Frida Kahlo

Frida Kahlo

Frida Kahlo's life was one marked by extreme suffering, extreme

heroism, and extreme genius. Stricken with polio as a child then

nearly crippled in a bus accident at the age of eighteen, Kahlo defied

the odds not only by learnng to walk again (twice) but by taking the

world by storm with her unique artistic vision.

Frida Kahlo was born July 6, 1907 near Mexico City. However, she

always claimed to be born in the year of the Mexican Revolution, 1910,

in order to link her own birth to that of modern Mexico. It was just

one of the many half-truths Kahlo told about her life, some say, in

order to create a myth through which she would always be remembered.

The desire to be remembered was always a central theme of Kahlo's art,

as reflected in the many self-portraits she painted (the images for

which she is best known). Once she embroidered a pillow for her

husband, the muralist Diego Rivera, which read, "Remember me, my

love."

Kahlo's obsession with mortality is no mystery as illness, severe pain

and the threat of death repeatedly imposed themselves on her young

life. At age six, Kahlo contracted polio and had to spend 9 months

confined to her room. During that time, she created an imaginary

friend who would later be reflected in a painting called "The Two

Fridas." Explaining the painting in her diary she wrote, "I

experienced intensely an imaginary friendship with a little girl more

or less the same age as me ... I followed her in all her movements and

while she danced, I told her my secret problems."

Once over the polio, Kahlo seemed determined to live life to the

fullest. She became a tomboy at school and the le...

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...e couple

did divorce, in 1939, they reunited in less than a year. For all their

troubles, they remained one another's greatest loves and greatest

fans.

That same year Kahlo suffered another blow. Her right leg had to be

amputated below the knee due to a gangrene infection. On July 13,

1954, at the age of 47, Frida Kahlo died. The cause was never

officially determined. The last entry in Kahlo's diary read, "I hope

the leaving is joyful and I hope never to return."

Little known outside of the art world until the 1990's, Frida Kahlo

has recently become a cultural icon. Numerous books and articles have

been written about her. She has been the subject of three

documentaries, and a feature film about her life was released October

25, 2002. For a woman who wished to be remembered, it seems, her wish

has come true.