TIMELINE

Shaped by two cultures

Frida Kahlo was born in Mexico City on 6th July 1907, the daughter of German photographer Carl Wilhelm Kahlo and Mexican painter Mathilde Calderón.

Frida Kahlo spent the vast majority of her life at her family home, La Casa Azul (The Blue House), in the metropolitan district of Coyoacán.

Just like her three sisters and the two half-sisters from her father’s previous marriage, Frida Kahlo rejected her mother’s strictly Catholic lifestyle. This was a repeated source of tensions within the family.

Frida Kahlo’s formative years

Her health problems began in 1914. A congenital deformity of her spine kept Frida bound to her bed for much of her childhood.

In 1922, Frida Kahlo was one of the first girls to be admitted to the renowned Escuela Nacional Preperatoria school, where she prepared to study medicine.

Following her serious accident in September 1925, she began to train with Fernando Fernández, a commercial artist who was friendly with her father.

A serious accident shapes her life

When she was 18 years old, Frida suffered a severe injury while she was on a bus journey with her boyfriend Alejandro Gómez Arias.

When the bus collided with a tram, her legs were broken in many places, while her back and pelvis were pierced by an iron handrail. These injuries caused her great pain and forced her to spend recurring periods in hospital throughout her life.

Frida Kahlo had to wear a whole-body plaster cast or a corset for many weeks after the accident. Later, she did manage to walk again, contrary to her doctors’ expectations – but she had to give up her dreams of studying medicine.

“I paint myself because I spend a lot of time alone”

During her long period of recovery, she began to paint and to draw. Frida Kahlo painted her first self-portrait in September 1926. This was followed by many other images of herself, in which she reflected her current emotional and physical circumstances.

Frida repeatedly stated that “I paint myself because I spend a lot of time alone, and because I am the subject I know best” to explain her self-portraits. 

Following Alejandro’s increasing withdrawal from her life, Frida’s relationship with her first boyfriend finally came to an end in 1928.

The painter Diego Rivera – more than just one passion

The 22-year-old Frida Kahlo met 41-year-old Mexican painter Diego Rivera through an acquaintance. Not only did they both share a passion for painting, they also shared the same political opinions.

Rivera’s large-scale revolutionary wall paintings in public spaces – the Murales – gained him a great deal of attention and international fame at a very early age.

Rivera immortalised Frida in a portrait within the wall painting “Ballade of the Revolution”, which he created for the Ministry of Education in Mexico City during this period. Frida joined the Communist Party of Mexico at about this time.

Frida Kahlo gets married in Coyoacán

Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, 20 years her senior, were married in Coyoacán on 21st August 1929. 

This was the third marriage for Diego Rivera.

At the Palacio Nacional, Rivera was starting to work on the wall painting that depicted the history of the Mexican people.

Rivera was excluded from the Mexican communist party because of his criticism of Soviet communism and its party leader, Josef Stalin. As a result, Frida left the party too.

Turbulent times in the United States of America

Diego Rivera received a commission for two wall paintings in California. Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera travelled to the USA.

During the first six months of their stay, Kahlo met the surgeon, Dr Leo Eloesser. He diagnosed a prenatal abnormality of the spine as the cause of her medical problems. Kahlo painted a portrait of Eloesser, who would remain her most important medical practitioner

from then on. The artist produced six works within this period of six months in the USA.

During this time, Frida also cultivated the Mexicaninfluenced clothing style that became characteristic of her, and allowed people to photograph her in this guise.

Medical problems and a miscarriage

In December 1931, Rivera exhibited his work at the New Yorker Museum of Modern Art. This was only this institution’s second major solo show, following on from an Henri Matisse exhibition.

The deformation and pain in Kahlo’s right leg became worse and worse.

In 1932, Frida Kahlo and her husband moved to Detroit. There, Rivera painted a fresco in the Garden Court of the Detroit Institute of Arts.

Frida Kahlo suffered a miscarriage in the third month of a pregnancy.

On 15th September 1932, her mother died.

Relocation to New York

Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera moved to New York, where Rivera was to paint a mural entitled “Man at the Crossroads, Looking with Hope and High Vision to the Choosing of a New and Better Future” at the Rockefeller Center.

This work openly reflected his pessimistic attitude towards capitalism. He failed to obey the instruction to paint over a portrait of Lenin, and the commission was withdrawn from him as a result. The unfinished work was covered over, and was finally destroyed at the beginning of 1934.

Return to Mexico and Sister Cristina

The final return to Mexico. Kahlo and Rivera moved into their new “double” house in San Ángel, a suburb on the outskirts of the capital city. The Museum Estudio Casa Rivera is now housed in this building.

Having had a first abortion in 1931, Frida now underwent another termination of pregnancy. The painter also lost five toe joints in her first operation on her right foot.

During this period, which was already difficult, Frida Kahlo’s husband Diego Rivera embarked upon a relationship with Frida’s younger and best-loved sister, Cristina.

Frida Kahlo did not produce a single picture during this year.

My grandparents, my parents and I

In 1935, Frida Kahlo left her house in San Ángel for some months. She met Isamu Noguchi, a sculptor and designer whose roots lay in Japan. Noguchi was a fascinating character and a love affair began between them.

In 1936, Kahlo painted her work “My grandparents, my parents and I“.

Frida Kahlo joined Diego Rivera to lobby the Mexican President for asylum to be granted in Mexico to Stalin’s rival, Leon Trotsky.

Leon Trotsky lives as a guest in the Blue House

From 1937 to 1939, the Blue House in Coyoacán provided shelter for two well-known public figures – Marxist theoretician Leon Trotsky and his wife Natalia Sedova. They arrived as the result of a personal invitation from Frida Kahlo.

After just a few months, Trotsky and Frida Kahlo became lovers. She found it very difficult to deal with Diego Rivera’s affairs, yet still enjoyed quite a few extramarital relationships of her own.

She also had romantic relationships with a number of women, including Josephine Baker and the Mexican singer Chavela Vargas.

“I am not a surrealist”

André Breton and his wife, the painter Jacqueline Lamba, visited Mexico in April 1938, and enjoyed lively discussions with Trotsky and Rivera. Breton described Frida Kahlo as a surrealist, which she rejected.

In the November, Frida Kahlo’s first solo exhibition took place at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York.

Kahlo embarked upon a love affair with the Hungarian photographer Nickolas Muray. His photographs of the artist, who was already famous by then, are among the most vivid images of Frida Kahlo.

Frida Kahlo’s journey to Paris

An exhibition initiated by André Breton and presented by Marcel Duchamp at the Galerie Renou et Colle in Paris was a great success for Frida Kahlo, who travelled especially there for the opening show.

In Paris, Kahlo got to know other surrealists and representatives of the Parisian avant-garde, including such famous figures as Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró and Max Ernst.

The Louvre acquired Frida Kahlo’s painting of “The Frame”.

Return to Mexico and a divorce

Having returned to Mexico, Frida Kahlo divorced Diego Rivera on 6th November. She could no longer bear his ongoing affairs. 

One result of this turbulent period is Kahlo’s painting “Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair”. The long hair that Rivera loved lies on the floor, and Kahlo wears a man’s suit rather than her traditional Mexican dress.

Severe problems with alcohol and a kidney inflammation forced Frida to stay in hospital for an extended period.

New paintings and a revived marriage

Frida Kahlo presented two works, “The Two Fridas” and “The Wounded Table”, at the International Exhibition of Surrealism at the Galería de Arte Mexicano.

On 8th August in San Francisco, Kahlo and Rivera married each other for the second time. Rivera was painting a picture for the “Golden Gate Exposition” while Kahlo was on an alcohol rehabilitation course. The couple moved into the Blue House in Coyoacán in February 1941.

Trotsky was murdered at his home in Coyoacán on 21st August 1940, after a first attempted assassination in the May.

Diary entries

In her written and pictorial diary entries, Frida Kahlo not only tried to describe her own physical pain, but also to illustrate the glory of the world.

Her diaries dealt with subjects such as esotericism, sexuality, magic, fertility and illness, just as fully as her personal physical and psychological suffering.

A creative time in spite of periods in hospital

In 1943, Kahlo was made a professor at the “La Esmeralda” School of Art, where she taught

for over ten years.

The National Prize for Painting was awarded to Frida Kahlo in 1946 for her work entitled “Moses”.

In the following year, she contributed 45 selfportraits to the “Exhibition of Mexican Artists from the 18th to the 20th Centuries”.

In 1948, she re-joined the Communist Party of Mexico.

Frida Kahlo painted the works “Diego and I” and “The Love Embrace of the Universe” to celebrate the 60th birthday of Diego Rivera.

In 1950, Kahlo spent nine months in hospital, where she had to endure seven operations in the same area of her spine.

By now, Frida Kahlo constantly suffered the effects of painkillers, and could only work while lying down. She painted “Dr Farill” and “Portrait of my Father” in this period.

First solo exhibition in Mexico, and an amputation

Frida Kahlo’s first solo show in her homeland took place in the Lola Álvarez Bravo Gallery in Mexico.

Because of the state of her health, the artist could only attend the opening if she lay in her sick bed.

Her right leg was amputated at the knee later in that same year.

Frida Kahlo attempted suicide during this period.

The final public appearance

Frida Kahlo fell seriously ill in the spring of 1954. She suffered severe pneumonia, which made it necessary for her to go into hospital yet again.

She remained politically active.

While she was still recovering, and against medical advice, Kahlo took part in a demonstration against the North American intervention in Guatemala.

This was her last appearance in public.

Taking leave of a fascinating artist

Seven days after her 47th birthday, on 13th July 1954, Frida Kahlo died at the Blue House in Mexico.

The cause of her death was believed to be a pulmonary embolism. Rumours of suicide from an overdose of painkillers and sleeping pills could not be substantiated.

Frida Kahlo’s body was taken to lie in state at the Palacio de Bellas Artes. She was then cremated, and her urn returned to be set in place in the Blue House.