Frida

by Hayden Herrera

  For her pupils, Frida’s Coyoacán house was an education in itself. Their models were anything close at hand—monkeys, dogs, cats, frogs and fish, all the plants in the garden, all the art in the house. Frida tried to give them an aesthetic approach to everyday life by means of such games as arranging and rearranging the fruit, flowers, and earthenware plates on the dining room table to see who could make the most striking composition. "[She] constantly renewed the scenography of objects around her,” remembers Fanny Rabel. “She would wear twenty rings one day and twenty other rings another day. Her milieu was full of things, and they were always kept in order.”

  Frida made her pupils into a family—her family—and her house an exotic home for them, one in which they encountered a whole new world. “When she was ill and staying home, there were always people around,” Fanny Rabel says. “That was one of the things that impressed me very much—all those people, crazy people like Jacqueline Breton, Leonora Carrington [English-born Surrealist painter, who has lived in Mexico since 1947], Esteban Frances [Spanish-born Surrealist painter], Benjamin Péret, artists and collectors and all kinds of friends. I looked at them with huge eyes, and Frida used to wink at me, because I was so impressed. And I remember after many years I used to tell her that I thought I was never going to be an artist, because I was too normal, and one must have to have a great personality to be a great artist. Then Frida would say, ’You know why they do all those crazy things? Because they don’t have any personality. They must make it up. You are going to be an artist because you have talent. You are an artist, so you don’t have to do all those things.’ ”

  As much as Frida advocated direct contact between art and life, she also wanted her students to read (Walt Whitman and Mayakovsky, for example), and to learn from art history, by sketching pre-Columbian sculptures in the anthropology museum and colonial art in other museums. Pre-Hispanic art she called the “root of our modern art,” and besides the anonymous retablo painters, her favorite artists were José Maria Estrada, Hermenegildo Bustos, José Maria Velasco, Julio Ruelas, Saturnino Herrán, Goitia, Posada, Doctor Atl, and of course, Diego. She showed her pupils books with reproductions of paintings by such Europeans as Rousseau and Brueghel. Picasso, she told them, was a “great and many-sided painter.” She also conveyed to them her interest in biology, showing them slides under a microscope and talking about microorganisms as well as plants and animals. Eager to share her own fascination with the formation of life, she did not hesitate to include sex education in her curriculum. She lent them books illustrating the development of the human fetus as well as books on erotic art, which she loved.

  Some of Frida’s students had studied mural painting with Rivera at La Esmeralda, and knowing their interest, Frida arranged for them to paint various murals. Near her house, on the corner of Londres Street, just next door to the home of the dethroned King Carol of Rumania, there was a pulquería called La Rosita. Along with those of most other pulquerías in Mexico, the government had whitewashed its mural decoration for reasons of health and high-mindedness. Frida obtained permission for her students to paint new murals on the two exterior walls facing the street, and soon three of the four “Fridos” plus several other student artists between the ages of fourteen and nineteen were working there free of charge with brushes and paint supplied by Frida and Diego. El maestro and la maestra came to watch the work progress and gave advice, but they did not participate in the actual painting.

  The project was conceived and executed in the spirit of fun. No one presumed that a great work of art would be produced. The style combined the broad, simplified realism of Rivera with the awkward primitivism of the pulquería mural tradition. The subjects—town and country scenes based on the bar’s name (The Little Rose) and on the theme of pulque—were delegated according to each student’s predilection. Fanny Rabel recalls that her job was to paint a little girl. She also put roses in the pasture. (In those days, children were deemed a suitable subject for women artists, and not surprisingly, Fanny later became a specialist in painting children.)

  The fiesta to inaugurate La Rosita was announced by an illustrated, tongue-in-cheek Posada-like broadside distributed in the plazas, markets, and streets of Coyoacán:

  The spectator! with his chitchat on the news of the day! Kind radio listeners: Saturday, the 19th of June, 1943, at 11 in the morning Grand Premiere of the Decorative Paintings of the Great Pulquería La Rosita on the corner of Aguayo and Londres, Coyoacán, D.F. The paintings that adorn this house were painted by: Fanny Rabinovich, Lidia Huerta, María de los Angeles Ramos, Tomás Cabrera, Arturo Estrada, Ramón Victoria, Erasmo V. Landechy and Guillermo Monroy under the direction of Frida Kahlo, professor of the School of Painting and Sculpture of the Ministry of Public Education. Acting as sponsors and as guests of honor: Don Antonio Ruiz and Doña Concha Michel, who offer to all the distinguished clientele of this house a succulent lunch consisting of an exquisite Barbecue imported directly from Texcoco, which they sprinkled with the supreme pulques from the best haciendas that produce the delicious national nectar. Add to the charm of this festival a band of Mariachis with the best of their singers from the lowlands, sky rockets, firecrackers, thunder-making fireworks, invisible balloons, parachutists made of maguey leaves, and whoever wants to be a bullfighter may throw himself into the ring on Saturday afternoon, since there also will be a little bull for the aficionados. Exquisite pulques, lavish prizes, pretty gifts, superior quality, painstaking attention.

  “All Mexico” came to the opening—famous personalities of the worlds of art, literature, film, music, plus students from La Esmeralda and the people of Coyoacán. It was a spectacular occasion that delivered almost as much as the announcement promised. There were fireworks, balloons, and a parade of celebrities. The folksinger Concha Michel, Frida, and the girls among the art students all came dressed as Tehuanas. The pulquería and the streets were decorated with brightly colored tissue-paper cutouts, and confetti fell like rain. Filmmakers scurried about; their film of the opening was later projected in all the theaters belonging to the distributors, Cine Mexico. Press photographers and reporters were there in abundance. Mariachi bands played loudly, and Frida and Concha Michel sang corridos, to much applause. Among the songs were corridos written for the occasion that told about Frida, about the La Rosita murals, and about pulquería painting in general. The verses were printed up like Posada’s ballad illustrations on cheap colored paper and handed out to assembled guests.

  At the height of the festivities Guillermo Monroy sang the fifteen verses of his corrido, of which here are six:

  The barrio of Coyoacán

  formerly was so sad!

  And that was because it lacked

  something to be happy about.

  To paint La Rosita

  took a lot of work!

  The people had already forgotten

  the art of the pulquería.

  Doña Frida de Rivera,

  our beloved teacher,

  says to us: Come, boys,

  I will show you life.

  We will paint pulquerías,

  also the façades of schools—

  art begins to die

  if it stays in the academy.

  Neighborhood friends,

  I want to advise you

  not to take so much pulque

  because you can get bloated.

  Think of the fact that you have wives

  and dear little children!

  It’s one thing to be gay

  and another to lose one’s senses!

  Arturo Estrada’s corrido spoke of the past and present of pulquería murals:

  Formerly it looked so bad,

  that we could not deny;

  when it began to be painted,

  it began to be a pulquería

  with street kid language

  the drunkards criticized.

  Some said: How pretty!

  and others said: Ay, how disgusting.

  In spite of this, si
rs,

  the people are getting excited

  and they are very interested

  in doing it the honors.

  Along with the music, there was dancing in the street. Sombrero on head and hands clasped behind his back, Rivera was photographed dancing a Yucatecan jarana with Concha Michel. Frida, the pain in her back and foot dulled by excitement and tequila, danced jaranas, danzones, and zapateados with Diego. And of course, there was some tipsy clowning. On a dare, Hector Xavier stole a friend’s hat, put it on his own head, then dipped his hand in the mole sauce and drew brown stripes on the other man’s face. “But,” says Xavier, “the greatest thing of that afternoon was when I told Diego: ’Maestro, the French teacher [Benjamin Péret], who is over there, wants to dance a zapateado with you,’ and Diego, nimble and quick, with that body that moved and swayed, went toward the guy and coldly said to him, ’Let’s dance.’ The guy said, ’No, I don’t dance. I don’t know how to dance a zapateado.’ He had only recently arrived from Europe. The strangest thing in Diego’s attitude of being the great figure as an artist was the frolicking and the menace. When the man said no, he couldn’t dance the zapateado, Diego took out his pistol and said, ’I’ll teach you,’ and the French teacher did the zapateado with Diego. One had to see Diego move, an upright elephant, slow, graceful.”

  All the dignitaries made speeches, few of them in celebration of La Rosita. Concha Michel spoke passionately about the current state of the Mexican Revolution, which, she said, had done nothing but enthrone the reactionaries in power so that the people of Mexico took refuge more and more in pulque. Diego went further: another revolution was needed, he said. Then he softened this thought, adding that it was up to the artists to make the revolution by painting murals on all the pulquerías, “so that the people can express their complaints, their needs, and see their ideal, or their right to a better world, given shape.” Finally, the poet Salvador Novo addressed himself to the murals being celebrated. He congratulated the artists and Frida, who, he said, had renewed the approach to art instruction in Mexico. More congratulations came to Frida from Dolores del Rio, for “this cultural work which will create true art and make art available to our people, who do not enter the palaces and who cannot help seeing art if it is on pulquerías.”

  Justifiably the student artists were thrilled with their success. The people of the parish liked the murals so much, according to La Prensa, that several commissions for other pulquería murals were offered. And having interviewed Frida at the opening fiesta, the reporter noted: “Frida Kahlo, satisfied with her work, said to us that she hoped this crusade in favor of art would result in a resurgence of spontaneity and of pure art, since the disciples will paint in the open air and in an atmosphere where sincere criticisms will cause them to improve their styles. Frida intends that they should decorate all the pulquerías of Mexico, so typical and so beautiful, with Mexican motifs.” Another newspaper took a more skeptical view of Frida’s goals: “In the end, there is a tendency to resuscitate what is Mexican—each in his own way.”

  Thanks to the success of the La Rosita murals, Frida obtained another project for the “Fridos” in 1944. An old friend of the Riveras had built the Posada del Sol, a luxury hotel, and he wanted Diego and Frida to paint murals in the hall for wedding banquets. Although Rivera was not interested, and Frida’s physical condition by then made it impossible for her to take on such a commission, they did not reject the offer. They said they would do it on the condition that the “Fridos” assist them with the job. The hotel owner set the theme: great loves from world literature. The young artists presented their sketches and went to work. But since they considered the assigned subject to be trite and old-fashioned, they disregarded it, and instead painted motifs related to love in Mexico—for example, courtship in the midst of a fiesta or the desperate passions of soldiers during the revolution. The owner was not amused. He canceled the contract and had the work destroyed.

  A more appropriate mural project was secured for the “Fridos” in 1945. In order to improve the working conditions of laundresses—mainly widows and unwed mothers who took in wash in order to survive and who often did their washing in muddy streams—President Cárdenas had sponsored the building of several public laundries. The one in Coyoacán comprised several small houses: one for ironing, another for a nursery, another for dining, and the last a meeting room for public and social functions. It was here that “Los Fridos” painted their murals.

  Well indoctrinated after two years of contact with Frida and Diego, the young artists were delighted to have a project that would serve the public good. Frida gave them paints and brushes, and the laundresses contributed enough money to pay for the painters’ refreshments. After planning the mural around a chosen theme, they worked independently on their individual designs. “Later, at the moment of definitive selection, with the help of la maestra Frida’s clear vision, we formed a single plan, taking the best and most positive from each one, giving unity to the theme and to the ensemble.”

  García Bustos remembers that they presented their various projects to Frida, and then to a large group of washerwomen. “My particular project moved these washerwomen very deeply. They wept when they examined it, because they said that it reminded them of the sorrows of their lives. They asked us whether we could veil the misery a little, since some of them were going to appear as portraits in the mural. Monroy’s project was the one that was finally chosen, because it was less painful in subject matter.” Each painter took responsibility for the subject and wall that he or she had drawn, and each participated in the execution of all the panels, respecting the pictorial personality of its designer.

  The group worked with enthusiasm, except for Fanny Rabel, who says she felt like a “dog without a master” because her design for the nursery (again she chose to involve herself with the theme of children) had to be abandoned for lack of funds. But, she says, the experience was “beautiful, because all day long we had those women around and we made sketches of them.” The “Fridos” included the laundresses’ portraits in the scenes of washing, ironing, sewing, and eating. A photograph of the preparatory drawings on the walls (the mural, executed in tempera on dry walls, did not last) shows a style that is more skillful and sophisticated than that of the La Rosita murals. Large, simplified volumes are depicted in a few succinct lines—a Riveraesque version of the kind of spare, elliptical line drawing that Picasso and Matisse made popular in the 1920s.

  When the mural was done, a rather formal invitation went out for the inauguration: “The group of young people Fanny Rabinovich, Guillermo Monroy, Arturo Estrada and Arturo García Bustos, of the School of Painting and Sculpture of the Ministry of Public Education, invite you to see the mural painting that they executed in the House of Women “Josefina Ortiz de Domínguez” situated in Coyoacán, D.F., No. 1 Tepalcatitla Street (Barrio del Niño Jesús).” The invitation told of the financial sacrifices the laundresses had made in order to build the laundry and said: “Considering that our effort was made by the people and for the people, we think it will interest you, given your civic and social sense, to accept our invitation, and if you find our work valid, you will be a collaborator in the labor that with modesty, but with firm resolve, we have undertaken, for the planting and growth in our time of the marvelous tradition of Mexican art of the past, when everything from the most humble household utensil to the collective temple was a work of art.”

  On March 8, Women’s Day in Mexico, the students and teachers of La Esmeralda joined the laundresses for the opening. Fanny Rabel says that there were numerous speeches, and it was more like a political meeting than a fiesta. But there was also music, leaflets printed with a corrido to sing, and platters of tacos filled with nopal cactus, cooked by the laundresses.

  Frida did other things to further her students’ careers. She helped them to find jobs as artists’ assistants and to exhibit their work. As early as June 1943, when they had only just begun to study with her, they had a show, and in 194
4, together with other students at La Esmeralda, they showed their work at the Palace of Fine Arts. In February 1945, they had another joint exhibition, at the Gallery of Plastic Arts on Palma Avenue, which was run by a friend of Frida’s.

  The “Fridos” contribution to the 1945 “Exposición de Arte Libre 20 de Noviembre,” a huge tempera painting that Estrada, García Bustos, and Monroy had worked on together in Frida’s garden, was full of revolutionary fervor. Inflammatorily entitled Who Exploits Us and How They Exploit Us, it drew a lot of attention, not all of it favorable. First someone threw sulfuric acid on it. Then a storm of public protest broke out when authorities in the Department of Fine Arts withdrew the painting. Calm was restored after one of Diego’s assistants repaired the maligned work, and it was purchased for nine hundred pesos by a well-known collector.

  The political controversy was hardly surprising. Frida had always seen her students as “comrades,” and Rivera was not exaggerating the political impetus his wife gave to her students when he wrote: “She encouraged the development of a personalized style of painting, and urged her followers to hold firm political and social views. Most of her adherents are members of the Communist party.” Frida inculcated leftist theory in her pupils by her own and Diego’s example. By 1946, Rivera had applied for readmission to the Party, and Frida, though she dragged her feet for a while, ended by following in his political footsteps. As one friend put it, “If Diego had said, ’I am the Pope,’ Frida would have become a papist.” Frida put it even better. Among her papers is a scribbled rhyme: "Yo creí a D.R./Con el burgués una fiera;/pero adoro sus ideas/porque no escoge a las feas.” (I believed in Diego Rivera/Devil take the bourgeoisie;/but I adore his ideas/because he does not choose the ugly ones.) Ironically, Diego’s several applications were rejected until 1954; Frida, possibly because she had never officially become a Trotskyite, was welcomed back into the Communist fold in 1948, after undergoing the usual humiliating ritual of “self-criticism” that orthodoxy required.