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FRIDA KAHLO, THE BRUSH OF ANGUISH |
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The Beginning, Part 1
My Grandparents, My Parents, and I (Family Tree), 1936 Rain in the morning in Coyoacan, for her birth as well as her death. Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo Calderon came into the world on the sixth of July, 1907, maybe in the family home, the Casa Azul, as she always claimed, maybe down the street at her grandmother's house, a6 shown in the official registry of her birth.
Frida in Coyoacan, 1927 An hour by streetcar from Mexico City, Coyoacan was surrounded by flat, open land, cornfields, and ranches. Frida absorbed the history and habits of every corner of the village; she explored its river, markets, churches, and plazas. She knew when the street markets and neighborhood fairs would be held, which street vendors sold the best quesadillas, and where to buy the most amusing toys. She spent hours strolling the streets with her friends, talking to merchants and shoeshine boys, and roaming the verdant parks and gardens.
The Casa Azul, a rambling, blue structure in colonial style, was built by Guillermo Kahlo a few years before Frida's birth. Tall, shuttered windows opened to the street, and within, a series of interconnected rooms surrounded a large inner patio. Frida's part Indian mother, Matilde Calderon, a rigidly conventional woman, was a meticulous housekeeper and a devout Catholic. She frequently took communion, went to confession, and said the rosary in the late afternoon with relatives and friends. She chose not to raise her husband's two daughters by a previous marriage, sending them off to live in a convent orphanage. Her relationship with her own four daughters was strained as well; the oldest two married and left home at very young ages. By the time Frida was in her teens, her mother was in poor health and struggling with the family's finances. Although Matilde Calderon's letters prove otherwise, Frida once said with irony that her mother couldn't read or write, but she certainly could count money.
Matilde Calderon de Kahlo and Guillermo Kahlo, c. 1932
Cristina Kahlo, Isabel Campos, and Frida, 1919
Portrait of My Father 1951
Frida wearing a crucifix, center back; her sisters Matilde and Adriana with their spouses; her younger sister Cristina and a nephew; Matilde Calderon, center, 1928 Frida's father was a greater influence in her life. Shy, taciturn, withdrawn, Wilhelm Kahlo was a German Jew of Hungarian descent who had come to Mexico as a young man. He eventually found work in his father's trade, the jewelry business. When his first wife died giving birth to their second daughter, he turned for.help to Matilde, a co-worker. They married three months later. Guillermo, as he now called himself, took up his new father-in- law's career of photography and soon had his own studio. Guillermo's always tender attachment to his "Liebe Frida" strengthened when she was stricken with polio at age six. Her right leg became noticeably thinner than the left, and frequent exercise was prescribed to speed her recuperation. Guillermo was the parent to help her, encouraging her to swim, ride a bicycle, and participate in sports. She often accompanied her father on outings with his camera, assisting him with the equipment, and she worked in his studio, learning to retouch, develop, and color his photographs. Possibly because of her bout with polio, Frida entered elementary school later than her peers. About this time she developed two tendencies that would become lifelong habits: she began to claim to be younger than she was, and to hide her physical disfigurement. In childhood and later photographs, she always posed with her right leg concealed. In 1922 Frida was ready to enter high school. A bright student, she qualified to attend Mexico City's National Preparatory School, by far the best school in Mexico at the time, with a faculty of prominent intellectuals from many disciplines. Frida was going out into the world, and a very different world it was, for Mexico as well as young Frida. The Mexican Revolution, which began three years after Frida's birth, had inspired a dynamic new sense of nationalism throughout the country. Turning away from dictator Porfirio Dfaz and his elitist followers, and their love of all things European, Mexico looked proudly to its native roots and initiated a deliberate program of cultural reconstruction and educational development. The country's marvelous archaeological history, heretofore little known and undervalued, was being revealed in excavations of the ancient ruins at Mitla, Monte Alban, El Tajin, and Teotihuacan, and indigenous arts and crafts of all regions gained new attention. Under the direction of the education minister; Jose Vasconcelos, literacy campaigns were initiated; women were integrated into the school system, and libraries and a state publishing house were set up to provide inexpensive books. Vasconcelos is also credited with stimulating the Mexican muralist movement. Believing that Mexican citizens would acquire a more profound awareness of their history by seeing it depicted on public walls, he turned over large areas of civic buildings to artists such as Jose Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and Diego Rivera, who soon became internationally famous as "Los Tres Grandes," the three greats, of the movement. One of the buildings whose courtyard walls they painted was the National Preparatory School, and there Diego and Frida met for the first time. Women had only recently been admitted to the Prepa; Frida was one of only thirty-five females in a class of approximately two thousand. She soon established herself as a rebellious student full of pranks, audacity, and humor, with a lively imagination and an astounding mastery of foul language, which she picked up from conversations with bootblacks and street vendors in her neighborhood. Although actually older (at fifteen) and more mature than many of her schoolmates, she said she was three years younger, claiming 1910 as her birth year so she could declare herself a Frida wearing a man's suit, far left, with members of her family, c. 1924 "daughter of the revolution." This fiction exemplifies her habit of calculated fabrication for dramatic effect.
Frida wearing a man's suit, far left, with members of her family, c. 1924
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