Frida Kahlo: Portrait of an Artist

<v Frida Kahlo>I am the subject I know best. <v Frida Kahlo>I paint myself because I am so often alone. <v Narrartor>For years, Mexican artist Frida Kahlo was known to the public only as the way for <v Narrartor>the great muralist Diego Rivera. <v Narrartor>To those who knew her, she was a remarkable painter who triumphed over a life of physical <v Narrartor>suffering. <v Speaker>A legacy from an accident that injured her spine and left her crippled at the age of 18. <v Speaker>I suffered two grave accidents in my life, one in which a streetcar knocked <v Speaker>me down. <v Speaker>The other accident is Diego. <v Speaker>Her marriage to Rivera was a stormy one. <v Speaker>Although she shared his political beliefs in total absorption in Mexican culture. <v Speaker>Flamboyant and impassioned, she became a myth partly of her own creation. <v Speaker>Surrealist claimed her as one of their own, but she said of her work.

<v Speaker>I never painted dreams. <v Speaker>I painted my own reality. <v Speaker>Frida Kahlo was an artist whose paintings were totally original and came directly out of <v Speaker>her own experiences. <v Speaker>She lived a life of physical and emotional pain, but she embraced her suffering <v Speaker>and used it to create vibrant, compelling works of art. <v Speaker>Frida Kahlo is largely unrecognized during her lifetime.

<v Speaker>She was overshadowed by her husband, Diego Rivera, Mexico's most renowned muralist. <v Speaker>Frida involved is down the stink from Diego's. <v Speaker>Well, he painted huge murals portraying sweeping views of history and human events. <v Speaker>She painted on small canvases, mainly self portraits and scenes from her life. <v Speaker>Her friend, Ella Wolf, nobody took notice of her until <v Speaker>after she died. Nobody. <v Speaker>People bought her things, you know. Who were devoted to her as a person. <v Speaker>Many people bought things, but they were always comparing <v Speaker>it to the great maestro Diego. <v Speaker>Her paintings were often intense and always personal, mirroring a life of sorrow and <v Speaker>pain. At six, she had polio. <v Speaker>And at 18, an accident left her crippled and severely damaged her spine. <v Speaker>She underwent numerous operations and spent much of her life bedridden. <v Speaker>Because of her illness, she had several miscarriages and abortions and remain childless.

<v Speaker>Despite her afflictions, she relished life and revealed to others <v Speaker>little of the torment which infused her paintings. <v Speaker>Her student, Fanny Rebelle. <v Speaker>Nobody could believe that a person who had suffered so many <v Speaker>physical tortures, you know, could have <v Speaker>such a sense of humor and such moods for living <v Speaker>such a wonderful wedding to live. <v Speaker>And to talk about all her pains <v Speaker>with humor. <v Speaker>Well, Frida suffered physically. <v Speaker>Diego himself was the source of another kind of anguish. <v Speaker>He frequently indulged his weakness for beautiful women. <v Speaker>Her friend Adelina's Indicus labels Phala. <v Speaker>I fell asleep reading to him. <v Speaker>Yeah, if if we might grow gone forever. <v Speaker>No, they like it not. V.

<v Speaker>V. He can. Now, if you know the therapy. <v Speaker>Better look at him. Yeah. <v Speaker>Look at him. <v Speaker>Women have fallen in love with her work. <v Speaker>Our dealer, Mary Ann Martin. <v Speaker>Certain people just feel the sense of identification when they see her work <v Speaker>and they see her suffering. <v Speaker>And I would say a little bit her masochism. <v Speaker>At the risk of being provocative, I find a lot of people identify. <v Speaker>They feel that this woman is speaking to them directly. <v Speaker>I think she was a little self obsessed. <v Speaker>And I think I suspect that she was intensely narcissistic. <v Speaker>Her biographer, Heyden Herrera. <v Speaker>I think that she wanted like a novelist wanting to tell her story. <v Speaker>She actually needed to tell about her pain and about the events <v Speaker>in her life. <v Speaker>1910, the start of the Mexican Revolution and a prolonged bloody conflict, <v Speaker>which was the last more than 10 years.

<v Speaker>Frida Kahlo was three years old. <v Speaker>Led by such legendary figures as Hema Yamas up at the end Pancho Villa. <v Speaker>The revolution sought to rid the country of the vestiges of colonialism and give birth <v Speaker>to a New Mexico. <v Speaker>Freed of the third of four daughters grew up an independent and rebellious spirit. <v Speaker>Her father was a Hungarian Jew from Germany and a well-established photographer. <v Speaker>Her mother, a devout Catholic, Spanish and Indian descent. <v Speaker>Millions of Mexicans were poor Indians and peasants. <v Speaker>Most worked on vast colonial haciendas owned by a few families. <v Speaker>The revolution demanded Hitler leave that land in liberty <v Speaker>for the poor and the powerless. <v Speaker>Despite her own middle class background, Frida would throughout her life identify

<v Speaker>closely with her Indian roots and with the Mexican Revolution. <v Speaker>I see her childhood sweetheart, Andrew Goma's ideas, <v Speaker>policies, and I will Mikiko get told ibs dubba extremist <v Speaker>CVO for assurity most Movimiento Revolutionary's <v Speaker>India cosmetologists no sort Roscosmos you cannot see am is when <v Speaker>I was your mechanic inconsequent them in. <v Speaker>Yes. Never be mean. I think that is salary larkham this year Mrs. Sa'adi. <v Speaker>I mean then panicky impression <v Speaker>that I will now maintain that I've yet to get it done face <v Speaker>come into a who when he said I <v Speaker>on alive. <v Speaker>In 1922, Foody was one of very few women to attend the National

<v Speaker>Preparatory School in Mexico City, considered the best university in the country. <v Speaker>It was a time of political upheaval throughout Mexico, and the university was <v Speaker>no exception. <v Speaker>Free to belong to a student group active in protests over university autonomy, <v Speaker>her political beliefs led her to join the Communist Party. <v Speaker>Classmate of the Lenard's in Davis. <v Speaker>I think you don't know yet. <v Speaker>I'm still your family, madam. He's needs me. <v Speaker>Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. ABA lab. A fee one, Beth. <v Speaker>If he went then in one black poverty rate or <v Speaker>one bomb. But if he more creative new contender or a football game, <v Speaker>a phone number, clearly they'd ever play.

<v Speaker>They lost Jingjing game. <v Speaker>I in important today for the last singularity. <v Speaker>Salva Kiir, Darkey Gaita. <v Speaker>When I'm with Choucha Patel Menti if it ain't the same as me <v Speaker>Chechen's this movie. <v Speaker>How would I simply see sexy. <v Speaker>We attract diva yuppies out of the Olympic venue. <v Speaker>In fact the game don't stand here came. <v Speaker>You know this was, this was pure and this happens out of the east. <v Speaker>I judger gesture the athlete. <v Speaker>At six years old, Frida had been stricken with polio, but she <v Speaker>hit her lameness a yet knock <v Speaker>them off strapper to beat for Arthur. <v Speaker>Though he came to me that got me never fear Embrey <v Speaker>of Orlando to find that we had our faith in beer <v Speaker>bottle of Scotch. If he never got Maryland, I.

<v Speaker>He got me. Never seen. <v Speaker>But I cannot tell, you know, better lavae variance in dream B <v Speaker>will not be. Good luck. <v Speaker>On September 17th, 1925, the accident occurred which <v Speaker>would transform her life completely from the center of the city. <v Speaker>She and Alexandra left school and took a bus home and some accidentally <v Speaker>chmielewski a connotation featherless. <v Speaker>Yes, unless you die, they may equal Yooralla ABC <v Speaker>Ballis. King says he didn't elaborate. <v Speaker>I wouldn't eat. That brings he but stemming poverty that can <v Speaker>keep us so severe biosocial who seem to chic you alive <v Speaker>is that I much gleeful that my home with the abuse <v Speaker>when trying electrico called pillow. <v Speaker>I love the blues you know they struggle he <v Speaker>kidada. And as what. This body is still a specified state of the.

<v Speaker>I yeah. <v Speaker>Molly Stomata, you know, they love year off <v Speaker>in a family, remember, in coming home by that <v Speaker>name Altero Year. <v Speaker>But I guarantee, you know, guilelessly moments of the Heroes Men <v Speaker>on D-Day. <v Speaker>Paula Mahina Lagu All Bill loved. <v Speaker>Frida would say, rally. I lost my virginity. <v Speaker>Her pelvis and spinal column were each broken in three places. <v Speaker>Her collarbone and two ribs were broken. <v Speaker>Her right leg had 11 fractures in her right foot was crushed. <v Speaker>Confined to bed, she was bored and restless. <v Speaker>Her father lent Frida his paintbox, and she began to paint. <v Speaker>Showing astonishing natural ability.

<v Speaker>She produced a first serious painting and her first self-portrait. <v Speaker>I suffered two grave accidents in my life, one in which a streetcar knocked <v Speaker>me down. The other accident is Diego. <v Speaker>Freedom met, Diego Rivera was already a legendary <v Speaker>figure and a prolific and exuberant painter. <v Speaker>I am not merely an artist, but a man performing his biological function of producing <v Speaker>paintings just as a tree produces flowers and fruit. <v Speaker>A leader in the renaissance of Mexican euro art. <v Speaker>He was driven by his political ideas. <v Speaker>Inspired by the Mexican Revolution, he celebrated Indian history and culture. <v Speaker>A staunch communist. He joined other leftist artists in proclaiming a new

<v Speaker>kind of art. <v Speaker>It surges from the people. <v Speaker>It is collective in our own esthetic game is to socialize artistic expression. <v Speaker>Our supreme objective in art is to create beauty for all <v Speaker>beauty that enlightens and stirs the struggle. <v Speaker>Frida first met Diego when he was painting murals at the National Preparatory School. <v Speaker>The wife of Dagos biographer Berchem Wolf and these people <v Speaker>from the paper I toria used to watch Diego paint <v Speaker>and Diego was a strange looking fellow. <v Speaker>He had an enormous middle. <v Speaker>He had the most beautiful hands of a woman and he had the biggest <v Speaker>feet. And then he had eyes like a frog. <v Speaker>So everybody called him El Sapho the Frog. <v Speaker>In August, you and your lack on Binya.

<v Speaker>Yes, then I'm terror interested in less escalera yet if babba <v Speaker>email template. Don may be balat lap <v Speaker>but if either repent maybe <v Speaker>keep it. Is your vehicle over there. <v Speaker>Yoki, see it up there, near only for the young <v Speaker>lady here. Banquo, January 10 Fail. <v Speaker>Forgive me, goiter monstrosity Rafi. <v Speaker>Despite his appearance, Diego was a man of extraordinary charm and personal magnetism. <v Speaker>He was in the middle of a tempestuous Mary's to his second wife. <v Speaker>Whether Luper Muddy. <v Speaker>A striking woman whom Diego portrayed in his Miralles as a voluptuous figure. <v Speaker>By contrast, Dagos first portrait of Frida pictured her as a revolutionary, <v Speaker>distributing arms. <v Speaker>Eager for his opinion. Frida's showed several of her paintings to Diego.

<v Speaker>Her biographer, Heyden Herrera. <v Speaker>He liked the paintings very much and was extremely encouraging to her <v Speaker>and said she should definitely go on and become a painter. <v Speaker>But he also liked Frida. <v Speaker>They shared leftist values and they shared an interest in <v Speaker>art. I think that she was entranced by Rivera, who was an incredibly charming, <v Speaker>brilliant, articulate, funny, warm, complicated <v Speaker>man. And it also she said that she liked his great big fat <v Speaker>baby like body. And she told her school friend that she would like to wash <v Speaker>him and give him a bath. There's this turn towards Mexican ism and her work <v Speaker>and her. So this first self-portrait after she came into contact, Rivera, <v Speaker>she's wearing a Mexican blouse, make STK beads. <v Speaker>And so the whole stress on the Indian side was very important. <v Speaker>After courtship of almost two years, Frida and Diego were married on

<v Speaker>August 21st, 1929. <v Speaker>He was 43 and she was 22. <v Speaker>I fell in love with the eagle, and my parents did not like this because Diego was a <v Speaker>communist and because they said that he looked like a fat, fat, fat breugel. <v Speaker>They said that it was like a marriage between an elephant and a dove. <v Speaker>When Diego married Frida, he wanted his closest friends <v Speaker>to meet Frida, his new wife. <v Speaker>But he made the mistake of inviting Guadaloupe, <v Speaker>the wife that he had left. <v Speaker>Guadalupe got up, went over across the aisle to Frida, <v Speaker>lifted up her brown taffeta dress and shrieked <v Speaker>for these two crooked legs. <v Speaker>He left me. <v Speaker>In 1930, newly married Frida and Diego traveled to San Francisco,

<v Speaker>where Diego was commissioned to paint murals at the Pacific Stock Exchange and the <v Speaker>San Francisco Art Institute. <v Speaker>And together they explored the city, talking to the Italian fishermen and visiting <v Speaker>Chinatown. <v Speaker>The arrival of the world famous muralist and his young wife made headlines in the <v Speaker>city newspapers and they were courted by San Francisco society. <v Speaker>Free to post in Mexican costumes for Imogene Cunningham and other noted San Francisco <v Speaker>photographers, Ella Wolf, and they loved the <v Speaker>dramatic look in free. <v Speaker>They just loved her because she was something new, something different, <v Speaker>something exotic, the likes of which they'd never seen before. <v Speaker>When the couple was photographed by Edward Weston, he described Frida as <v Speaker>a little doll alongside Diego, but a doll in size only four. <v Speaker>She's strong and quite beautiful.

<v Speaker>Dressed in native costume. Even to what arches she causes much excitement <v Speaker>on the streets of San Francisco. <v Speaker>People stop in their tracks to look in wonder. <v Speaker>While Diego worked on his murals, Frida also painted mainly portraits <v Speaker>of people whom she met and knew in San Francisco. <v Speaker>She always marked herself as a painter and thought of herself as sort of almost a <v Speaker>amateur. She presented herself as a kind of charming, amateurish painter, <v Speaker>especially early on. <v Speaker>And it was Rivera who kept pushing her and wanting her to paint. <v Speaker>And she sort of painted when she felt like it. <v Speaker>And Rivera really wanted her to work harder. <v Speaker>In his mural at the Pacific Stock Exchange showing the bounty of California, Diego <v Speaker>included a portrayal of the famous horticulturalist Luther Burbank. <v Speaker>In a startling interpretation of the same subject, Frida portrayed Burbank as <v Speaker>half plant and half human death and life nourishing each other. <v Speaker>She revealed her interest in fantasy and then the duality in interconnectedness of life

<v Speaker>and death elements intrinsically Mexican, which would reappear in her <v Speaker>work. <v Speaker>San Francisco Freedon Diego traveled to Detroit, where Diego was <v Speaker>invited by Henry Ford to paint murals on the theme of industry at <v Speaker>the Detroit Institute of Arts. <v Speaker>Enthralled by the modern machine age, Diego eagerly accepted the commission. <v Speaker>Frida sat with him on the scaffold as he worked sometimes <v Speaker>12 and 14 hours without stop. <v Speaker>Diego's task was immense and took months to complete. <v Speaker>He was totally absorbed in his work. <v Speaker>Frida herself was less enamored of industrial America <v Speaker>in the painting self-portrait on the borderline between Mexico and the United States.

<v Speaker>She contrasted the industrial north. <v Speaker>Its smokestacks and machines with the harmony of her native land. <v Speaker>And replicas of its ancient culture. <v Speaker>In Detroit, two became pregnant and was delighted about the prospect of having a child. <v Speaker>Lucien Block, one of Diego's assistants who lived with him in Detroit. <v Speaker>I heard this strange sound. I thought she and you were having an argument. <v Speaker>It was about 4:00 in the morning. <v Speaker>It sounded like they were having a violent argument and she was crying <v Speaker>and I didn't know what I should do. <v Speaker>And suddenly Jeggo came in and said, Lucien. <v Speaker>Call a doctor, Fryday is having a miscarriage, <v Speaker>and she was in a pool of blood and she was crying and her hair <v Speaker>was all wet crying in the painting Henry Ford Hospital <v Speaker>Free Frida recorded the sorrow over a miscarriage, picturing around her

<v Speaker>bed symbols of her pain and misery. <v Speaker>With this work, she began to use painting to tell of the suffering in her life <v Speaker>and to release some of the pain. <v Speaker>After her miscarriage, Diego urged her to continue to paint. <v Speaker>He said wanted to paint stories of your own life. <v Speaker>And almost immediately after that, she painted the very beginning <v Speaker>of her life and she showed herself being born, born <v Speaker>with a head and her eyebrows already there. <v Speaker>When she painted those paintings, let's say my birth or Henry Ford <v Speaker>Hospital in the 1930s, they would have been incredibly shocking. <v Speaker>She had the courage to paint, as she's put it. <v Speaker>I paint my own reality and to paint it in the most direct way. <v Speaker>She's totally squeamish. <v Speaker>The brand new Rockefeller Center opened in New York in 1933, <v Speaker>and to inaugurate it, the Rockefeller Commission did go to paint a mural in the RCA

<v Speaker>building. <v Speaker>The country was still in the throes of the depression and freedon Diego suff, <v Speaker>frequent signs of hardship in the city's jobless and destitute. <v Speaker>Frida Inc., which saw in her painting. <v Speaker>My dress hangs there. <v Speaker>Her dress is standing, is hanging and in front of Wall <v Speaker>Street, and she is not in it because she was appalled <v Speaker>by the poverty and then the sort <v Speaker>of luxury of capitalist New York and at the same time, bread lines, protests. <v Speaker>Basically, it's free to taking a rather dim view of Manhattan during the <v Speaker>misery of the depression. <v Speaker>Diego's mural, meanwhile, unleashed a storm of controversy. <v Speaker>It is scene of a worker's utopia.

<v Speaker>He included Lenin. Much to the Rockefeller's consternation. <v Speaker>And all of a sudden, Frida told me, son, you better hurry up and take <v Speaker>photos as much as you can because it looks very bad right now. <v Speaker>Since a newspaper article that said that Rivera was painting communist activities <v Speaker>on the Rockefeller was footing the bill. <v Speaker>Frida recalled. <v Speaker>We were guests at dinner two or three times and we discussed the revolutionary movement <v Speaker>at great length. The Rockefeller knew quite well that the murals were to <v Speaker>depict the revolutionary point of view that they were going to be revolutionary <v Speaker>paintings. <v Speaker>Diego refused to remove Lennon from the mural and public outcry. <v Speaker>He was fired at midnight on February 10th, 1934. <v Speaker>The mural was removed from the walls of the RCA building and the space replaster. <v Speaker>According to a statement given by Rockefeller Center to The New York Times, <v Speaker>the removal involved the destruction of the mural.

<v Speaker>Returning to Mexico Freedom Day. <v Speaker>They moved into the house for Frida was born and raised. <v Speaker>The Blue House, now a museum. <v Speaker>Their home became a gathering place for artists, writers and intellectuals who identified <v Speaker>strongly with Mexican culture. <v Speaker>Their house was filled with native and popular art, which in colonial times <v Speaker>could be regarded with contempt. <v Speaker>Her house was like really an exhibition of color and <v Speaker>folklore and off art. <v Speaker>Her student, Fanny Rebelle, so we could use to <v Speaker>appreciate something that was not very appreciate and the middle class in <v Speaker>Mexico. So it became a style of all

<v Speaker>the Mexican artists and the Mexican intellectuals to have in <v Speaker>their homes all these the pot three and the <v Speaker>thick sides in this had office and then variola Ruiz. <v Speaker>Now, it is very common because everybody uses it and <v Speaker>because it has become in the style of Mexico's. <v Speaker>Pre Hispanic art inspired Frida's San Diego's work. <v Speaker>Before the coming of the Spaniards, the Mexican Indian artists had shown great force and <v Speaker>genius. Like all first rate artists, their work had been intensely local, <v Speaker>related to the soil, the landscape, the forms, animals, DTD and colors of their own <v Speaker>world. <v Speaker>Above all, it had been emotions centered.

<v Speaker>It was molded by their hopes, fears, joys, superstitions <v Speaker>and suffering. <v Speaker>Freed of so herself, literally nourished by green. <v Speaker>She suckles from her Indian wet nurse <v Speaker>who wears a Colombian mask. <v Speaker>At the same time, the Mexican sky nourishes or <v Speaker>blends in the earth. <v Speaker>Free to pay tribute to Indian and Mexican forms, placing herself <v Speaker>as a child in all of these images. <v Speaker>Diego studio was filled with traditional papier mâché skeletons. <v Speaker>Evidence of his Frida's intense interest in Mexican art and its recurring

<v Speaker>theme of death hidden her. <v Speaker>Frida and Diego seemed to have a kind of cyclical <v Speaker>view of time. And so that death was just part of an ongoing process. <v Speaker>Proud of it comes from the Aztecs who were very much preoccupied with death. <v Speaker>They also both seem to see the universes, everything interconnected. <v Speaker>So the death is just one thing and among many things. <v Speaker>Spurning the fashions of the times, Frida wore the traditional regional costumes <v Speaker>of Mexico.

<v Speaker>Mariana Mody, your Saffa was a child when she first met Frida. <v Speaker>When I first saw her because she always wore these long Mexican <v Speaker>dresses, I thought she was something like a movie star, someone I had never <v Speaker>seen before because, well, people in Mexico didn't <v Speaker>used to dress like that. <v Speaker>She used to wear. <v Speaker>All sorts of rings. One or two on each finger. <v Speaker>They were not expensive. They were Mexican jewelry, silver <v Speaker>and semi-precious stones. <v Speaker>She looked royal. <v Speaker>Her idea was to make herself into a work of art and the Mexican <v Speaker>costumes not only identified her with Mexico people, but made her into a marvelous <v Speaker>creature. <v Speaker>Her appearance, please, Diego, immensely. <v Speaker>The classic Mexican dress has been created by people for people, the Mexican <v Speaker>women who do not wear it do not belong to the people, but are mentally and emotionally <v Speaker>dependent on a foreign class to which they wish to belong.

<v Speaker>But Frida's costumes were not enough to prevent Diego from having affairs with other <v Speaker>women. <v Speaker>Including one with her sister, Christina. <v Speaker>In anguish over the affair, Frida painted a grisly scene and entitled. <v Speaker>A few small nips. <v Speaker>Based on a newspaper story she read about a man who viciously stabbed a woman <v Speaker>to death and when arrested, protested, but I only gave her a few <v Speaker>small nips. <v Speaker>If I loved a woman, the more I loved her, the more I wanted to hurt her. <v Speaker>Peter was the only obvious victim of this disgusting trait. <v Speaker>Although the Eagles and Fidelity hurt her deeply, Frida tried to dismiss <v Speaker>his affairs. <v Speaker>All these liaisons with Betty called lady teachers of English <v Speaker>Gypsy models, assistance with good intentions only represent

<v Speaker>flirtations. And at bottom, you and I love each other. <v Speaker>By the late thirties, Frida was troubled more and more by health problems. <v Speaker>She painted what the water gave me. <v Speaker>A surrealistic work with disturbing images of death, sexuality and pain. <v Speaker>She had continuing problems with the right foot crushed in the accident. <v Speaker>And increasingly, she's suffered terrible pains in her spine. <v Speaker>When I saw her, at least she was always happy. <v Speaker>She was making jokes. She was telling these stories all the time. <v Speaker>I never saw her sad or in pain. <v Speaker>I know that she was in pain. I knew it. <v Speaker>But she wouldn't you know, she wouldn't complain.

<v Speaker>She was kind enough to give me when she was with me all <v Speaker>her attention when she was talking to me. <v Speaker>She was talking to me. <v Speaker>This little girl, you know, pretty girl, didn't have any children. <v Speaker>She never could. <v Speaker>And she liked children a lot. <v Speaker>She had several miscarriages and therapeutic abortions. <v Speaker>There's a painting of her sitting on a bed with a doll, a baby doll <v Speaker>that was just a terrible substitute for actual baby. <v Speaker>It's said that Rivera did not want to have a child. <v Speaker>And that may have been a kind of conflict between them. <v Speaker>In the 1930s, the rise of fascism in Europe, outraged leftists in Mexico, <v Speaker>moved by the plight of victims of the Spanish Civil War, Frida assisted refugees

<v Speaker>by raising money and helping many to come to Mexico. <v Speaker>At home, both she and Diego are strong supporters of the country's new government under <v Speaker>Lacerda, Catalina's got in the nice redistributed <v Speaker>lands and encouraged the formation of labor unions. <v Speaker>He nationalized the country's oil industry in a move to promote Mexico's <v Speaker>economic independence from foreign interests. <v Speaker>In 1937, Guardedness granted asylum to Leon Trotsky, <v Speaker>who had been exiled from the Soviet Union by Stalin. <v Speaker>It was Diego who petition in us to allow the Russian revolutionary to come <v Speaker>to Mexico. <v Speaker>Because he was ill, Diego sent Frida to greet Trotsky when he arrived in Vera <v Speaker>Cruz and they opened their home in Coyoacan to the famous revolutionary

<v Speaker>and his wife. <v Speaker>The minute Trotzky laid eyes on Frida, he fell on top of. <v Speaker>And little by little, you know, those things <v Speaker>sort of gelled and they began this affair behind <v Speaker>DeLay was back. <v Speaker>Trust me, is a very attractive man. And like Diego, very famous man, it's I think it's <v Speaker>clear that Frida liked men who were leaders. <v Speaker>They. <v Speaker>They had a love affair, which was, I suspect, rather <v Speaker>brief. It was extremely dangerous and awkward for Trotzky to <v Speaker>leave the house. I mean, he had to go with guards and things like that. <v Speaker>After a political falling out with Diego, Trotzky moved into a nearby <v Speaker>house in Coyoacan.

<v Speaker>Trotsky was the target of repeated assassination attempts by Stalinists <v Speaker>within a year. He was murdered in his study by the Soviet <v Speaker>agent Ramone Mitiga, there for a time freedon Diego, who <v Speaker>knew Melika there were suspects in Trotsky's death. <v Speaker>Frida was questioned at length and released. <v Speaker>What remained of their relationship was a self-portrait, which she painted for <v Speaker>Trotzky and dedicated to him. <v Speaker>1939, free to travel to Paris, where her work was included in a show of surrealist. <v Speaker>She met artist Duchamp, Kandinsky and Picasso, among <v Speaker>others. <v Speaker>The show was organized by Andre Breton, whom Freedom and through Trotzky in Mexico.

<v Speaker>Calling her work a ribbon tied around a bomb. <v Speaker>Bricktown claimed her as a survivalist. <v Speaker>I never knew I was a surrealist till Andre Red Dawn came to Mexico and told me I was <v Speaker>the only thing I know is that I paint because I need to <v Speaker>and I paint always whatever passes through my head without any other consideration. <v Speaker>Up to this time, very little notice had been paid to Frida's work. <v Speaker>She is painting at the same time that the muralist movement was going on. <v Speaker>Everybody is painting enormous but mainly political paintings on public walls <v Speaker>and doing little private things wasn't considered fashionable. <v Speaker>It was considered rather peculiar. <v Speaker>The actor Edward G. Robinson, while traveling in Mexico, was <v Speaker>one of the few early buyers of Frida's work.

<v Speaker>The ego showed in my paintings and Robinson brought four of them from me for 200 <v Speaker>dollars each. <v Speaker>For me, it was such a surprise that I marveled and said this way <v Speaker>I am going to be able to be free. <v Speaker>I'll be able to travel and do what I want without asking Diego for money. <v Speaker>There was trouble in their marriage. <v Speaker>Jagels womanizing resulted in frequent separations. <v Speaker>Free to a sexually liberated woman had her own affairs, some <v Speaker>serious, some casual with both men and women. <v Speaker>She was a very sexual woman and tended to do <v Speaker>what she wanted to do. <v Speaker>But also I think Diego didn't fill all of her needs it couldn't possibly have. <v Speaker>He was much too egocentric a man. And therefore, there some needs that had to be <v Speaker>to have to find an outlet with other men. <v Speaker>But her estrangement from Diego tormented her. <v Speaker>And an ominous self-portrait.

<v Speaker>She has a hummingbird, traditionally a Mexican love charm. <v Speaker>Hanging lifeless on a necklace of thorns. <v Speaker>With her marriage to Diego failing, Frida painted herself as split into two <v Speaker>distinct persons. <v Speaker>The Indian whom Diego loved and the European whom Diego did not <v Speaker>love, as Frida herself described it. <v Speaker>The Indian Frida holds an image of the child, Diego, who is the lifeline. <v Speaker>And the European cuts off the blood from this lifeline <v Speaker>Freedon Diego divorced in 1940. <v Speaker>The 1940 World's Fair was held in San Francisco.

<v Speaker>Diego was invited to paint a mural celebrating Panamerican Unity. <v Speaker>As a symbol for American womanhood, dear God, chose Paulette Gotthard. <v Speaker>He met the lovely young actress through her husband, Charlie Chaplin, when they visited <v Speaker>Mexico. He was enchanted by her. <v Speaker>The portrait of Paulette Goddard in the Panamerican Unity <v Speaker>Mural has Paulette Goddard and Rivera holding hands around the <v Speaker>Tree of Life, and Paulette Goddard is incredibly attractive woman. <v Speaker>And then nearby stands Frida, who's very much a sort of symbol for Panamerican <v Speaker>unity. But not the attractive woman in Diego's life at that <v Speaker>point. <v Speaker>In retaliation, a despondent Frida cut off her long hair <v Speaker>and painted a self-portrait with her hair cropped. <v Speaker>And in men's clothing. <v Speaker>Her health worsened and her doctor wrote Diego that the divorce had exacerbated her <v Speaker>illness. They decided to remarry.

<v Speaker>Frida told a friend. <v Speaker>I will go to San Francisco and marry Diego again. <v Speaker>He wants me to do so because he says he loves me more than any other girl. <v Speaker>I am very happy. <v Speaker>They were remarried at San Francisco City Hall in December 1940, less <v Speaker>than a year after their divorce. <v Speaker>In a new self-portrait, Frida took her shorn hair and piled it haphazardly on top of <v Speaker>her head as a symbol of her patched up marriage. <v Speaker>Frida and Diego managed to find an accommodation in their marriage. <v Speaker>One in which he indulged his whims, caprices and sometimes even his love <v Speaker>affairs. <v Speaker>I will not speak of Diego as my husband because it would be ridiculous, <v Speaker>Diego never has been and never will be anyone's husband, <v Speaker>nor will I speak of him as a lover. <v Speaker>Because to me, he transcends the domain of sex.

<v Speaker>And if I speak of him as a son, I will have done nothing but describe <v Speaker>or paint my own emotions. <v Speaker>Diego echoed Frida's image of himself as a mischievous child, and she <v Speaker>is indulgent mother. <v Speaker>He called the egg the egg eater, which I could never understand when I was a little <v Speaker>girl, because imagine to call that huge Diego to call <v Speaker>him. You get the little Diego. <v Speaker>I never said relation with such a tender <v Speaker>relation one to the other, because she was protecting him <v Speaker>and he was protecting her from everything. <v Speaker>And that was so sweet. <v Speaker>And because the devil has always had it. <v Speaker>And he was famous for being, you know, a monster. <v Speaker>He had such a tender and sweet relation to free that <v Speaker>like if he she would be his little child.

<v Speaker>And she treated him like a child. <v Speaker>Frida continued to have severe and persistent pains in her spine. <v Speaker>She was forced to wear corsets, which provided little relief. <v Speaker>What they made. They get to the bend that <v Speaker>he's either on to get a party, he'll be there is <v Speaker>to have submitted our laptop computer based courses, <v Speaker>Calais putting me. He can have a sketchy. <v Speaker>They have Andre Speare, especially elementalist courses that Gibson <v Speaker>can play. <v Speaker>Gisele priva his decision. <v Speaker>When did you show Sindhu racing? <v Speaker>Yesterday. I mean. Yeah, Natera do that. <v Speaker>These people. <v Speaker>She had surgery on her spine, which would be repeated several times during her life.

<v Speaker>It was wonderful visiting with her always because in spite of her agony, she <v Speaker>could be very amusing. <v Speaker>She had wonderful stories to tell. And then she was beautiful to look at, really the way <v Speaker>she dressed. It's a sort of self-respect <v Speaker>and an unwillingness to let the image deteriorate, <v Speaker>the image that she had of herself and the image that she presented to <v Speaker>the world. <v Speaker>I've always felt that she painted so many self portraits as a way of confirming her <v Speaker>reality because she felt that her hold on reality, given her bad health, <v Speaker>was rather tentative and that if she painted self portrait, <v Speaker>she's a re-created herself as a solid thing. <v Speaker>To portray her illness, Frida adopted native Mexican bred Diablo's like this one. <v Speaker>Traditionally, when someone has been saved from a grave sickness, a red diablo

<v Speaker>is painted in Thanksgiving to Christ the Virgin or a saint. <v Speaker>In one of her versions of her diarrheal, Frida is a grateful patient and her doctor is <v Speaker>the savior. <v Speaker>In another, Frida is both the savior and the sick person. <v Speaker>She offers herself encouragement with a banner reading Tree of Hope. <v Speaker>Stand firm. <v Speaker>She didn't believe in God and said if she believed in, I think, more in herself and that <v Speaker>she would bring about her own salvation. <v Speaker>Catholic images of physical suffering also influenced Frida's work. <v Speaker>The whole thing of Catholicism and pain, especially wounds

<v Speaker>to the body, which you've got a great deal, and Mexican Catholic pictures and sculptures <v Speaker>that in every church as a bloody wounded Christ figure, <v Speaker>I think all of that comes out in her painting very strongly <v Speaker>freighted to Christ crown of thorns and put it around her neck. <v Speaker>She portrayed herself as a martyr or Christlike figure, suffering <v Speaker>was perhaps a path to salvation. <v Speaker>After a particularly difficult operation, she pictured herself as <v Speaker>a martyr. Dear. <v Speaker>As Frida's health deteriorated, death was increasingly with her

<v Speaker>death, had become a companion, a friend <v Speaker>in the dream. She placed above her bed a Mexican who a <v Speaker>paper mâché skeleton traditionally strung with fireworks and blown up during festivals. <v Speaker>She is sleeping in her bed and on the canopy of her bed. <v Speaker>Is this who does the skeleton figure which Diego called her <v Speaker>lover? He would tease her and call the skeleton her lover. <v Speaker>Well, she was very shocked by her death because of the fragility of her health. <v Speaker>But also, Frida's attitude about death was to make light of it, the sort of fight it off, <v Speaker>and it was something that she sparred with, played with, flirted with. <v Speaker>And I think that's why you see so many skeletons in her work. <v Speaker>Who was still the center of her life?

<v Speaker>She often worried about losing. <v Speaker>I simply wanted to be free to carry on with any woman who got my fancy, yet free to do <v Speaker>not object to my infidelity. <v Speaker>But she could not understand was my choosing women who were either unworthy of me or <v Speaker>inferior to her. <v Speaker>Let her draw any line, however. Was this not to circumscribe my freedom? <v Speaker>Despite her unhappiness, Frida came to terms with their relationship. <v Speaker>Perhaps they hope to hear from me laments about how much one suffers. <v Speaker>Living with a man like Diego. <v Speaker>But I do not believe that the banks of a river suffer for letting the water run <v Speaker>or that the earth suffers because it rains within my difficult <v Speaker>and obscure role of our play of an extraordinary being. <v Speaker>I have the same reward as a green dot within a quantity <v Speaker>of red.

<v Speaker>Frida had repeated surgery on her spine. <v Speaker>By the end of her life, she had undergone more than 30 operations of various <v Speaker>kinds. <v Speaker>It's just a guess, but I think that she may have had more operations than she should <v Speaker>have had. And it's somewhat like her paintings of herself <v Speaker>with a crown of thorns or with her bodies. <v Speaker>But open that was a kind of fascination with her own pain. <v Speaker>It's also possible that she knew that Rivera couldn't leave her if <v Speaker>she was in terrible health. So it could be that she would then go into a hospital <v Speaker>and make herself more helpless. <v Speaker>And then he would have to take care of her. <v Speaker>She developed osteomyelitis, an inflammation of the bone marrow which <v Speaker>caused progressive deterioration of her bones, a disease she might <v Speaker>have contracted from one of her operations. <v Speaker>Afflicted and often alone, her solace was her love for Diego.

<v Speaker>In her diary, she put forth her love and passionate stream of consciousness writings. <v Speaker>The nothing is comparable to your hands <v Speaker>and nothing is equal to the gold green of your eyes. <v Speaker>My body fills itself with you for days and days. <v Speaker>You are the mirror of the night. <v Speaker>The violent light of lightning. <v Speaker>The dampness of the earth. <v Speaker>Your armpit is my refuge. <v Speaker>My fingertips touch your blood. <v Speaker>As her health rapidly declined. <v Speaker>She turned to find strength in her political commitment and her devotion to <v Speaker>the Communist Party. <v Speaker>Until now, I've not painted anything but the honest expression of my own <v Speaker>self. But absolutely distant from what my painting could do to serve

<v Speaker>the party, I should struggle with all my strength for the little that is <v Speaker>positive that my health allows me to do in the direction of helping the revolution. <v Speaker>Even in these political paintings, she always made her statement personal. <v Speaker>She showed us how afraid of her crutches by Marks. <v Speaker>And included herself in a portrait of Stalin. <v Speaker>She pressed on with her work, although her bed health made her painting <v Speaker>tortured and imprecise. <v Speaker>In 1954, against her doctor's orders, a very sick Frida <v Speaker>attended a demonstration to protest United States actions in neighboring Guatemala. <v Speaker>Guatemalan President Kobel Autobahns had instituted land reforms <v Speaker>in expropriated holdings of the privately U.S. <v Speaker>owned United Fruit Company. <v Speaker>Arbenz was ousted in a coup supported by the U.S. <v Speaker>Central Intelligence Agency.

<v Speaker>And pretty does his PR move just manifest as your politics? <v Speaker>No, sir. Bring them they ski ing is the Casa Cascino <v Speaker>Bob Yappin SMP. <v Speaker>Here it is. These guys who come promesa lock you up. <v Speaker>Yep. And. Get on course as important this part <v Speaker>as you by U.S. see it. <v Speaker>I totally free to contracted pneumonia <v Speaker>and eight days later at the age of 47 she died. <v Speaker>Her body lay in state and her funeral was attended <v Speaker>by many of Mexico's noted artists, writers and politicians. <v Speaker>Including former President Carter, then us, as well <v Speaker>as her family and friends. <v Speaker>We went to the cemetery with the red flag and with

<v Speaker>everything. <v Speaker>And in the time she was cremated, all her pupils <v Speaker>and friends and the airborne, we were singing around, <v Speaker>you know, the fire and the songs she loved <v Speaker>and go with the. <v Speaker>He was you know, she was all the time. <v Speaker>How did you see when you put your name son, in <v Speaker>your hands, you know, like you suffer very much. <v Speaker>And then the end, the former president, the <v Speaker>cardinals was there. <v Speaker>It was very. <v Speaker>Throughout, they have on that my but

<v Speaker>it had a thing in plastic, I guess my make you can <v Speaker>either Leanna's indicus cannot go under the yoke on <v Speaker>which water would let my hair, my <v Speaker>African yamey. <v Speaker>Get Matthew, though. <v Speaker>And if he's doing me, Diego was a giant in <v Speaker>his time. <v Speaker>Art dealer Marion Martin. <v Speaker>But you also have to look at him as someone who chose to paint to speak for a particular <v Speaker>period. You know, he has this place in history. <v Speaker>Frida doesn't really have a place in history. Frida has occupied a smaller position, <v Speaker>but a very universal one. <v Speaker>I mean, there still are going to be people who have interior struggles and who <v Speaker>paint, you know, what they think. And there would be. <v Speaker>I'm sure the people aren't the human race isn't going to change that much. <v Speaker>And I think that her pains will have more meaning to individual collectors <v Speaker>and viewers than Diego.

<v Speaker>I think the ideas have to be explained in the time period. <v Speaker>And hers don't. <v Speaker>She's probably one of the two or three top valued Latin American <v Speaker>artists that exist. <v Speaker>And Horden, director of Latin American Art at Sotheby's. <v Speaker>My observation is that the people will collect or have a deeper relationship with <v Speaker>her paintings than the people who collect Diegos. <v Speaker>I think her time has come in a sense, but I don't think it will <v Speaker>depart. <v Speaker>Too late now I realize that the most wonderful part of my life had been my love for <v Speaker>Frida. <v Speaker>If I had died without knowing her, I would have died without knowing what a real woman <v Speaker>was. <v Speaker>In the panorama of Mexican painting, the work of Frida Kahlo shines like a diamond <v Speaker>in the midst of many inferior jewels, clear and hard, with precisely <v Speaker>defined facets. <v Speaker>We are clods. Next to Frida.

<v Speaker>Frida is the best painter of her epoch.