THE RELEVANT QUEER: Frida Kahlo, Painter, Iconic for her Powerful Surrealist Portraits

“I leave you my portrait so that you will have my presence all the days and nights that I am away from you.”

TRQ: Frida Kahlo, Born July 6, 1907

Painter Frida Kahlo, iconic for her powerful surrealist portraits, was born on July 6, 1907. The Tate Modern describes Kahlo as one of the 20th Century’s most significant artists, and she is important to queer, feminist, and Chicano cultures. Her evolving autobiographical work predates Madonna, Cindy Sherman, and Marina Abramovic. Contributing to the “Fridamania” phenomenon, Mattel’s Frida Barbie and films like Julie Taymor’s Frida (2002) and Disney-Pixar’s Coco (2017) have portrayed Kahlo and her instant recognizability.

Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderon was born at her parents’ La Casa Azul home in Coyoacán, a historical village on Mexico City’s outskirts. Kahlo’s father was photographer Carl Wilhelm Kahlo, who sailed from Germany to Mexico in 1891. Her mother was Matilde Calderon y Gonzalez, a mestiza who was of indigenous and Spanish descent. 

In 1910, when Kahlo was 3 years old, the Mexican Revolution started. Later, she would align herself with the revolutionaries’ political struggles that sometimes played out with gunfights in the streets near her home. Kahlo’s mother fed the hungry fighters coming into her yard, while she also protected her daughters from the nearby violence. Kahlo described the atmosphere as sad. 

As a child, Kahlo enjoyed making art, sketching, and taking drawing lessons from Fernando Fernández, a printmaker who employed her as an engraving apprentice in the 1920s. At age 6, Kahlo contracted polio. She began wearing long skirts to disguise that her right leg was thinner than the left. Frida’s father was an epileptic and empathetic with Frida’s condition. He encouraged her to taking up boxing and other sports to regain her strength. He also taught her photography and darkroom skills. 

Kahlo attended primary school in Coyoacán, was home-schooled for 5th and 6th grades, and briefly attended a teachers’ school—where she was sexually abused. In 1922, she was one of 35 girls enrolled at the Preparatoria, a national prep school that promoted Mexico’s indigenous culture and identity. She hoped to become a physician. 

Kahlo joined with nine schoolmates to form the rebellious “Cachuchas,” known for pulling pranks, staging plays and debating philosophy and literature. Kahlo fell in love with fellow gang member Alejandro Gomez Arias. Kahlo and Arias were on their way home from school on September 17, 1925, when their bus collided with a streetcar. The accident killed several passengers, and a steel handrail pierced Kahlo’s hip, abdomen, and uterus. She suffered from a dislocated shoulder, a broken spine and collarbone, a shattered right leg, and a crushed right foot. 

Once Kahlo returned home to recuperate after her stay at the Red Cross Hospital in Mexico for several weeks, she started painting. In a full body cast, Kahlo suffered in great pain and turned her attention away from medicine. She was immobile for three months and her mother made an easel that enabled Kahlo to paint bed. The next year, she gave her first self-portrait to Arias. 

By 1927, Frida returned to socializing with her friends. She joined the Mexican Communist Party and met Julio Antonio Mella and photographer Tina Modotti. In 1928 she met painter Diego Rivera. She admired his work, and he encouraged hers. A year later, Kahlo and Rivera married. 

Their relationship was tumultuous. Kahlo had affairs with women and men. Rivera had affairs with several women. Kahlo began dressing in Mexican peasant clothing to emphasise her indigenous ancestral connection to the Isthmus of Tehuantepec’s matriarchal society. Over time, Kahlo began cross-dressing, using male clothing to construct power and independence. Frida presented herself as an anti-colonial feminist. 

“Nothing is worth more than laughter. It is strength to laugh and to abandon oneself, to be light. Tragedy is the most ridiculous thing.”— Frida Kahlo 

1930, she and Rivera moved to San Francisco where he painted murals for the San Francisco Stock Exchange. Following, they travelled to Detroit. Despite Rivera’s retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1931, Kahlo started claiming in the press that she was the bigger artist. She was unsure about having children with Rivera. She underwent one abortion and later suffered a miscarriage. Once Rivera finished the New Workers School mural in 1933, they returned to Mexico. 

After Rivera had an affair with Kahlo’s younger sister Cristina, the two divorced. In 1939, surrealist painter Andre Breton invited Kahlo to show her paintings in Paris. The Louvre bought her painting, The Frame, making it the first work by a 20th Century Mexican artist purchased by an international museum. She also socialized with Pablo Picasso and Marcel Duchamp. 

By 1950, Kahlo’s health problems kept her in the hospital for 9 months. In 1953, surgeons amputated her gangrene right leg. That year, Kahlo held her first solo exhibit in Mexico. Bedridden, she arrived by ambulance and celebrated the evening reclining on a four- poster bed in the gallery. 

A year later, Kahlo was again hospitalized. She suffered bronchial pneumonia and returned to the hospital 2 months later. On July 2nd, 1954, Kahlo made her last public appearance protesting the overthrow of President Jacobo Arbenz. Her participation brought on more illness, and she died on July 13, 1954, a week after her 47th birthday. Her ashes are on display in Coyoacán at La Casa Azul, now a museum. 

In 2001, Kahlo became the first Hispanic woman appearing on a U.S. postage stamp. In 2012, she was inducted into Chicago’s Legacy Walk celebrating LGBTQ history and people. In 2014, the Rainbow Honor Walk inducted Kahlo into the walk of fame in San Francisco’s Castro neighborhood. In 2018, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors renamed Phelan Avenue to Frida Kahlo Way. 

About the Authors

Troy Wise is currently a PhD student at UAL Central St Martins and teaches fashion and graphic design at London College of Contemporary Arts. His background is in marketing and is founder and co-editor of Image Amplified. He lives in, and is continually fascinated by, the city of London.

Rick Guzman earned his most recent MA at UAL Central St Martins in Applied Imagination in the Creative Industries. He currently holds two MA’s and an MBA in the New Media, Journalism and International Business fields. Co-editor at Image Amplified since its start, he lives in London, is fascinated by history and is motivated by continuing to learn and explore. 

Sources:

Biography

Britannica

Frida Kahlo Foundation

GLBTQ Archive

The Art Story