Frida Kahlo: An Introspective Life, Part 2

Frida Kahlo took pride in caring for her husband Diego. In 1930, the couple went to the United States. When they returned to Mexico, their rocky relationship affected Frida's health. As her marriage worsened, Frida's star in the art world gradually rose.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Time to Blaine a chalk rewarding and and we are
continuing on with our look into the life of twentieth
century Mexican artist Frieda Collo, who's best known for the

(00:23):
sometimes enigmatic and often haunting self portraits that she painted. Once,
when asked why she painted so many self portraits, Frieda
famously replied, because I'm so often alone, because I am
the subject I know best. So we got a taste
of that aloneness in the first part of this podcast
when we discussed her battle with polio as a child

(00:46):
and then the bus accident in her teenage years that
left her bedrooden for several months, and we kind of
talked about how that tragic accident changed the entire course
of her life, causing her to give up her original
dream of going to medical school and instead focus on painting,
an occupation that she took up actually while she was
confined to her bed recovering from her injuries. We also

(01:07):
talked a little bit about her political interest, how she
got more interested in Mexican politics in the first place,
getting involved with the Communist Party with the encouragement of
her friend Tina Madotti, who was an Italian photographer and
a supposed Soviet spy. And of course it was probably
that political involvement, or at least the circles that had

(01:27):
her running in rather than her art alone, that put
her back in the path of celebrated muralist Diego Rivera,
who she had come across before when she was in school,
but they met again through these political circles, and that
was kind of where we left at. Diego was courting
Frieda at her parents home known as Cossa Zul. Now

(01:48):
the way we catched in the last episode, Diego was
visiting Cosa Azul sort of under the pretense of critiquing
Frieda's paintings a respected artists exactly the more well known
artists helping the novice. But while it's true that Diego
probably wanted an excuse to stop by her parents house,
he also was just truly interested in Frieda's art. He

(02:09):
later wrote, quote, it was obvious to me that this
girl was an authentic artist, So he wasn't leading her
on in that respect exactly. He wasn't just blowing smoke.
That's the one thing that seems to ring true throughout
their relationship. In fact, whatever happens between these two lovers,
and we'll see that a lot happens between them, they

(02:29):
remain really big supporters and admirers of each other's work,
mutual fans, and as we also mentioned, friends on both
sides had reservations about their pairing up together being romantically involved.
Some of Frieda's friends saw Diego, who was twenty one
years older than her, it's kind of a dirty old man.
He'd been married twice before already, he was a notorious womanizer.

(02:53):
They were afraid she was getting involved with the wrong
kind of guy. And Frieda, though, wasn't exactly this demure
young lady who being snatched out of her parents house
that she left drinking and dancing, socializing, flirting. She had
kind of a wicked sense of humor, and according to
the PBS biography, ever, she really left gossip and dirty jokes.
So you know, maybe it's not as strange of appairing

(03:15):
as it seems initially, According to that Smithsonian article by
Phillis Tukman that we mentioned in part one of this podcast,
when Diego and Frieda decided to get married, her dad
warned Diego that Frieda was, quote a devil, to which
Diego responded, I know it. So this obviously didn't deter him, though,
as the two were married on August one. Frida was

(03:38):
twenty one at the time and Diego was forty two.
Frieda was later known to have said, quote, I suffered
too grave accidents in my life, one in which a
street car knocked me down, and the other was Diego.
And we'll kind of analyze that quote a little bit
later on strange thing to say about your husband is.
We wanted to mention it though, because we kind of
alluded to it, I think at the last at the

(04:00):
end of the last episode, so we needed to bring
it up again. But her parents described it in kind
of a funny way to their marriage. They described it
as quote a marriage between an elephant and a dove
because of Frieda and Diego's comical size difference. Yeah, but
despite these superficial differences, Frieda and Diego did really share
a lot of the same ideals. We already talked a

(04:20):
little bit about Diego being part of the Makani Dad movement,
in which he rejected Western European influences in his art
in favor of all things considered authentically Mexican, and Frieda
became a pretty devoted adherent of this movement too. She
started wearing traditional Mexican costumes. That's probably what she's most
famous for doing in that respect, including these long floor

(04:43):
link skirts and dresses and tops and flamboyant color. She
was somebody very focused on her look and her style
and her clothes, and she also rejected conventional standards of beauty,
which is why she didn't plug her eyebrows or her mustache.
In fact, according to Stephanie Mensmer's article in The Washington
Monthly which we mentioned last episode, she actually groomed them

(05:06):
with these special tools and sometimes penciled them darker. So
it was a point of pride, it was, and this
facial hair famously shows up in her self portraits and
it is kind of one of her trademarks in her art.
Following their marriage, Diego and Frieda spent about a year
in Cuernavaca, where Diego painted murals that the American Ambassador
to Mexico had commissioned, and from the beginning Frieda took on.

(05:31):
She took a lot of pride in taking care of
Diego and in playing sort of the part of the
devoted wife, but she wasn't playing apart. She really seemed
to be into this. She would cook for him and
even bathe him in. Diego was finally able to get
a visa to go to the United States, which was
something that he had wanted to do for a while,
but by that point he had been expelled from the

(05:51):
Communist Party, so that might have kind of helped his
cause and getting that visa. But since Diego was expelled,
Freda resigned from the party as well and beca that
she was able to join him in traveling to the States,
and they arrived there November. So they started out in
San Francisco, where Diego created murals for the San Francisco

(06:12):
Stock Exchange in the California School of Fine Arts, and
meanwhile Kala, who was still pretty much of an unknown
artist at this point painted portraits of friends, continued to
paint portraits that reflected her life more like homelike pursuits,
I guess, than what Diego was doing. We should note though,
that much like her style of dress, these paintings were

(06:33):
authentically Mexican. They were informed by nineteenth century portraiture, but
they also combined aspects of Mexican pop culture and pre
Columbian art in a way that really hadn't been done
before at that point. They were tiny to kind of
like Frieda, so very different in scale from the type
of stuff that her husband was working out. I mean,
I think that's so fitting, isn't it that their preferred

(06:56):
mode of art fits their own stature. It kind of
But these paintings of hers were often painted on sheet
metal too, instead of canvas, which is another point that
I found interesting. And this was a style that was
similar to Mexican street artists, who did small vote of
paintings that were religious in nature. Well, I think it's
cool too that. I mean, I didn't realize that many
of her paintings were done in sheet metal either. Her

(07:18):
images are very iconic, but I don't know how many
I've actually seen in person where you could tell, oh,
that's sheet metal, not campus, That's true. It's an entirely
different thing to see art in person. But after San Francisco,
Frieda and Diego moved on for a quick visit to
New York City, where Diego had a show at the
Museum of Modern Art, and after that they went on

(07:38):
to Detroit, where Diego was commissioned to paint industrial theme
murals in the garden court of the Detroit Institute of Art.
And it's their time in Detroit that's considered a really
significant time in Frieda's life and in her art especially.
Really her art matured over the entire time they were
in America. But it's those works that she painted after

(07:59):
she had a miscare and Detroit that, although a bit disturbing,
and their gruesomeness, those works, they're considered some of her
most original and one piece, for example, she actually painted
her miscarriage. It's a nude portrait of herself where she's
lying on a blood stained bed and crying. She also
did a painting called My Birth around this time, which

(08:19):
depicts a partially covered woman's body with Colo's head coming
out of the vagina, one of her more famous paintings,
and a lot of people women especially connect with these
paintings today because they seemed to embody female suffering. And
it's assumed that that overwhelming influence on Frieda was her
longing to have children. She had several miscarriages and at

(08:42):
least one abortion during her marriage to Diego, but most
attribute her inability to have kids to those injuries she
sustained in the bus accident. But in her article, Mentor
does point out that Frieda actually may have been more
ambivalent about having kids than a lot of people assumely
because in her letters she never really expressed as a

(09:03):
strong desire to have her own kids, and her actions
sometimes supported this theory. So one example, once when she
was pregnant, she deliberately disobeyed doctor's orders and took driving
lessons instead of staying in bed like she was supposed to.
And she also might have thought kids would distract Diego
from his work and possibly from her too. I mean,

(09:25):
you're gonna see more as we go on. They have
a very tumultuous relationship they do. After that sort of
heroin time in Detroit, Diego and Frieda returned to New York,
where Diego worked on a mural for Rockefeller Center. Diego
was really enjoying his time in the States. I mean,
he was getting all this great work to do, he
had this major show, but Frieda became very homesick. Mentimer

(09:48):
also points out something that might be a bit surprising
to us fans of Frieda's art. Frieda really didn't like
Americans or the United States at all. In fact, I
think Mensimer used the term disdain when she was talking
about Frieda's feelings for the United States. Basically, she like
going to see Marx Brothers and Laurel and Hardy movies,
and that was about it. I'm imagining a very sullen

(10:10):
Frieda sitting in the theater by herself brooding. Freda once
said quote, I find that Americans completely lack sensibility and
good taste. They are boring, and they all have faces
like unbaked rolls purn That's a real cutdown. But one
of Frieda's most recognizable paintings is self portrait on the

(10:31):
border line between Mexico and the United States, where she's
standing between a pre Columbian ruin and native flowers on
one side. It's all very beautiful, and then Ford Motor
Company smoke stacks and skyscrapers on the other. And I mean,
if you look at that painting, you can eavily see
how this would have been inspired by her homesickness on

(10:51):
the one hand, and kind of her disdain for Americans
in the United States after they spent about three years
in the US. Though free to finally got her wish.
They returned to Mexico near the end of ninety three,
but neither of them were exactly elated about this. They
weren't happy when they homecoming exactly. That mural that Diego

(11:12):
had painted on Rockfeller Center, for one thing, had created
quite a bit of controversy because he had included flattering
portrait of Lenin in it, and the owners of the
portrait weren't happy with that at all, and they wanted
Diego to paint Lennon out of it, but he refused,
so they had the entire mural destroyed. A just a
side note to that, Diego recreated the mural later for

(11:33):
the Palace of Fine Arts in Mexico City, so he
did sort of get it back later. But Frieda was
also unhappy when they came home, partially because she felt
like Diego blamed her for making him come back and
for you know, a lot of the feelings that he
had had upon their return. There were also some other
issues going on with their relationship too, though, yeah, kind

(11:54):
of ongoing issues, most of which revolved mainly around infidelity
and as we mentioned before, where Diego was quite the
womanizer and that didn't change a bit after he married Frieda,
and that maybe one reason why she'd often visit him
on the scaffolding while he was painting his murals, bringing
him lunch, taken care of him, whatnot, because she was

(12:14):
keeping an eye on him and his lovely models he
was using, just sort of establishing her wifely presence there.
And every time he'd take up with another woman, though,
she would really kind of spiral into a depression. And
it brings us back to Frieda's quote about how Diego
was like another accident in her life, you know, comparable
to her horrible bus accident, because while the street car

(12:37):
incident had left her crippled physically, it's almost as if
Diego had crippled her in some way too, some like
an emotional way. And sometimes that's uh taken quite literally. Yeah,
I mean it wasn't literally in the sense that it
wasn't all emotional. When he was with someone else, she
usually become physically ill, to experiencing pain and sometimes even

(12:59):
had mean to be hospitalized. Diego and Frieda moved into
a new house in Mexico City, which featured two buildings
connected by a narrow bridge. It was kind of a
his and her sort of set up. His building was
pink and hers was blue, and you know, they had
plans for each to have studios and both. But she
didn't really get to enjoy this home so much or

(13:20):
paint much here because she was hospitalized a lot. And
when Diego had an affair with her little sister, Christina,
she actually moved out of the house into an apartment.
After a few months, they did make up and she
moved back in. But I can imagine that her focus
on her work was probably pretty broken up to be
kind of a permanently damaging incident. But Frieda wasn't completely

(13:40):
the victim here either. She had a lot of affairs
of her own, with both men and women, and one
notable affair of hers was with Russian Marxist revolutionary Leon Trotsky,
who was living in Eggbile for opposing the Stalinist regime,
and Diego actually worked on Trotsky's behalf to have him
admitted into Mexico, and Trotsky and his family started living

(14:02):
at Frieda's childhood home, Kassa azul and Um. Not too
long after that, Freedom and Trotsky became lover. She even
painted him a portrait of herself as a gift, but
their affear didn't really laugh that long, and after Trotsky
was eventually assassinated, Frieda even called him a coward, claimed
he'd stolen from her while living at Kassa Zul, something

(14:22):
that probably wasn't true. Um. And then in that article
we keep mentioning by Mensumer, she says Frieda turned on
Trotsky like this because she had become a devout Stalinist
in the meantime and remained so pretty much the rest
of her life. One of her last paintings was called
Stalin and I so I guess at this point she
preferred Stalin over Trotsky and made that quite clear. After

(14:44):
her affair with Trotsky, things began to change with Frieda
as far as her art was concerned, though. The French
writer Andre Breton, who's considered the father of surrealism, came
to Mexico and really became enamored with Freeda's work. He
called her work surrealist, which, as art, basically meant that
it produced fantastic imagery or effects by using these unnatural

(15:08):
or unexpected juxtaposition. Dolly, I mean, he's kind of the
classic example exactly. But Frieda never really thought of herself
this way. She wrote that she never knew that she
was a surrealist quote until Andre Breton came to Mexico
and told me that I was one. She also wrote, really,
I do not know whether my paintings are surrealist or not,
but I do know that they are the frankest expression

(15:30):
of myself. Since my subjects have always been my sensations,
my states of mind, and the profound reactions that life
has been producing in me, I have frequently objectified all
this and figures of myself, which were the most sincere
and real thing that I could do in order to
express what I felt inside and outside of myself. Interesting

(15:51):
to note too, Diego didn't agree with the surrealist assessment either.
He believed that Frieda's work was very much realist, regardless
what they thought. Though. Britain arranged for Frieda to show
her work in New York in ninety eight. This was
a huge deal. It was her first one person show
held at the Julian Levy Gallery, which was one of

(16:12):
the first American venues to promote surrealist arts. So I
mean it was certainly being marketed as surrealist, even if
she was unsure. People like Georgia O'Keefe were in attendance
for the opening, and the show was widely considered to
be a huge success, I mean enough of a success
for Frieda to grace the cover of Vogue shortly thereafter,
and after her success in New York free to travel

(16:35):
to France, where eventually she got a show as well,
and the Louve ended up buying one of her self portraits,
and it was the first work by twentieth century Mexican
artists to enter the Louver's collections. Pablo Picasso, and admire
of her work, gave Frieda a pair of ear rings
around this time too, which I feel is very exciting
to get jewelry from public Picasso. I would have liked

(16:58):
one of his china's. That would be my my requested
gift from Pablo Coffee if I got a fee in that.
I don't know. You're the one who always says, what
are you going to do with china? Anyway, that's true,
I would use my pcaffee china as you should. Coming
home from this was kind of a letdown though for Frieda.
She found Diego in the midst of yet another affair.

(17:20):
By the end of nine nine they finally decided to
get a divorce, and after the split, freed to kind
of threw herself into her art since people had started
to take notice of her work. Finally, she hoped that
it would be her ticket to financial independence. No longer
dependent on her family, no longer dependent on Diego, she thought,
maybe this will be my way to be able to
do whatever I want to exactly. So Frieda did a

(17:43):
lot of self portraits around this time, where she was
surrounded by her beloved pets, including monkeys, cats, and parents.
One distinctive portrait she also did around the time of
her divorce was the Two Frieda's and as the name suggests,
it's actually a double self portrait. There are two of
her in this painting. One is wearing a European outfit
that's torn open to reveal a broken heart, and the

(18:04):
other is wearing Mexican costume, and they're joined together by
an artery that's running from one heart to the other.
So we can see kind of a little influence from
her medical her pre medical studies here too, I think,
but she later said that this was inspired by the
memory of an imaginary childhood friend. However, we know that
Diego was also born a twin, so there might have

(18:25):
been some influence from that as well things that play there. Perhaps,
so Diego and Frieda really didn't stay apart for very long.
A doctor friend of theirs in San Francisco basically told
Frieda that she should make up with Diego, and according
to Tukman's article, he wrote to her saying, quote, Diego
loves you very much, and you love him. It is

(18:46):
also the case, and you know it better than I
that besides you, he has two great loves, one painting,
two women. In general, he has never been, nor ever
will be monogamous, so that sounds kind of not encouraging.
But ultimately Frieda decided to accept Diego for who he was,

(19:06):
warts and all, and they remarried in December of ninety
but they continued to have a very volatile relationship. Both
of them kept having affairs, but Freeda also continued to
focus on her work. She even took on a group
of students known as Los Frieda's, and she continued to
do the things that made her happy, like cooking and
socializing with friends. As the years went by, though, Frida's

(19:28):
health continued to deteriorate pretty much through the last decade
of her life, she had had several operations on her
back and her leg during this time. All told, really
we should mention since her accident, since her teen years,
she had had more than thirty operations total nine three.
Her right leg had to be amputated below the knee.

(19:49):
And while in during these health problems, she became addicted
to alcohol and pain killers, and that just kind of
compounded the problem and it showed in her work. By
ninety three, Menstumer writes that Frieda could barely pick up
a paintbrush. Her hands were so shaky, and that's why
a lot of her late work is considered subpar um
when you compare it to her other earlier pieces. Frida did, however,

(20:12):
have kind of a last her Raw One More One
Person show in nineteen fifty three. It was her first
solo exhibition in Mexico, the only one held in her
native country during her lifetime, something I consider kind of remarkable.
She was bedridden, though, but she insisted on attending this
opening night, you know, her big event. So they had

(20:32):
to get her there in an ambulance, and then she
was carried to a canopy bed which had been decorated
with photos and things, and that's the perch from which
she got to enjoy her night. I mean, you can
imagine her almost holding court there during her her big
gala event. But a local critic wrote of the exhibition quote,
it is impossible to separate the life and work of

(20:55):
this extraordinary person. Her paintings are her biography. She died
the next year, in nineteen fifty four, at the age
of forty seven, and while the cause of death was
officially pulmonary embolism, many do suggest or suspect that she
committed suicide. Just four days before her death, she had

(21:16):
been out fighting now, I mean, she kind of had
a spark to the end. It themed she had attended
a protest in a wheelchair with Diego. They were protesting
the overthrow of the Guatemalan president by the CIA. After
her death, Frieda's work went unnoticed for several decades until
the freedom mania that we mentioned in the first part
of this podcast kicked off in the early nineties. Now,

(21:38):
her painting self for millions of dollars, putting her at
least as far as dollar figures are concerned, in the
same league as the likes of Picasso and Warhol, Madonna
for instance, as a huge collector of freed To Callo's work,
she owns that painting that we mentioned earlier called My Birth,
and she said that she quote identifies with Frieda's pain
and her sadness. We were speculated a little bit before

(22:00):
recording about like I wonder where Madonna keeps it? Even
like where is it on display? I know, I want
to do a little more research on that, and I
wonder what else she owns. I'm sure she didn't own
just one. You can't have just one. Will be googling
Madonna's art collection later. With that kind of cachet, you
can see why the art world would be in an
uproar about a previously unknown trove of Frieda's artwork coming

(22:21):
to light, like the one that we mentioned in the
intro to Part one. So we know that the art
experts generally think this troe that we mentioned as a fake,
but some others think otherwise. Diego Rivera's granddaughter, for instance,
attested to the works authenticity before her death in two
thousand seven, and a couple of former Los Frida's students
are also convinced. Regardless the trust that controls Collas copyright.

(22:44):
As we mentioned, did file a criminal complaint, and they
asked the Mexican government to investigate these fines. So after
that last June, a Mexican court ruled that opponents have
failed to prove their claim that the collection is focused.
But they didn't roll on the collections often ticity. They
only said that the trust had failed to prove that
it was counterfeit. Still, though, the antique dealers who possessed

(23:07):
the trope are considering this pretty much a victory. They've
filed for ownership papers for the material, and at the
time the story broke, they were considering options for an exhibition.
So it's gonna be interesting to see how this plays out.
I love when we close a podcast on an open story.
It shows you kind of history is ongoing exactly, and
it's something that might come up later in a podcast.

(23:30):
I mean, maybe in our Historical Finds round up for
two thousand twelve to bring up this trove again if
something happens with it, you know, and it just opens
up possibilities for listeners to down the road. I think.
I know, we know you guys watched the news very
closely for us, so we'll all be looking out for
this one. Well. I think putting an open ended mystery
out there is a good way just to finish off

(23:51):
and transition into kind of an artsy related listener mail
as well. This isn't an email for once. It's a
letter that was sent to me actually with a package
by listener Robert, and it was just a really cool
thing to receive. If you listen to the podcast a lot,
you may remember we did one on John d back

(24:12):
in the fall late fall, and um we mentioned Harry Potter,
and I mentioned that my niece was reading Harry Potter,
and um had suggested to me to read it as well.
More than suggested. She kind of shoved a book in
my hand and was like, read this. So Robert wrote
to us and sent us wand pretty cool looking, right.

(24:32):
Have you tried any spells or has your niece tried any?
I know it was ultimately destined for her. Yes, I
don't know. I'm going to have to explore that and
find out if any of her, if her brother or
sister has been turned into a toad or something. But
I wanted to read what Robert wrote because it's really cool.
He said, jar to Blina and closed as a gift
for you to read gift to your Harry Potter reading niece.

(24:53):
When my daughter's nieces and nephews were busy with the
Harry Potter series, I made several of these wands for
them to play with. Of course, I made more than
I needed so they could each have a variety from
which to choose, So afterward I ended up with some extras.
So I guess that's what I ended up with. And
when you mentioned that you were reading the books along
with your niece, I thought of sending you one to

(25:14):
help steal your status as a cool ant. And this
particular wand is made of mahogany and padwalk. I don't
know if I said that correctly or not. With an
agged at the base of the handle, the end of
the handle unscrews to reveal a small compartment for a phoenix, feathers,
or other supplemental magical items. I hope she enjoys it,

(25:35):
so thank you so much, Robert. I know that my
niece and probably my other niece and my nephew will
enjoy this for years to come. And it was just
so cool to see. I cannot believe that he made
this with his own hands. It's pretty amazing and I
guess we'll have to just be searching. Keep on the
lookout for Phoenix Brothers too, or I don't know, dragon
heart string something something along something to stuff in there. Um.

(25:58):
If you have you don't have to send us a gift,
but if you have any letters to send us, any
comments about podcasts, or notes about interesting crafts that you
do like listener Robert, or if you just want to
send us a suggestion for a future podcast, please write
to us where at History podcast at Discovery dot com.
You can also find us on Facebook and we're on Twitter.
In this history and if you want to learn a

(26:19):
little bit more about art history related topics. We mentioned
this last time that we have a lot of articles
on famous artists, but we also have articles on famous
art movements, including for realism. You can look that one
up by searching for how Surrealism works on our homepage
at www dot how Stuff Works dot com. Be sure

(26:45):
to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future.
Join House to Work staff as we explore the most
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