BBC News
July 13, 2004
Artist Kahlo's legend grows
The 50th anniversary of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo's death, is being
celebrated by her growing number of worldwide fans. BBC News Online
looks at her life and work.
During her lifetime, Kahlo did not enjoy the same level of recognition
as Mexico's great mural painters - Rivera, Orozco and Siqueiros.
But now her works depicting the artist as a private, vulnerable woman
are becoming ever more popular.
During her life, Kahlo was a mythic figure in her own country - famous
for her stormy marriage to the Mexican muralist Diego Rivera as well as
her communist ideals and native Mexican dress and jewellery.
In recent years her art has been sought by leading museums, while her
dress has inspired fashion designers.
Meanwhile, her bohemian lifestyle has been the subject of plays, as
well as the 2002 Oscar-nominated film Frida starring Salma Hayek.
Born in Mexico City in 1907, Kahlo began to paint in 1925 while
recovering from a bus accident that left her in constant pain and
permanently disabled, leading to more than 30 operations.
Many of the 200 or so paintings relate to her experiences with physical
pain. Some detail her turbulent relationship with Diego Rivera, 20
years her senior, whom she met in 1928 aged 22 and married the
following year (they divorced briefly in 1939, remarrying in 1940).
The pair hosted a stream of famous guests from the US and Europe, and
both had numerous affairs.
Perhaps the most famous of Kahlo's trysts was with exiled Russian
communist Leon Trotsky, who was killed in Mexico.
Kahlo shared Rivera's faith in communism and passionate interest in the
indigenous cultures of Mexico, while he encouraged her in her work,
playing up her primitive ancestry.
She had Indian blood on her mother's side, mixed with Hungarian-Jewish
stock on her father's.
The artist worked at a time of surging national interest in
pre-Hispanic Mexican history and culture, when the notion of native
roots had great currency.
She encouraged the myth of her own primitiveness in part by adopting
traditional Mexican dress, which generated respect and imparted
credibility in the art world.
Piercing
To mark the 50th anniversary of her death there is a flurry of
exhibitions, events and new books in her birthplace in Mexico City.
Many of the piercing self-portraits she was famous for have been
brought to her former home, the Blue House, for a special exhibition.
Through these self-portraits Kahlo dealt with her crippling accident -
which led to her inability to have children - and her tempestuous
marriage.
In 1958 Rivera had Kahlo's home turned into a museum - now one of the
most visited in Mexico.
Each year, more than 325,000 people tour the house's lush gardens and
see the bedroom where Kahlo often painted and where she died at the age
of 47.
Visitors can buy everything from religious-style icons featuring
Kahlo's image to mouse pads and cigarette holders.
The museum has begun cataloguing more than 26,000 letters and other
documents which will eventually be opened to the public.