The Most Celebrated Female Modernist AKA Ribbon Around a Bomb

Originally Published March 1, 2022

In celebration of International Women’s Month, we are featuring Frida Kahlo. If you have never heard of her, you are probably living under a rock. She is the epitome of social justice, sexual identity, nonconformity, and resilience in the male-dominated society of her time. Most of her works were translated into agonized poetry on canvas—a personal tragedy turned into potent art. Unsurprisingly, these were byproducts of a life that were mostly lived in pain. Aside from being disabled by Polio since childhood, she had also undergone 30 major operations after a road accident when she was 18.

Growing up, Kahlo planned to become a doctor and took courses in biology, zoology, and anatomy. In spite of having a strong state of mind, her fragile body eviscerated this dream. Waking up from the bus accident that almost took her life, her parents made her a special easel that helped her paint whilst in bed. Who would have thought that her work would be later on acquired by Louvre Museum—making Kahlo the first 20th-century Mexican artist to be included in the museum’s collection. Her painting ‘The Roots’ was sold for $5.6 million which became the most expensive Latin American work ever purchased at an auction.

If there’s a commonality that we share with Frida, it’s the 55 (out of over 200 paintings and sketches) sophisticated self-portraits that she drew and painted. Something similar but far harder to do than the selfies that we hoard in our camera roll. Finding herself often alone, her reflection fueled an unflinching interest in identity. A new art style that she crafted instead of copying Europe. She left the world in awe. In fact, Picasso was one of her fanboys and gifted her a pair of earrings. Today, she is celebrated in Mexico for her attention to Mexican and indigenous culture and by feminists for her depiction of the female experience and form.

We don’t know if it’s her unibrow but famous personalities such as Nickolas Muray, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Chavela Vargas, revolutionist Leon Trotsky and of course, her ex-husband Diego Rivera fell deeply in love with her. If you doubt that we don’t have screenshots to prove it, feel free to read their exchange of handwritten letters that can be found online.

In her drawing ‘Appearances Can Be Deceiving’, she wrote “Feet, what do I need you for when I have wings to fly?” A statement of how persistent, steadfast, and confrontational she is. Although self-taught and only having read frequently the art of the Old Masters, surrealism came naturally to her looking inward. However, she did not see herself as a surrealist, it is a label she rejected, saying she just painted her reality. She had never attended art school, had no studio, and had never focused on any particular subject matter. It became crucial for women artists to have a female role model and this is the gift of Frida Kahlo—a new and articulate means to discuss the most complex aspects of female identity with rawness and honesty.

In her first and only exhibit, she arrived in a four-posted bed loaded in an ambulance. She quoted, “It is not worthwhile to leave this world without having had a little fun in life.” She played soccer, boxed, wrestled, swam competitively, and recalled, “My toys were those of a boy: skates, bicycles.” Her stepdaughter Guadalupe Rivera even filled a cookbook with Kahlo’s recipes.

8 days before she died, she finished the painting, ‘Watermelons’ where the words “Viva La Vida” were engraved—meaning “Long Live Life”. The same house where she lived since birth is now turned into a museum called La Casa Azul. Examine yourself and you might not only see 2 Fridas. That’s okay. Be who you are. Fight for life, fight for what is right.

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