100Betram Wolfe told the story: Wolfe, Fabulous Life of Diego Rivera, p. 249. The story is also mentioned in Rivera’s My Art, My Life (p. 173). Ella Wolfe remembers it well (private interview, Palo Alto, California, November 1978).
100Frida’s account of the post-wedding festivities: Bambi, “Frida Kahlo Es una Mitád.”
100As Andrés Henestrosa remembers the party: Henestrosa, private interview, Mexico City, March 1977. Henestrosa may be confusing the wedding celebration with the party at Modotti’s where Frida met Diego.
CHAPTER 8: NEWLYWED: THE TEHUANA FRIDA
101“as furniture we had”: Bambi, “Frida Kahlo Es una Mitád.” Since, when Frida and Diego got married, Siqueiros was in prison for taking part in a workers’ demonstration that had been violently suppressed by the police in May 1929, Frida’s account may indicate that she and Diego lived together before their marriage.
101the charges against him: Wolfe, Fabulous Life of Diego Rivera, pp. 163–65.
102“Diego arrived”: Dromundo, private interview.
102“I think his going out of the party”: Modotti’s letter is quoted in Mildred Constantine, Tina Modotti: A Fragile Life (New York: Paddington Press, Two Continents Publishing Group, 1975), pp. 162, 166.
102“I did not have a home”: Beckett, “Rivera Denies.”
103The teachers were . . . to be subject: Wolfe, Fabulous Life of Diego Rivera, p. 260.
103she learned how to cater to his fancies: Bambi, “Frida Kahlo Es una Mitád.” Lupe’s solicitude for Frida did not last long; on November 2, 1929, she wrote from Veracruz, where she had gone to live with her new husband, the critic Jorge Cuesta: “Frida: It disgusts me to take pen in hand to write to you. But I want you to know that neither you nor your father nor your mother has a right to anything of Diego’s. Only his children are the ones whom he has the obligation to maintain (and among them count Marcia [sic], to whom he has never sent a penny!) Guadalupe” (Wolfe, Fabulous Life of Diego Rivera, p. 249). Actually, Diego was extremely generous to Lupe and never stopped sending money to his illegitimate child, Marika, who lived in Paris.
Frida’s portrait of Lupe Marín is now lost, but it is documented in a photograph. Though attractive and intelligent-looking, Lupe in Frida’s conception does not seem to be at all the savage and sensuous beauty who appears in Rivera’s portraits or in the famous photographs that Edward Weston took of her.
105He loved . . . to tell the story: Zendejas, Crommie interview.
105Luis Cardoza y Aragón . . . described his days in Cuernavaca: Luis Cardoza y Aragón, “Frida Kahlo.”
106“We could not have a child”: Bambi, “Frida Kahlo Es una Mitád.”
106Frida had an abortion: Begun, medical record.
106She mentioned the possibility: Letter to Dr. Leo Eloesser, May 26, 1932, Joyce Campbell, personal archive.
106“I suffered two grave accidents”: Gisèle Freund, “Imagen de Frida Kahlo.”
108“As is natural”: Wolfe, Fabulous Life of Diego Rivera, pp. 395–96.
108“the most important fact in my life”: Rivera, My Art, My Life, p. 172.
108“For lovely Fisita”: “Fisita” was the name Frida’s niece, Isolda Kahlo, called her aunt when Isolda was too young to pronounce “Frida” (Isolda Kahlo, private interview).
108he returned. . . with a cartload of flowers: Mrs. Pablo O’Higgins, private interview, Mexico City, April 1978.
108Mariana Morillo Safa . . . recalls: Mariana Morillo Safa, private interview, Mexico City, July 1977.
109Carmen Jaime remembers: Orthón Lara Barba, “Sor Juana y Frida Kahlo: Paralelamente,” Boletín Bibliográfico, Secretaría de Hacienda y Crédito Público (Mexico City), vol. XIII, no. 380 (Dec. 1, 1967), p. 8.
109“In another period I dressed like a boy”: Bambi, “Frida Dice Lo Que Sabe,” June 15, 1954, p. 1.
110“Does it work?”: Lucile Blanch, telephone interview, Woodstock, New York, October 1978.
110“coquettish masochism”: Bambi, “Manuel, el Chófer de Diego Rivera, Encontró Muerta Ayer a Frida Kahlo, en su Gran Cama que Tiene Dosel de Espejo,” p. 1.
111“She is a person”: Parker Lesley, transcription of notes taken during two conversations in Mexico City with Diego Rivera about Frida Kahlo and her work, in May 1939. Rivera’s dealer Alberto Misrachi and New York art dealer Pierre Matisse were present and took part in the conversation.
111“The classic Mexican dress”: “Fashion Notes,” Time, May 3, 1948, pp. 33–34. In the 1930s and 1940s, the virtues of the colonial, “homespun” past were sung, and native folk art was revered north of the border as well. From Greenwich Village to Santa Fe, sophisticated women (mainly artists or artists’ wives) wore embroidered blouses, ruffled skirts, and huaraches. As is usual when folk costumes are adopted by sophisticated people, the peasant style did not catch on with men either in Mexico or in the United States. Diego Rivera, for example, chose to wear shabby, ill-fitting business suits. He would have felt ludicrous in the white manta shirt and pants that is virtually the uniform of the Mexican campesino. Only his Stetson hat and the pistol in his belt contradicted his citified appearance, linking him with the Mexican Revolution and activism. When working, he donned the denim overalls of the urban proletariat. “I searched my soul profoundly,” said Rivera in 1929. “I found . . . I had sufficient strength to be a workman among other workmen” (Diego Rivera, in Creative Art, January 1929).
112this magic power of clothes: The photographer Manuel Alvarez Bravo caught this mysterious vitality of empty clothing in his Absent Portrait, 1945, which shows an old-fashioned dress placed as if it were seated on a chair in an empty room. The dress charges the room with the owner’s absence. Alvarez Bravo photographed Frida a number of times, and one of his portraits of her shows her on the roof of a Mexico City house, dressed in a Mexican costume and juxtaposed with empty clothes drying on a laundry line. When asked about the relationship of this image to those of Frida’s paintings that depict empty clothes, he said that it was very possible that his knowledge of her work affected his decision to photograph her in this way (Manuel Alvarez Bravo, private interview, Mexico City, February 1978).
CHAPTER 9: GRINGOLANDIA
114“whitewash those horrible frescoes”: Wolfe, Fabulous Life of Diego Rivera, p. 203.
115“the philosopher of the brush”: Ibid., p. 301. Rivera resigned from the artists’ syndicate in July 1924, because he did not want to ally himself with its protest over the wave of vandalism that had caused considerable damage to the Preparatory School murals. Later, in the Ministry of Education building, he painted a caricature of his old patron Vasconcelos as a dwarf straddling an elephant and dipping his pen in a spittoon.
115As critic Max Kozloff put it: Kozloff, “The Rivera Frescoes of Modern Industry at the Detroit Institute of Arts: Proletarian Art Under Capitalist Patronage,” Artforum 12 (November 1973): 60.
116“one thing left for me”: New York Times, May 17, 1933.
116“There is so much beauty”: Edward Weston, The Daybooks of Edward Weston, vol. I, “Mexico” (California: An Aperture Book, 1961), pp. 34–35. Rivera’s positive attitude toward the United States is also revealed in an interview with him, possibly conducted by Bertram Wolfe or Frida Kahlo, in Bertram D. Wolfe archive, Hoover Institution, Stanford University.
116“Frida dreamed”: Rivera, My Art, My Life, p. 174. The self-portrait Frida gave Diego en route to San Francisco may be the pencil drawing in the Frida Kahlo Museum that Frida falsely called her first drawing. It shows Frida in front of a background that is half U.S. skyscrapers and half Mexican mountains.
117“Since they didn’t have a phone”: Blanch, private interview.
117“Your game of football”: Wolfe, Fabulous Life of Diego Rivera, p. 290.
117Years later Frida told a friend: Loló de la Torriente, “Verdad y Mentira en la Vida de Frida Kahlo y Diego Rivera,” p. 21.
118“The city and bay are overwhelming”: Frida Kahlo, letter to Isabel Campos (May 3, 1931)
, published in Tibol, Frida Kahlo, pp. 42–43.
118“We were feted at parties”: Rivera, My Art, My Life, p. 175.
118The Call-Bulletin reported: Wolfe, Fabulous Life of Diego Rivera, p. 287.
119“I don’t particularly like the gringo people”: Kahlo, letter to Isabel Campos, May 3, 1931.
119“I am the adventurer”: Weston, Daybooks, vol. 2, “California,” p. xi.
119“Why this tide of women?”: Ibid., p. ix.
120“I met Diego!”: Ibid., pp. 198–99.
120he diagnosed a congenital deformation of her spine: The diagnosis is an indication that not all Frida’s subsequent problems with her spine were the result of her accident. Frida also apparently had symptoms of syphilis, for a Wassermann and Kahn test was administered. The results were “slightly positive,” and she was treated for the disease. Subsequent tests in the 1930s and 1940s were (usually) negative (Begun, medical record).
120At the age of forty-nine: This account of Dr. Eloesser’s personality and life is from a private interview with Joyce Campbell, Tacambaro, Michoacán, Mexico, July 1977. Joyce Campbell was Dr. Eloesser’s closest friend for many years.
121“A few notes on the painting”: Letter from Dr. Eloesser to Mr. William Zinn, the gifts and endowments officer of the University of California Hospital in San Francisco, in the hospital archive.
122Lady Cristina Hastings: Lucienne Bloch, private interview.
122Frida wrote of her exasperation: Letter to Dr. Leo Eloesser, Mar. 15, 1941. Frida Kahlo’s letters to Dr. Eloesser from 1931 to 1946 are in Joyce Campbell’s personal archive.
123Luther Burbank: The element of fantasy in this painting, so different from the simpler, more straightforward portraits Frida did in San Francisco, may indicate that it was completed after Frida and Diego returned to Mexico (for a six-month period) in June 1931. Further evidence of this is a photograph (almost certainly taken in Mexico and now in the archives of Mexico’s Institute of Fine Arts) of Luther Burbank, which shows the painting before it was finished.
123Frida and Diego Rivera: The painting was exhibited at the sixth annual exhibition of the San Francisco Society of Women Artists at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor in 1932 and prominently reproduced in at least one local newspaper. It is now in the collection of the San Francisco Museum; the museum staff feel strongly that the title of the painting should accord with the spelling of the inscription and should therefore be Frieda and Diego Rivera.
124“I spend most of my time painting”: Kahlo, letter to Isabel Campos, 1931.
124“His enormous stomach”: Kahlo, "Retrato de Diego. "
125“Diego is beyond all limited . . . relations”: Ibid.
125At a dinner: Blanch, private interview.
126“Rivera for Mexico City”: Wolfe, Fabulous Life of Diego Rivera, p. 285.
126Painter Kenneth Callahan’s complaint: Ibid., p. 292. In later years the mural was covered, not because of Rivera’s “fat rear” but because figurative art was out of fashion. Times have changed, and now it is once again proudly displayed.
128Mexican Arts Association “to promote friendship”: Wolfe, Fabulous Life of Diego Rivera, p. 297.
128“Diego’s very spinal column”: Museum of Modern Art, Diego Rivera, Exhibition Catalogue (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1931), p. 35.
128Diego was on deck: The details of the Riveras’ arrival in New York and Diego’s comments are from the New York Herald Tribune, Nov. 14, 1931. Bertram Wolfe’s account of the arrival (Fabulous Life of Diego Rivera, p. 278) cites (erroneously) "New York Times, December 14, 1931.”
129She once asked him: Lucienne Bloch, private interview.
130“I was sitting next to Diego”: Ibid.
131“We had lunch with Frieda”: Diary of Lucienne Bloch. Lucienne Bloch read portions of the diary aloud to the author during their private interview.
132“Had a delicious meal”: Ibid., December 1931.
132“As concerns what you asked me”: Letter to Dr. Eloesser, May 26, 1932.
CHAPTER 10: DETROIT: HENRY FORD HOSPITAL
133To Diego Rivera, Detroit: Linda Downs, “The Rouge in 1932: The ’Detroit Industry’ Frescoes by Diego Rivera,” in the Detroit Institute of Arts, The Rouge: The Image of Industry in the Art of Charles Sheeler and Diego Rivera (Detroit Institute of Arts, 1978), pp. 47–48.
133William Valentiner . . . met Rivera: Dr. Valentiner met Rivera through Helen Wills, and with his new friend had the terrifying experience of being driven by the athlete to one of her tennis matches: “I sat in the rumble seat next to Rivera. While we discussed balance and harmony in composition, we found ourselves pitched backwards to a horizontal position and looking directly at the sky, because Helen Wills took delight in driving us up the steepest of steep streets in San Francisco. Indeed Rivera’s weight carried him so far backwards that I was afraid he might tumble out, and I with him” (Downs, “The Rouge,” pp. 47–48).
133“the great Saga of the machine and of steel”: Detroit News, Jan. 19, 1933, p. 4.
133They were met at the station: With the exception of the quotation “His name is Carmen,” the description of the Riveras’ arrival in Detroit is largely from Detroit News, April 22, 1932. Edgar P. Richardson, in a letter to the author (Jan. 30, 1978), remembered Diego’s broken English.
135the Wardell: Lucienne Bloch, private interview.
134“I now placed the collective hero”: Rivera, My Art, My Life, p. 183.
135he called the . . . fountain "horrorosa”: Detroit News, Apr. 22, 1932.
135“a wonderful symphony”: Rivera, My Art, My Life, p. 187.
135“Marx made theory”: Ibid., p. 188.
135she retaliated: This account of Frida’s social life in Detroit is derived from private interviews or other communications with people who knew her there: Mrs. Barnett Malbin (private telephone interview, New York City, January 1978); Lenore de Martinez (Detroit, January 1978); Ernst Halberstadt (Onset, Massachusetts, September 1978); Edgar P. Richardson (letter to the author, Jan. 30, 1978); Peggy de Salle (Detroit, January 1978); Lucienne Bloch (private interview and diary).
135“Mr. Ford, are you Jewish?”: Lucienne Bloch, private interview.
136In Mexico, Frida said, there was more sparkle: de Salle, private interview.
136the matter of food: Lucienne Bloch, private interview.
136When Frida chastised him: Ríos y Valles, private interview.
136[Frida’s] success at a folk dancing party: Rivera, My Art, My Life, pp. 188–89.
136“When we went to Detroit”: Bambi, “Frida Dice Lo Que Sabe,” p. 7.
137Actually, the car was a trade: Lucienne Bloch, diary, late October 1932, and private interview; Ernst Halberstadt, private interview.
140When Lucienne Bloch came to Detroit: Lucienne Bloch, interviewed by Karen and David Crommie.
140Lucienne worked . . . designing small figurines: Frida used to tell Lucienne that she should work in larger scale, that making such tiny sculptures was bad for her career. It was serving as Rivera’s assistant that finally impelled Lucienne to abandon her plan to be a sculptor. Instead, she became a mural painter, and she has been painting frescoes ever since (Lucienne Bloch, private interview).
141“She was just hoping to be pregnant”: Lucienne Bloch, Crommie interview.
141“I wish I were dead!”: de Salle, private interview.
142when Lucienne brought her a parody: Lucienne Bloch, private interview.
142Frida wanted to draw her lost child: Lucienne Bloch Crommie interview.
144Rivera noted the change: Rivera, My Art, My Life, p. 202.
144“my idea of . . . the insides of a woman”: Lesley notes.
144The snail . . . refers to . . . the miscarriage: Ibid.
144The meaning of the. . . machinery: Lucienne Bloch, private interview, and Wolfe, “Rise of Another Rivera,” unedited draft in the Frida Kahlo archive, Frida Kahlo Museum, Mexico City.
144“anything mechanical” always me
ant bad luck and pain: Lesley notes.
144Frida herself told one friend: Helm, Modern Mexican painters, p. 169.
144to another she said that she had “invented [it]”: Lesley notes.
145“Diego gave [the orchid] to me”: Ibid.
145she said she painted the ground . . . earth color: Ibid.
145To help her combat depression: Lucienne Bloch, private interview.
145Frida was “like the wildest animal”: Lucienne Bloch, diary, July–August 1932.
146“These proofs are not good and not bad”: Muller’s comments were written on the second proof of the lithograph, which was dated August 1932, and signed “Frieda Rivera” instead of “Frieda Kahlo,” perhaps because Muller was Rivera’s, not Frida’s friend.
146Frida returned to her easel: Lucienne Bloch, private interview, and Crommie interview.
146Three more times . . . Frida was to try to have a child: Rivera, My Art, My Life, p. 201.
146he “forbade her to conceive again”: Ibid.
147“Diego was very cruel.” Ella Wolfe, private interview, Palo Alto, California, November 1978. Frida’s inability to bear a child has most often been attributed to the accident. Certainly that played a role, but Frida’s medical record says that in 1934, when Frida was pregnant for the third time, a Dr. Zollinger ordered an abortion after three months because of the “infantilism of Frida’s ovaries.” Both of Frida’s older sisters also had “insufficient ovaries"; neither bore children (Adriana had three miscarriages), and both eventually had their ovaries removed because of cysts (Begun, medical report). Gómez Arias says that “once she told me that all her feminine organs kept certain infantile characteristics during her whole life. They were organs of a small girl in a grown woman” (Gómez Arias, private interview). Another possibility, a remote one, is that syphilis played some role. Ulcers on the feet are a symptom of secondary syphilis.
147“bring me a doll”: Bambi, “Manuel, el Chófer de Diego Rivera,” p. 1.
148“My painting carries within it”: Tibol, Crónica, p. 50.
149“Frida came in every day”: José de Jesús Alfaro, private interview, Detroit, January 1978.
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