Hey guys!
Since I’ve been living as a nomad here in Mexico I wanted to learn more about Frida Kahlo
so I’ve been reading her biography and I knew a little bit about her before
but not much and I’ve just been blown away by some of the incredible details of her life.
So I wanted to share with you the ten most interesting things I learned about Frida Kahlo.
Number one.
When she was only eighteen years old Frida was in a horrible traffic accident.
She and a friend were on their way home after school and they got on a bus
and the bus collided with a streetcar.
In those days, apparently the buses in Mexico City were just made of wood
and the streetcar pushed the bus into the corner of a building
and, due to the collision, Frida where she was sitting
was thrown forward and the hand railing of the bus went through her like a sword.
And the force of the crash also threw off all of her clothes so she was naked
lying there on the bottom of the floor of the bus with this handrail through her.
It entered through her hip and went out through her vagina.
Someone else on the bus was a painter.
He had a packet of gold dust that he was carrying and, at the impact, the dust went everywhere
and so there’s Frida lying there like one of her paintings on the floor of the bus
with no clothes on, covered in blood, with a sword-like bus handrail through her,
covered in gold powder.
And at the scene, before the ambulances got there, one of the bystanders insisted
that they remove the handrail so he tore it out of her as she screamed.
And people that were there said that when the sirens did come you couldn’t here them
because she was screaming so loudly.
And for the rest of her life she suffered from the injuries from that accident
and she once famously said, ‘I am not sick. I am broken.’
Number two.
One doctor tried to ease her chronic back pain by putting her in a device
that hung her from the ceiling.
She had sandbags laced to her feet and she dangled there for three months
and she always painted for at least an hour a day,
even though she was hanging in this strange contraption.
Other doctors tried to put different corsets on her while she was dangling
and they were made of leather and steel and plaster, sometimes a combination.
One of them was put on incorrectly by an inexperienced doctor and she almost suffocated to death
until the corset was cut away as quickly as possible.
And apparently during the last ten years of her life she had twenty-eight different corsets
put onto her torso in an effort to help her back pain.
She also had to have her right leg amputated below the knee because her toes had gotten gangrene.
Number three.
Frida was famously married to Diego Rivera.
Twice.
They were first married in 1929 when she was twenty-two years old and he was forty-two.
But they got divorced in 1939 and then remarried a year later in 1940 on Diego’s fifty-fourth birthday.
Number four.
When she was six years old, Frida contracted polio which left her right leg
shorter and thinner than her left leg.
And years later when she married Diego his ex-wife Lupé was also invited to the reception
and she had too much to drink and she went up to Frida and pulled her dress up
showing everyone Frida’s legs and famously yelled something along the lines of
‘looks at these sticks!
Look at what Diego will have to put up with when he could’ve had these!’
And she lifted up her own skirt and showed off her legs.
And Frida tried to grab her and people had to restrain the two women from fighting.
Frida apparently was fuming and she ran out of the room.
Diego was laughing and just delighted that these two women were fighting over him
and Frida was so upset that she didn’t even spend the wedding night with him
and he went to the bar.
Number five.
Frida’s husband Diego was a self-confessed womanizer.
In 1944 Frida wrote a letter to a couple of friends and said,
“From 1929 to the present, I don’t remember any time
that the Diego Rivera household has not had
at least one extra female companion.
Home sweet home.”
He even had an affair with her sister.
Number six.
In Mexico City, Frida and Diego lived in houses that were separate but attached by a bridge.
Hers was blue and his was red.
They were very modern and, in theory, this was meant to symbolize their independence
both as people and, importantly, as artists.
However, it also gave Diego a great opportunity to conduct his womanizing
with some semblance of privacy.
Frida also had affairs during their marriage.
Number seven.
Frida was a huge partygoer and a fixture on the social scene wherever she happened to be.
She had gold and diamond studded teeth that she could slip on liked capped teeth
whenever she went out and I can only imagine the types of conversations that would get going.
Number eight.
Frida was commissioned by a woman named Clare to paint a portrait of her friend Dorothy
who had just committed suicide by jumping off of a building.
She wanted to have the portrait to give to Dorothy’s mother in memoriam
since her daughter had died.
But Frida totally misunderstood the request and so what she delivered
was a two part reenactment of the death called The Suicide of Dorothy Hale.
In the first part you see Dorothy mid-flight jumping off of a building
and in the second part, at the bottom of the frame,
there she is lying on the ground in a pool of blood.
And there’s even blood splattered on the bottom of the frame.
And you cannot imagine the awkwardness when Frida presented this portrait to Clare.
Number nine.
Frida had a menagerie of animals at her home in Mexico City.
Sadly, she wasn’t able to have children and so she thought of them as her surrogate babies.
She had spider monkeys and birds and a fawn and dogs and she loved them.
And number ten.
In 1953, the year before she died, Frida Kahlo got what she had always wanted:
a solo show in Mexico.
But she was so unwell at the time she couldn’t go.
Her doctors had given her very strict orders that she was not to leave her bed.
So in typical Frida rebelliousness and flare she showed up to the gallery
in her four poster bed escorted by police.
I had no idea of the challenges that she faced during her life
and I’m so glad that I read this biography because now, every time I see her paintings,
which are so full of pain and loneliness,
I think I’ll have a much better appreciation for where that came from in her life.
I hope that you enjoyed hearing about the iconic Frida Kahlo.
I would love for you to leave a comment down below and tell me if any of these facts
were new to you as well.
Please subscribe to my channel if you haven’t already and I’ll see you in my next video.