We all love hearing life stories that inspire us, stories where we can follow someone’s fears, hopes and dilemmas. This time I chose to write about an inspiring woman, known to many mainly for the physical suffering that followed her throughout her life: Frida Kahlo. Frida Kahlo was a woman full of joy who broke through quite a few glass ceilings, and one of them has a direct connection to France. Frida Kahlo was the first Mexican painter to exhibit in France, and the first whose painting was purchased by a French museum.
Frida Kahlo: The Early Years
Frida Kahlo was born in 1907 in Mexico, to a father of German Jewish descent and a mother of Spanish and Indigenous descent. The home she grew up in combined a free, relaxed atmosphere created by her photographer father with the traditional, conservative upbringing of her Catholic mother.
When she was 6, she contracted polio, which left her right foot twisted and her leg thin and withered. At 18, she was badly injured in a traffic accident: a streetcar collided with the bus she was riding, and a metal handrail pierced her abdomen and pelvis. Frida was forced to lie in the hospital for months, wrapped in a plaster cast, and out of sheer boredom she began to paint.
Frida suffered her whole life from the illness and the accident, which left her in constant pain, disabled, and eventually addicted to painkillers. She underwent many surgeries on her back and leg, part of which was later amputated. Even in her youth, Frida Kahlo had an independent, rebellious character. At 21, she joined the Mexican Communist Party and met the painter Diego Rivera. The two fell in love, and a year later, Frida, then 22, became the third wife of Diego, then 43. Frida was a fragile young woman; Diego was a larger-than-life figure, a world-famous painter and a womanizer.
Diego Rivera had a huge influence on Frida, who admired him as an artist. Under his influence, she began wearing traditional Mexican clothing: colorful, embroidered dresses and exotic jewelry, and she styled her hair in elaborate braids decorated with flowers. Their life together was stormy, full of ups and downs. Diego was devoted to his art and often cheated on Frida, including with her own sister.
Frida herself had several affairs, with both men and women, but she always fought to save her marriage. At first, Frida painted mainly for herself. She didn’t think about an artistic career and made no effort to exhibit her work, find patrons, or seek reviews. She preferred to be seen as a fascinating personality rather than judged as a painter. She painted small, personal works that expressed the painful reality of her life in a direct, piercing way, so she sold few paintings, and would say she felt sorry for the buyer, who had probably bought the painting because he was in love with her.
The Journey to France
At the start of 1938, Diego pushed Frida to take part in a group exhibition at the university’s small gallery in Mexico City. Frida sent four paintings. A few people said they were wonderful; the rest thought they were too crazy. One of the enthusiasts was Julien Levy, who owned a small, elegant gallery on East 57th Street in Manhattan specializing in Surrealism. He wrote to Frida that he wanted to put on an exhibition of her work at his gallery in New York.
In April 1938, André Breton, the writer and poet who created Surrealism, was sent on a lecture tour of Mexico by the French Foreign Ministry, and that’s how he first saw Frida’s work. Within a few months of his arrival, Breton and his wife stayed with the Riveras. Frida thought little of Breton, but Breton was captivated by Frida and loved her paintings. He offered to organize an exhibition in Paris after her debut exhibition in New York, and also wrote a flattering essay for the catalog of her New York exhibition at Julien Levy’s gallery, in which he declared Frida a Surrealist.
In January 1939, Frida sailed to France. At first she stayed with André and Jacqueline Breton in their small apartment, and later moved to a hotel. But the visit, from her point of view, was not a success: Breton failed to release the paintings from customs, claiming he hadn’t received the photographs of the works, and it turned out that no gallery was willing to exhibit her paintings.
In the end, Frida met the artist Marcel Duchamp, who arranged to have the paintings released and convinced the Pierre Colle gallery, whose owner was Salvador Dalí’s art dealer, to put on an exhibition in March alongside other artists. The gallery owner decided to show only two of her paintings, since the rest were too shocking for the public. The exhibition ran for two weeks, with a huge crowd at the opening, including the artists Joan Miró, Wassily Kandinsky and Pablo Picasso, but the show was not a financial success.
Jacqueline Breton said the French were too nationalistic to take an interest in the work of an unknown foreigner, and that they still didn’t appreciate women enough. Frida said that men were kings, that they ran the world.
Even though Frida Kahlo was disappointed by the visit and by the exhibition’s financial failure, some good did come of it: her work received positive coverage in the newspaper La Flèche, and the Louvre Museum bought the painting The Frame, a self-portrait of Frida with her hair tied up in a yellow-green ribbon and a giant yellow flower above it. It was the first twentieth-century work by a Mexican artist to be purchased by the Louvre. The painting is now part of the Centre Pompidou collection.
The French fashion world was also captivated by Frida. Elsa Schiaparelli was so taken with Frida’s Mexican outfits that she designed the “Robe Madame Rivera” dress for fashionable Parisian women, and Frida’s ring-covered hand appeared on the cover of Vogue magazine.
During her visit to Paris, Frida Kahlo also visited Chartres, the châteaux of the Loire Valley, and the Louvre. Still, Frida never liked Paris. After the exhibition closed on March 25, 1939, she sailed back to New York. Over her lifetime, Frida Kahlo painted 143 paintings, 55 of them self-portraits that reflected the accident and the terrible suffering of her broken body and tormented soul. Four of them are on display in France.
Frida Kahlo died in 1954, at only 47 years old. Today she is considered one of the most fascinating painters in the world, and the French, of course, recognize her importance too. That’s why, from October 5, 2016 to January 23, 2017, the Grand Palais hosted an exhibition called “Mexico,” featuring works by Mexican artists, including Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo.
Want to read more about trailblazing women in art?
- Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, the painter who fought for Marie Antoinette’s image
- Édouard Manet and Berthe Morisot: the passion in their art
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