Fiona McMonagle

Frida was resilient

At the age of 18, Frida was involved in a serious trolley car accident (or tram as we would recognise today), which left her confined to a bed for months. While healing from painful injuries she began to paint. Her parents provided her with a modified easel that she could use from her bed and mounted a mirror above her so that she could paint her own image.

Prior to the accident Kahlo wanted to become a doctor, but her long-lasting injuries prevented her from pursuing a career in medicine. Instead, she turned to art. The permanent pain and suffering she endured as a result of the accident, as well as personal traumas that were to follow her throughout her life, became the source of inspiration for many of her paintings.

Frida was from Mexico

The vast social inequalities between the wealthy elite and the indigenous inhabitants of Mexico were the major factor behind the Mexican Revolution in 1910 which gave rise to social and cultural change. Devoted to her country, Frida Kahlo changed her birthdate to 1910, so that it coincided with the year of the Mexican Revolution.

From 1920 with the installation of the new president, Álvaro Obregón, the social and political upheaval gradually stabilised, allowing for a consolidation of a new Mexican national identity, one linked to its indigenous heritage. The increased access to education and the arts inspired great artistic output, with new generations of artists looking to the past, present and future, for inspiration.

Through direct government support, indigenous cultures were celebrated. Artists were encouraged to take inspiration from Mexico’s long and rich history and embrace the indigenous people and the associated folk-art traditions, with the explicit aim of creating a new sense of national identity.

Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo is how Frida’s name appears on her birth certificate. Her father was a German Jewish immigrant and her mother was of Spanish and indigenous Mexican descent. During the 1930s when Nazism was on the rise in Germany, she asserted her German heritage by spelling her name Frieda, a honor to the German spelling peace (frieden).

Frida was a Modernist

Kahlo was interested in politics and art, which led her to join the Mexican Communist Party in 1927. It was here that she met fellow artist Diego Rivera (1886-1957) who would become her husband in 1929. Together, Kahlo and Rivera helped to develop modernism in a postrevolutionary Mexico.

Rivera alongside other Mexican artists participated in the Mexican muralist movement which was a government-led initiative to create large scale murals that promoted social ideals and glorified the Mexican Revolution. Aimed to unify the country and build a national identity, the murals gave indigenous people, peasants and the working-class, pride of place in shaping modern Mexico.

The murals and paintings made during this movement combined a distinct fusion of folk art and international modernism. Ancient Aztec icons are set amongst abstracted modernist landscapes, portraits of Mexico’s indigenous peoples are given precedence, and folk arts and crafts abound in embroidery, weaving and sculpture.

As a modernist, Kahlo rebelled against the European forms of art that were popular before the revolution. Instead, she explored her personal psyche depicting portraits and self-portraits that were rich with symbolism, personal stories and bold colours and patterns.

Frida and Fashion

Mexico City in the 1920s was truly cosmopolitan and people followed the latest in international fashion. For Kahlo, however, fashion became a bold political statement as she began to favour traditional Tehuana costumes similar to those worn by her ancestors in Oaxaca. Her indigenous costume served two purposes for Kahlo; it masked her physical injuries and, by aligning with Mexico’s ancient indigenous cultures, it provided a vehicle for reclaiming power and personal identity.

The traditional Tehuana attire commonly consisted of a tunic like garment called a Huipil which had a long skirt that was brightly embroidered. In Diego on my mind, (Self-portrait as Tehuana) 1943, pictured here, Kahlo wears a headdress from Tehuantepec, in the state of Oaxaca. The starched lace folds that encircle her face draw attention to the portrait of Rivera etched on her forehead.

Frida was a Feminist

Kahlo did not conform to social norms and defied gender stereotypes placed on women at the time. She refused to alter her features including her ‘trademark’ single dark eye-brow and faint moustache – in fact, she exaggerated these features in her portraits. Kahlo wore carefully constructed outfits and elaborate hairstyles. Her body adornment was rebellious as she challenged the fundamentals of how women were supposed to dress and behave in contemporary Mexican society.

Kahlo’s subject matter often acknowledged women’s lived experience, including birth, miscarriage, abortion and breastfeeding, which were sometimes deemed as taboo topics to talk about or even explore in art making. Despite the physical and emotional suffering that Kahlo endured throughout her life, her intense gaze in her self-portraits consistently exudes strength and power.