A major presence in the Dior cruise 2024 show by Maria Grazia Chiuri, Frida Kahlo is an icon the world over. Here, a look back at the meteoric rise of one of the most inspiring, free and radical artists of all time. By Boris Bergmann.
Frida Kahlo grew up in Casa Azul, south of Mexico City, a place renowned for the bright blue walls that now illuminate the Coyoacán district. A frail child, she suffered from poliomyelitis, which left her with a limp. She was one of the first girls admitted at the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria (now the Colegio de San Ildefonso). Her father, a photographer, introduced her to the fine arts, but young Frida wanted to be a doctor.
On September 17, 1925, at the age of eighteen, her life was turned upside down. The school bus she was in crashed into a streetcar. Frida was seriously injured. She spent several months in the hospital undergoing various operations. It was then that Frida realized painting would be her key to survival. Art became her reason for living.
She soon developed a unique style. Through her work, she relayed her story, producing multiple self-portraits and never shying away from putting herself centre stage. Through her clothing, she expressed commitment: by mixing traditional Mexican garments with men’s suits, she invented a singular, (already) avant-garde silhouette. With the encouragement of photographer Tina Modotti, she joined the Mexican Communist Party. From that point on, her art would be militant, dedicated to oppressed minorities. Women first among them.
Freedom, whether in love or in art, became her primary cause, her most fundamental stance against a patriarchal, traditionalist society. In 1922, while studying at the Colegio de San Ildefonso – the backdrop for the Dior cruise 2024 défilé – she met Diego Rivera, an artist famed for his mural paintings who was twenty-one years her senior. She showed him her work. It was love at first sight. Despite their age difference, they married and became a celebrated duo far beyond their country’s borders. They were welcomed in the United States but only lived there briefly because Frida missed Mexico. Her life was marked by hardship: due to the accident, she could not bear children. The couple tore apart. While exploring her own identity, she gave herself permission to love as she pleased, men and women alike.
Once back in Mexico, they welcomed an exiled Trotsky and the French poet André Breton, who in 1939 invited Frida to Paris for an exhibition. A critic of the Surrealists, she demonstrated that she belonged to no particular movement, that she remained free at all costs. Raised to the rank of national icon at home and honoured the world over, Frida was consumed by illness. Bedridden, she arrived at retrospectives dedicated to her work on a stretcher. She passed away in 1954, at the age of forty-seven. At the centre of her last painting was a cry of revolt: “Viva la Vida!” The final exclamation of an artist who elevated her life and trials through the unconditional power of art, love and friendship, and who followed only her heart to transcend and create.
