by Frida Kahlo
Her reoccurring bad health forced Frida into the American Cowdray Hospital in Mexico City for another bout of surgery. Though it seems difficult to accept considering her active and strenuous lifestyle, but Frida Kahlo suffered from daily pain and fatigue. Doctors paraded in and out of her life offering various diagnoses and cures directly related to her 1925 accident. Most were wrong, but she listened to them all. As anyone with a chronic bad back, asthma, arthritis, migraines, or any condition that produces lingering or sudden periods of pain understands. Life becomes a distraction, an escape from the pain that is always there, an automatic function like breathing and swallowing. Frida pushed her other senses into overload and turned a stoic face to the world.
Today, modern medicine has studied her symptoms, relying on notes from those doctors and in particular, Dr. Leonardio Zamudio who has her complete medical records. The latest diagnosis is she suffered:
…posttraumatic fibromyalgia. This prevalent syndrome is characterised by persistent widespread pain, chronic fatigue, sleep disorders, and vegetative symptoms, and by the presence of tender points in well-defined anatomic areas. The concept of fibromyalgia as a clinical entity as we know it today was probably unknown to most physicians of the early twentieth century. This diagnosis explains her chronic, severe, widespread pain accompanied by profound fatigue. It also explains the lack of response to diverse forms of treatment. The onset of fibromyalgia after physical trauma is well-recognised.[25]
Frida’s inward journey to rebuild and reshape her life found expression in her 1936 painting on metal, My Grandparents, My Parents and I. A naked five-year-old Frida stands as a giant towering in the courtyard of La Casa Azul against a brown and cloudy desert landscape. She clutches a red ribbon that connects portraits of her grandparents joining them to the central wedding portrait of her parents. It’s a charming bit of allegorical kitsch, but Frida carries the story further back to her prenatal portrait in the womb connected by the umbilical to her mother.
66. The Wounded Deer (The Little Deer), 1946.
Oil on masonite, 22.4 x 30 cm.
Private collection, Houston (Texas).
Letter to Diego Rivera
July 23, 1935
A certain letter I happened to see, in a certain coat, belonging to a certain man, coming from a certain lady from distant and damned Germany. I think it must be the lady that Willi Valentiner sent here to have fun and with “scientific”, “artistic”, and “archeological” purposes... made me angry and to tell you the truth, jealous...
Why do I have to be so stubborn and obstinate as not to understand that the letters, the problems with skirts, the female teachers of... English, the Gypsy models, the helpers with “good will”, the disciples interested in the “art of painting”, and the plenipotentiary women sent from faraway places are just simply jokes, and that deep inside you and I love each other a lot! Even if we experience endless adventures, cracks in the doors, “mentions” from mothers, and international complaints, don’t we always love each other! I think that what is happening is that I am a little stupid and a fool because all these things have happened and have repeated themselves during the seven years that we have lived together. All this anger has simply made me understand better that I love you more than my own skin, and that even though you don’t love me as much, you love me a little anyway – don’t you? If this is not true, I’ll always be hopeful that it could be, and that’s enough for me...
Love me a little
I adore you
Frieda
Letter to Ella Wolfe
Mexico, March I9J6
Beautiful Ella,
Martin must have told you about what has happened to me these last few months, and that is why I will not bother you with all the details of the adventures, vicissitudes, and troubles of the powerful Chicua Rivera… It’s only the head that is malfunctioning and there is no remedy since I was born “cuckoo” and cuckoo I will die, In spite of all that, you love me, don’t you?
[…] As for the biography, we don’t even have to talk about it since you and everyone knows that Bert must write it [...] Diego thinks that in case Covici Friede publishes the book, Bert should get information regarding issues of price, royalties, etc. from the beginning, because Covici pulled several fast ones on Diego regarding the money with the “Portrait of America“. That could be avoided this time by clarifying all these things in the contract, don’t you think?
This is the most important thing: Diego doesn’t think that the frescoes painted in Mexico have the same artistic interest as the ones he painted in the United States, and that the “Portrait of Mexico” should be done considering more the political and social interest that the frescoes contain, taking the analysis of these [frescoes] as an excuse to analyse Mexico’s current political situation clearly and openly, which is of most interest, thus creating a book helpful to workers and peasants, by avoiding as much as possible the exaggeration of the artistic value of the paintings and considering their political content. Naturally, this analysis would be broad and precise, and Diego would do it according to his political beliefs, especially now, after all the C.P.’s disgusting actions here in Mexico and the world over. I don’t know what Bert will think about this, since you know there are differences between them. I think it is very important for them to talk frankly about this from the beginning, since Diego would not accept putting together the book if it’s not in the way I just explained to you. That’s why I think it will be good for you to ask Bert what he thinks about this and whether he thinks he and Diego can come to an agreement. Otherwise, he can write to Diego personally with suggestions as to how the book could be done without friction between them. These things aside, I don’t think there’s anyone better than Bert to write this book and certainly Diego could not do it better with anyone else. Tell Bert these things and answer me soon so I can tell Diego what the two of you think […]
You, darling, receive millions of kisses to share among yourself, Boit, your mummy and dad, brothers and sisters, etc [...]
(Special ones for you from la Chicua)
[Four lip prints appear at the bottom.]
67. Memory or The Heart, 1937.
Oil on metal, 40 x 28 cm.
Private collection, New York.
And then further still, as, to the left of the Blue House, a single sperm penetrates an egg, the moment of conception. By acknowledging the ties to her past, this flashback and consolidation of all the genetic elements that sum up her existence – and unfortunately end with her childless state – possibly serves to reinforce the new start to her life, the second birth of Frida Kahlo.
She had begun to paint again, had established some equilibrium in her relationships with Diego and her sister and looked forward to a period of stability in her congenial, Bohemian lifestyle. And then a hunted fugitive, dogged by Stalinist assassins stepped off a rust bucket oil tanker in Tampico and, once more, her life was hurled into emotional chaos.
Lev Davidovich Bronstein was born in the Ukraine on November 7, 1879. He was a bright lad and attracted to radical politics during his university years. His activities and oratory in Tzarist Russia ended in flight and exile in England where he changed his name to Leon Trotsky. An avowed Marxist, he aligned himself with Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and returned to Russia following the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. Lenin (“the end justifies the means”) and Trotsky, his number two, didn’t see eye to eye in their Communist dogma, but both became heroic icons in the Bolshevik movement as the government began to stabilise. Trotsky’s high position in the Kremlin halls of power plummeted after Lenin’s death and the Marxist ideologue became an obstacle to Josef Stalin’s brutish power grab. After being battered about by trumped-up charges of counter-revolutionary activities, Trotsky was kicked out of Russia in 1929. Shortly thereafter, Stalin realised he had made a mistake allowing Trotsky to remain alive and keep up a steady stream of anti-Stalin books and articles. The GPU – Russia’s Secret Police – was dispatched to silence Trotsky onc
e and for all. With these killers hot on his trail, Leon and his wife, Natalia, began a long odyssey of globe hopping, relying on friends for their safety.
Diego Rivera was a committed Trotskyite. Though he had been kicked out of the party, he joined Trotsky’s Fourth International, lending his prestige to this Trotsky organisation that stated in their 1936 Olso Convention:
The working class of the U.S.S.R. has been robbed of the last possibility of a legal reformation of the state. The struggle against the bureaucracy necessarily becomes a revolutionary struggle. True to the traditions of Marxism, the Fourth International decisively rejects individual terror, as it does all other means of political adventurism. The bureaucracy can be smashed only by means of the goal-conscious movement of the masses against the usurpers, parasites and oppressors.
68. Roots or The Pedregal, 1943. Oil on metal,
30.5 x 49.9 cm. Private collection, Houston (Texas).
Aware of Trotsky’s nine years of peripatetic wanderings in search of safe haven, Diego petitioned Mexico’s President Cardenas to give sanctuary to the revolutionary on the run. Cardenas granted permission providing Trotsky didn’t interfere with the Mexican government’s internal affairs. On January 9, 1937, Trotsky watched the wooden gangplank lower onto the dock at Tampico, Mexico. At his elbow, Natalia scanned the greeting party for friendly faces. She’d grown tired of skulking around Europe just ahead of hard-eyed men with guns, knives and bombs. On the dock, looking back at her and Leon, were smiling Trotsky supporters, party functionaries – and Frida Kahlo.
An eye problem coupled with Diego’s bad kidneys had kept him in the hospital and Frida represented him at the welcome. The party was quickly bundled into automobiles and then onto a train for the ride to Mexico City. To confuse possible assassins lying in wait, false welcoming parties were established while the train stopped at a small station outside the city. Eventually, the party reached Frida’s parents’ home, La Casa Azul in Coyoacán. On arrival, a makeshift group of bodyguards took up posts outside watching the rooftops and street as the Trotskys hurried inside. Guillermo Kahlo smiled politely and shook hands, not having a clue to the identity of the gray-bearded man with the dowdy wife.
Trotsky and his wife lived off and on at La Casa Azul for two years as the aging revolutionary wrote a continuing stream of anti-Stalinist tracts for publication around the world. His age – a hard-lived 58 – did not interfere with his libido, nor did it keep Frida from finding his military posture, piercing eyes and dazzling intellect very attractive. His old-world manners, admonitions against her smoking and excess drink plus Diego’s unswerving devotion to the man made him a perfect target for Frida’s considerable powers of seduction and continuing need to give Diego a few more “nips” for his affair with Cristina. She turned up the heat, speaking to Trotsky in English, a language unfamiliar to Trotsky’s wife. And if she made no secret of her desires in person, Frida’s paintings in 1937 reflected her new confidence and purpose.
The volume of her work increased as did the variety of her subject matter. Continuing the examination of her childhood, she painted My Nanny and I, this time adding her roots to ancient Mexico. She was turned over to an Indian wet nurse when she was a baby. Having no recollection of the nurse’s actual features, she commemorates that event by depicting the substitute with the face of a carved Indian mask. From the nurse’s breast flows the fruit of the soil, nurtured by rain drops pelting down from a cloud-roiled sky – “milk of the Virgin” according to Frida’s mother. Frida’s adult head grows from the child’s body as in My Birth.
69. Self-Portrait dedicated to Dr. Eloesser, 1940.
Oil on masonite, 59.5 x 40 cm. Private collection, USA.
70. Self-Portrait dedicated to Sigmund Firestone, 1940.
Oil on masonite, 61 x 43 cm. Private collection, USA.
71. Me and My Parrots, 1941.
Oil on canvas, 82 x 62.8 cm. Private collection.
72. Self-Portrait with Monkeys, 1943.
Oil on canvas, 81.5 x 63 cm. Collection of
Jacques and Natasha Gelman, Mexico.
But here, she’s relaxed and accepting in her virtually luminescent white gown trimmed in lace. Curiously, in the arms of the stone-faced, golem-like surrogate, the girl seems as much a sacrifice as something cherished. At the bottom of the painting is a retablo banner, but it is blank.
Of this painting, Diego Rivera wrote in 1943:
And Frida is the only example in the history of art of someone who tore out her breast and heart to tell the biological truth of what she feels in them of reason/imagination that is faster than light, she painted her mother and wetnurse, knowing that she really does not know their faces. The nourishing “nana’s” face is only the Indian mask of hard rock, and her glands are clusters that drip milk like the rain fertilises the earth, or like the tear that fertilises pleasure. The mother is the grieving mater with seven daggers of pain that makes possible the torn opening through which emerges the Child Frida, the only human force that has created birth by means of its own action in reality.[26]
She also painted her only formal portrait of Diego Rivera. The year had not been good for Diego’s mural commissions. He looks tired and undernourished, His illnesses and eye problems have taken their toll. Though his own work volume had slipped, he tirelessly devoted much of his time to propping up Frida’s confidence in her capabilities. Her rendition of his diminished presence is tender and sympathetic.
On the other hand, his act of callous infidelity with her sister would never be far from Frida’s palette and brushes. She created Memory in 1937, an enigmatic trio of three Fridas: as a suspended schoolgirl costume at the time of her accident, but with only one arm, and as Frida dressed in white with her cropped hair and wearing a bolero jacket made of cowhide. A wooden lance pierces a heart-shaped, see-through hole in the jacket. No hands extend from the jacket’s cuffs, but the third Frida – a Tehuana costume on a hanger – extends an arm to the wounded and helpless Frida. As though wrenched from her chest by an ancient Aztec priest, her huge heart lies abandoned on a desert landscape pumping vast quantities of blood into the soil and the sea. Red blood vessels tie the three Frida images together – each of them incomplete and all tied to the pain of a broken heart.
My Doll and I, painted in oil on metal, speaks to her childless state, not with pathos, or longing, but rather with an aloof acceptance. She wears a Tehuana skirt and blouse and sits next to a naked boy doll. But she’s smoking as though waiting for a bus. All her life she loved and collected dolls and yet this one seems abandoned and ignored seated an arm’s length away on the bare cane bed.
73. My Nanny and I, 1937. Oil on metal,
30.5 x 34.7 cm. Museo Dolores Olmedo, Mexico City.
74. Two Nudes in the Wood or The Earth or My Nanny and I, 1939.
Oil on metal, 25 x 30.5 cm. Private collection.
Letter to the Mexican composer Carlos Chávez
April 29, 1936
Brother,
I received your poem and I don’t need to tell you that I was very happy. You know this well. I’d like to be able to answer you with verses, but this time I’m not even in the mood since Diego and I have been at the Hospital Inglés for the last two weeks. I had surgery again with dubious results, because my paw does not want to heal. But that’s the least of my concerns. I’m so sad about Diego’s illness that you wouldn’t believe it. He has a big problem with his eye. I’ve had a few days like never before; now I’ll tell you everything in detail.
Diego started having problems with his left eye about a month ago. At the beginning we thought it was not serious, since he’s had problems with his eyes many times before, as you know, but without any major consequences. But this time it’s a serious infection in his lachrymal gland (he had tests done); it turned out to be streptococcus. We have seen all the eye doctors in Mexico. They all have the same opinion; they say it is a dangerous thing and that he runs the risk of losing his eye in case of the slightest injury to the conju
nctiva, a situation that could easily happen with any dust particle or external agent that could injure his eye directly, given his delicate condition. These microbes have already infiltrated in the skin and tissue of the eyelid, in the lower part of his face, and in his forehead, so he has a terrible swelling that has almost closed his eye. There was a moment when we thought everything was lost; you can imagine his situation and my anguish. I cannot even describe it with words. Three days ago the inflammation seemed to start coming down a little, so there is hope that this will not lead to more serious consequences. However, Dr. Silva says that the danger is not over yet and that the recovery is quite long. He’s in a very dark room and the poor man feels truly desperate (rightly so) and I, helpless as I am, can hardly see him since I cannot walk yet. Even if I could, I couldn’t solve anything or help him in any way. This is what has made me crazy with anguish. We’re thinking of taking him to New York if he does not get better this week, to see what the eye doctors up there can do for him. I believe that it is not exactly a local eye problem, but a general condition related to the malfunction of his thyroid. Moreover, I think that a trip in his condition would be terrible and a huge responsibility. We wouldn’t know what to do if something happened because of the trip. So here I am, desperate, like an idiot, without knowing how to solve this situation. Naturally, I am not going to fix anything with my stupidities and my desperation. I think that the most reasonable thing would be to wait for the injections of “ Bioformina“ and Dr. Silva’s treatment to take effect, since it would be damn foolish to expect miracles in a situation that has to take its natural course.