Historical Babes: Frida Kahlo: The Lady with One Eyebrow

Since today is the 99th anniversary of the end of World War I, I had been planning to either wrap up or launch a series on women in World War I. AND it’s also Native American Heritage Month, so I had planned some posts on Native American Women in history too – but, I have perennial amnesia about just how much time and energy these posts take.

Alas, the best laid plans of mice and women…

ANYWAY: I may as well finish up my series on Mexico before I go on hiatus (again) until after Thanksgiving.

Frida Kahlo was born in Mexico in 1907, but always claimed to have been born three years later, in 1910. Although it is impossible to know Kahlo’s true reasons for doing anything (her diaries are quite convoluted and misleading), it is probable that this particular lie was not for the vain purpose of appearing three years younger (although, she probably was vain) but to align her birth with the birth of the new Mexican nation. (Recall from previous posts that the Mexican Revolution began in 1910.) Her proclaimed birthdate is actually rather appropriate. Despite the fact that Kahlo did not directly participate in the revolution that provided a backdrop for her childhood, she lived a revolutionary life and her artwork is often a symbolic commentary on the tumultuous changes of Mexico’s 20th century – among other things.

Frida Kahlo was born in an upper middle class family that epitomized the cultural and racial blending of Mexico. Her father was of German-Jewish heritage, and her mother, Spanish Catholic, with some indigenous heritage. Growing up, Kahlo had a closer and more loving relationship with her father, while her relationship with her mother remained cold throughout her life. Despite this, as an adult, the identity Kahlo chose to project to the world emphasized her indigenous Mexican roots on her mother’s side.

A painting of Kahlo, her parents, and grandparents.

Two Fridas: the self-portrait, among other things, shows Kahlo's mixed heritage.

As an icon, Frida Kahlo is best known for her proclivity for native Mexican dress, love of Mexican folk art, and preference for wearing her hair in indigenous style. As with just about everything Kahlo did, there is no single definitive answer for why she had these preferences. One possible explanation is that the flowing Mexican dresses hid Kahlo’s physical deformities in her lower extremities. As a child, Kahlo contracted Polio, which resulted in an atrophied leg. Since Kahlo did not wear a brace to accommodate her shriveled leg, she developed subsequent deformities in her pelvis and spine. These were further exacerbated in 1925 when a bus that Kahlo was riding with her lover/art instructor was struck by a trolley. As a result of the accident, Kahlo suffered several fractured ribs, fractures in her spine, and in her pelvis. Although plausible, Kahlo’s desire to hide her injuries doesn’t seem to be the entire explanation for her fashion choices, especially since her art made her injuries quite public.

The Broken Column: Kahlo's fractured spine represented by a broken Ionic column.

Kahlo painted this picture after a visit to the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit where her pregnancy ended either in miscarriage or abortion.

In fact, Kahlo seems to some degree to have reveled in her injuries and illnesses due to the attention and affection she received as a result, beginning with the attention her parents showered on her during her polio recovery, right up to her dying days when she had her hospital bed moved to a museum where her art was on display.

Another possible explanation for Kahlo’s fashion choices could have been the artistic and political preferences of her husband, the Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, a communist whose artwork celebrated industrial workers, peasant guerrillas, and Mexico’s indigenous heritage. As a child, Frida Kahlo became obsessed with Rivera, who was 20 years her senior. The couple married in 1929, and by all definitions had a strange and unhealthy relationship.

One of Rivera's murals, showing Kahlo distributing arms to rebels.

Rivera was an incurable philanderer, who gloated that a physician had once declared him “incapable of monogamy.” Kahlo, who loved to baby Rivera, was undoubtedly injured by his infidelities, and carried on a string of affairs herself – with both male and female lovers. Some of them, such as an affair with the Soviet exile, Leon Trotsky, were as much vengeance against her unfaithful husband as for personal gratification.

But coming back to Kahlo’s iconic dress. Her choices were probably a combination of factors: part to hide her deformities, part to match her husband’s style, politics, and preferences – but I think most of all, Frida Kahlo dressed that way because she liked it, and the attention she gained from it.

By the time Kahlo died in 1954, age 47 (possibly by suicide, possibly from complications of her ever-mounting health problems, but no autopsy was ever performed to confirm her cause of death) she left behind a portfolio of 143 paintings, 55 of them self-portraits. She was described at times as a realist, and at other times a surrealist, exemplifying the painters’ version of a uniquely Latin American genre: fantastical realism, where the real and surreal mesh seamlessly. Her art was admired by artistic giants such as her own husband and Pablo Picasso. In 1995, one of her portraits sold for 3.2 million dollars: at the time the greatest sum ever paid for a work of Latin American art, and the second highest ever paid for work by a female artist. (To date, the highest sum paid for work by a female artist was the 2014 sale of a Georgia O’Keefe painting for 44.4 million dollars).

Self-portrait with a monkey and parrot - the painting that broke sales records in 1995.

Kahlo’s art represented the specific turmoil of 20th century Mexico, but also continues to resonate with viewers for her messages about identity, gender, sexuality, illness, and disability.