; they make me feel infinitely well.

  Never stop writing to me, at least once a week; you promised. Tell me if I can write to you at the Mexican Legation in Berlin or at the same place as always. I need you so much, Alex!

  [water sign as signature]

  Letter to Guillermo Kablo

  San Francisco, Cal. November 21, 1930

  Lovely Daddy,

  If you knew the pleasure getting your little letter gave me, you’d write to me every day, because you can’t imagine how happy it made me. The only thing I didn’t like is that you told me that you are still quick-tempered, but since I am just like you, I understand you very well, and I know that it is very hard to control oneself. Anyway, try as hard as you can; at least do it for mum who is so nice to you. Diego laughed really hard at what you told me about the Chinese, but he says he will take care of me so they won’t kidnap me. I am well, under [a treatment of] injections by a certain Dr. Eloesser, who is of German origin but speaks Spanish better than someone from Madrid, so I can clearly explain to him everything I feel. I’m learning a little bit of English every day, and I can at least understand the essentials, shop at stores, etc., etc…

  Tell me in your reply how you are and how mum and everybody are doing. I miss you very much – you know how much I love you – but certainly in March we will be together again and we will talk a whole lot. Don’t fail to write me and feel free to let me know if you need some money. Diego sends his warmest wishes and says that he doesn’t write to you because he has so much to do.

  I send you all my affection and a thousand kisses. Your daughter who adores you, Frieducha

  Here is a kiss

  Write to me everything you do and everything that happens to you

  28. Self-Portrait as a Tehuana or Diego on

  My Mind, 1943. Oil on masonite, 76 x 61 cm.

  Collection
Jacques and Natasha Gelman, Mexico City.

  Señora Diego Rivera

  On August 21, 1929, Frida Kahlo, age 22, married Diego Rivera, age 42, in a civil ceremony, joined by a few close friends at the Coyoacán City Hall. Looking on as official witnesses were a homeopathic doctor and a wig maker. The judge was a pal of Rivera’s from his student days at the School of Fine Arts. Diego, his hair slicked back, stood up in a plain gray suit, his Stetson hat, wide belt and the Colt revolver in his waistband. Frida had borrowed a long skirt and blouse from her maid and wore a red reboso stole over her shoulders. She barely came up to his shoulder, giving the couple the appearance of a small dark china doll next to an immense porcelain pug dog. After the ceremony they posed for a photographer from La Prensa. The accompanying story read:

  Last Wednesday in the nearby village of Coyaocan, the controversial painter Diego Rivera was married to Miss Frida (sic) Kahlo, one of his students. The bride was dressed, as can be seen, in simple street garb, and the painter Rivera as an American without a vest. The marriage was not at all pompous, but carried out in an extremely cordial atmosphere with all modesty, without ostentation and minus ceremonious pretentiousness. The newlyweds were extensively congratulated after the marriage by some intimate friends.