Frida Kahlo's House 2

Drawn from personal experiences, including her marriage, her miscarriages, and her numerous operations, Kahlo's works are often characterized by their suggestions of pain. Of her 143 paintings, 55 are self-portraits which often incorporate symbolic portrayals of physical and psychological wounds. She insisted, "I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality." Kahlo was influenced by indigenous Mexican culture, which is apparent in her use of bright colors and dramatic symbolism. She frequently included the symbolic monkey. In Mexican mythology, monkeys are symbols of lust, but Kahlo portrayed them as tender and protective symbols. Christian and Jewish themes are often depicted in her work.

She combined elements of the classic religious Mexican tradition with surrealist renderings. Kahlo created a few drawings of "portraits," but unlike her paintings, they were more abstract. She did one of her husband, Diego Rivera, and of herself. At the invitation of Andr? Breton, she went to France during 1939 and was featured at an exhibition of her paintings in Paris. The Louvre bought one of her paintings, The Frame, which was displayed at the exhibit. This was the first work by a twentieth century Mexican artist that was purchased by the renowned museum. As a young artist, Kahlo communicated with the Mexican painter, Diego Rivera, whose work she admired, asking him for advice about pursuing art as a career. He recognized her talent. He encouraged her artistic development and also began an intimate relationship with Frida. They were married in 1929, despite the disapproval of Frida's mother.

Their marriage was often troubled. Kahlo and Rivera both had irritable temperaments and numerous extramarital affairs. The bisexual Kahlo had affairs with both men and women, including Isamu Noguchi and Josephine Baker. Rivera knew of and tolerated her relationships with women, but her relationships with men made him jealous. For her part, Kahlo was furious when she learned that Rivera had an affair with her younger sister, Cristina. The couple divorced in November 1939, but remarried in December 1940. Their second marriage was as troubled as the first. Their living quarters were often separate, although sometimes adjacent. Misguided Communists, Kahlo and Rivera befriended Leon Trotsky after he gained political asylum in Mexico from Joseph Stalin's regime in the Soviet Union during the late 1930s. During 1937, Trotsky lived initially with Rivera and then at Kahlo's home (where he had an affair with Kahlo). Trotsky and his wife then relocated to another house in Coyoacan where, in 1940, he was assassinated.

Frida Kahlo died on July 13, 1954, soon after turning 47. A few days before her death she wrote in her diary: "I hope the exit is joyful ? and I hope never to return ? Frida". The official cause of death was given as a pulmonary embolism , although some suspected that she died from an overdose that may or may not have been accidental. An autopsy was never performed. She had been very ill throughout the previous year and her right leg had been amputated at the knee, owing to gangrene. She had a bout of bronchopneumonia about that time, which had left her quite frail. In his autobiography, Diego Rivera would write that the day Kahlo died was the most tragic day of his life, adding that, too late, he had realized that the most wonderful part of his life had been his love for her. A pre-Columbian urn holding her ashes is on display in her former home, La Casa Azul (The Blue House), in Coyocoan, which since 1958 has been maintained as a museum housing a number of her works of art and numerous mementos and artifacts from her personal life.

Aside from the 1939 acquisition by the Louvre, Kahlo's work was not widely acclaimed until decades after her death. Often she was remembered only as Diego Rivera's wife. It was not until the early 1980s, when the artistic style in Mexico known as Neomexicanismo began, that she became well-known to the public. It was during this time that artists such as Kahlo, Abraham ?ngel, ?ngel Z?rraga and others gained recognition and Jesus Helguera's classical calendar paintings became famous. During the same decade of the 1980s other factors helped to make her better known. The first retrospective of Frida Kahlo?s work outside Mexico (exhibited alongside the photographs of Tina Modotti) opened at the Whitechapel Gallery in London in May 1982, organized and co-curated by Peter Wollen and Laura Mulvey. The exhibition also was shown in Sweden, Germany, Manhattan, and Mexico City. The movie Frida, naturaleza viva (1983), directed by Paul Leduc with Ofelia Medina as Frida and painter Juan Jos? Gurrola as Diego, was a great success.

For the rest of her life, Medina has remained in a quasi-perpetual Frida role. Also during the same time, Hayden Herrera published an influential biography, Frida: The Biography of Frida Kahlo, which became a worldwide bestseller. Raquel Tibol, a Mexican artist and personal friend of Frida, wrote Frida Kahlo: una vida abierta. Other works about her include a biography by Mexican art critic and psychoanalyst Teresa del Conde and texts by other Mexican critics and theorists, such as Jorge Alberto Manrique. From 1990?91, Kahlo's "Diego on my Mind" (1943), oil on masonite, 76 by 61 centimeters piece was used as the representative piece on the post for the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Mexico: Splendors of Thirty Centuriesart exhibit. In 1991, the opera Frida by Robert Xavier Rodriguez, which had been commissioned by the American Music Theater Festival, premiered in Philadelphia. In 1994, American jazz flautist and composer James Newton released an album inspired by Kahlo titled Suite for Frida Kahlo on AudioQuest Music (now known as Sledgehammer Blues. 

On June 21, 2001, she became the first Hispanic woman to be honored with a U.S. postage stamp. In 2002, the American biographical movie Frida, directed by Julie Taymor in which Salma Hayek portrayed the artist, was released. The film was based on Herrera's book. It grossed $58 million worldwide. In 2005 an international exhibition of Kahlo's work was presented in London. It brought together eighty-seven of her works for the display. In 2006, Kahlo's 1943 painting Roots set a US$ 5.6 million auction record for a Latin American work. The 2009 novel The Lacauna by Barbara Kingsolver features Kahlo, her life with Rivera, and her affair with Trotsky. On July 6, 2010, to commemorate the anniversary of her birthday, Google altered its standard logo to include a portrait of Frida, depicted in her style of art. On August 30, 2010, the Bank of Mexicoissued a new MXNS 500-peso note, featuring Frida and her 1949 painting entitled Love's Embrace of the Universe, Earth, (Mexico), I, Diego, and Mr. X?lotl on the back of the note while her husband Diego was on the front of the note.

A play based on Frida Kahlo's life was premiered at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2008. 'Frida Kahlo: Viva la vida!", written by Mexican Humberto Robles and performed by Gael Le Cornec, received an Artistic Excellence Award and a best female performer nomination at the Brighton Festival Fringe in 2009. An exhibition of works by Frida Kahlo (1907 ? 1954) and Diego Rivera (1886 ? 1957, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera: Masterpieces from the Gelman Collection, will be shown at Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, West Sussex from 9 July to 2 October 2011. This major touring exhibition, which comes to Chichester for its only UK showing, brings together the iconic paintings of the two central figures of Mexican Modernism, for the first time in this country.

The one hundredth anniversary of the birth of Frida Kahlo was commemorated with the largest exhibit ever held of her paintings at the Palacio de Bellas Artes, Kahlo's first comprehensive exhibit in Mexico. Works were on loan from Detroit, Minneapolis, Miami, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Nagoya, Japan. The exhibit included one-third of her artistic production, as well as manuscripts and letters that had not been displayed previously. The exhibit was open June 13 through August 12, 2007 and surpassed all previous attendance records at the museum. Some of her work was exhibited in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, and moved during September 2007 to museums in the United States. In 2008, a Frida Kahlo exhibition in the United States with more than forty of her self-portraits, still lifes, and portraits was shown at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, th Philadelphia Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and other venues.

A "Frida Kahlo Retrospective" exhibit at the Walter-Gropius-Bau, Berlin from April 30 to August 9, 2010, has brought together more than 120 drawings and paintings, including several drawings never before displayed publicly. Regarding Kahlo's "preferred" birth year (she claimed to be born in 1910 during the Mexican Revolution), the Berlin show is also being touted as a "centennial" exhibition. Casa Azul in Coyoacan, Mexico City, is the family home where Frida Kahlo grew up and to which she returned in her final years. Frida's father, Guillermo Kahlo, built the house in 1907 as the Kahlo family home. Leon Trotsky stayed at this house when he first arrived in Mexico in 1937. The home was donated by Diego Rivera upon his death in 1957, which occurred three years after the death of Frida, and the house is now a museum housing artifacts of her life. Her former home is a popular destination for tourists. ? Source: Wikipedia.