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FRIDA KAHLO, THE BRUSH OF ANGUISH |
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The Beginning, Part 3
Portrait of Miguel N. Lira, 1927
Alejandro Gomez Arias, c. 1924 In June 1927 she wrote, "Monday, they're going to change my cast for the third time, this time to keep me immobilized without being able to walk for two or three months, until my spine knits together perfectly, and I don't know if afterwards they'll have to operate on me.... Every day I'm skinnier, and when you come back, you're really going to be in for a shock when you see how horrible I am with this dreadful apparatus. Afterward, I'm going to be a thousand times worse, so you can just imagine: after having been lying down for a month (the way you left me) and another month with two different devices, and now another two months flat on my back put in a coating of plaster, then six months again with the lighter apparatus so I can walk.... Is that enough to drive a person crazy, or not?" On September 9, 1927, she noted, "On the seventeenth it will be two years since our tragedy. For sure I certainly will remember it terribly well, although it's stupid, isn't it? I haven't painted anything new (and won't), until you come back.... I've suffered terribly, and I'm almost neurotic, and I've let myself become such an ignoramus, I'm totally demoralized." And eight days later: "I'm still very sick and almost without any hope. As always, nobody believes it. Today is the seventeenth of September, the worst day of all because I'm alone." Among the vague diagnoses and suggested treatments mentioned in Frida's letters were thermocauterization, an operation to graft a piece of bone from her leg, the discovery of a lesion on her sciatic nerve, and constant changes of immobilizing corsets in different materials. Undoubtedly her recovery and moods were affected by the household gloom dictated by her parents' poor health and the family's precarious economic situation. The Casa Azul was still mortgaged, and at one point all the fine furnishings had to be auctioned off. Her mother's daily bad humor coupled with her father's misanthropic behavior caused her to describe her home as "one of the saddest I have ever seen." A Prepa friend who remained close to Frida during her recuperation was German de Campo. A man of ardent political convictions, he was a major influence on the ideologically leftist road she took then and maintained all her life. De Campo introduced Frida to the weekly salons of painters, writers, photographers, and intellectuals held by Tina Modotti, the strikingly beautiful Italian who had come to Mexico from the United States with photographer Edward Weston. Modotti, an outstanding photographer herself and Weston's protege, worked for the muralists and was not only a model for Diego Rivera but probably the reason he separated at that time from his wife, Lupe Marin. Frida admired Modotti above all for her political militancy and the practical way she applied the strength of her convictions to her daily actions. Modotti apparently sponsored Frida's entry into the Communist party. Her hair now cut very short and styled close to her head, Frida no longer wore the white blouse of her student days, but was more apt to be seen in the distinctive red shirt of the party. (A Rivera mural, Distributing Arms, in Mexico City's Ministry of Public Education, portrays both Modotti and a red-shirtclad Frida.)
Portrait of a Girl, 1929
Portrait of Eva Frederick, 1931
Portrait of Mrs. Jean Wight, 1931 One account suggests that Frida renewed her acquaintance with Diego Rivera at a Modotti soiree where he impressed her with a show of flamboyant behavior, using a pistol to shoot a phonograph. Frida told another story in an interview with the Mexican journalist Bambi: "I took four little pictures to Diego who was painting up on the scaffolds at the Ministry of Public Education. Without hesitating a moment I said to him, 'Diego, come down,' and so, since he is so humble, so agreeable, he came down. 'Look, I didn't come to flirt with you or anything, even though you are a womanizer, I came to show you my painting. If it interests you, tell me so, if it doesn't interest you, tell me that too, so I can get to work on something else to help out my parents.' He told me, 'Look, I'm very much interested in your painting, especially this self-portrait which is the most original. The other three seem to me to be influenced by what you've seen. Go on home, paint a picture, and next Sunday, I'll come to see it and tell you.' So I did, and he said, 'You have talent.'"
Frida and Diego at a demonstration of the Syndicate of Technical Workers. Painters, and Sculptors, 1929 Diego told biographer Gladys March a similar story, adding that when he learned that the young woman who had sought his opinion of her paintings was Frida Kahlo, he immediately remembered the little girl who long ago had taunted his wife Lupe Marin in the halls of the Prepa and had been such a troublesome youngster to the school authorities.
Frida
depicted in Rivera's mural Distributing Arms (detail), Ministry of
Public Education, 1928
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