Tibol, Raquel. “Fué Frida Kahlo una Pintora Surrealista?” Siempre (Mexico City), Supplement, “La Cultura en México,” Aug. 5, 1970, pp. x–xi.
Westheim, Paul. “Frida Kahlo: Una Investigación Estética.” Novedades (Mexico City), Supplement, “México en la Cultura,” June 10, 1950, p. 3.
Wolfe, Bertram D. “Rise of Another Rivera.” Vogue, Nov. 1, 1938, pp. 64, 131.
Zendejas, Adelina. “Frida Kahlo: En los Diez Años de su Muerte (1910–1954).” El Día (Mexico City), Supplement, “El Gallo Ilustrado,” July 12, 1964, pp. 1–2, 64.
NOTES
PREFACE
x“Where’s the circus?”: Julien Levy, Memoir of an Art Gallery (New York: Putnam, 1977), p. 16.
xi“I don’t want to share my toothbrush”: Carmen Phillips, private interview, Pipersville, Pennsylvania, November 1979.
xi“I hold the record for operations”: Rafael Lozano, Mexico City dispatch to Time, Nov. 9, 1950.
xi“I paint my own reality”: Bertram D. Wolfe, “Rise of Another Rivera,” p. 64.
xiii “Frida embodied”: Quoted in Ira Kamin, “Memories of Frida Kahlo,” San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle, May 6, 1979, pp. 44–50.
xiii “Neither Derain, nor I”: Raquel Tibol, Frida Kahlo: Crónica, Testimonios y Aproximaciones, p. 96. All translations from the original Spanish, in letters, diaries, books, and articles, are by the author.
CHAPTER 1: THE BLUE HOUSE ON LONDRES STREET
4as her birth certificate shows: Frida’s birth was inscribed in the register of births in the town hall in Coyoacán.
5the youth sustained brain injuries: This information comes from Frida Kahlo’s medical records from birth to 1946, which were compiled by Dr. Henriette Begun, Frida’s gynecologist, who emigrated to Mexico from Berlin in 1942. The medical record is published in Raquel Tibol, Frida Kahlo, a German translation of Tibol’s Crónica. Tibol added this medical report in the German edition, published in 1980; see pp. 138–43. Henceforth, Begun, medical record.
5he found a job: Alejandro Gómez Arias, private interviews, Mexico City, July 1977–January 1982. Gómez Arias says that Guillermo Kahlo emigrated to Mexico with the Diener brothers and that Kahlo helped them found La Perla.
5“The night his wife died”: Tibol, Crónica, p. 22.
6“like a little bell from Oaxaca”: Ibid., p. 20.
6he “was very interesting”: Ibid., p. 21.
6her mother showed her a book: Ibid., p. 26.
7her grandfather lent her father a camera: Ibid., p. 22.
7“first official photographer”: Felipe García Beraza, “La Obra Historica de Guillermo Kahlo,” in Homenaje a Guillermo Kahlo (1872–1941): Primer Fotógrafo Oficial del Patrimonio Cultural de México, exhibition catalogue published by El Institute Mexicano Norteamericano de Relaciones Culturales, A.C. in August 1976, n.p. Some of the photographs later became the illustrations for the six monumental volumes of Las Iglesias de México (The Churches of Mexico), produced between 1924 and 1927 with the collaboration of the well-known painter Doctor Atl, the art historian Manuel Touissant, and the engineer José R. Benítez. The National Institute of Anthropology and History now possesses a collection of Kahlo’s daguerreotypes. It is said that Frida’s sister Matilde had her father’s glass plates after he died. A compulsively clean housekeeper like her mother, Matilde decided one day to wash them, and many of them were destroyed (Dolores Olmedo, private interview, Xochimilco, D.F., March 1977).
7“Guillermo Kahlo specialist in landscapes”: Ibid.
7he said that he did not want: Maria Luisa Kahlo, private interview, Mexico City, November 1977.
7“he had only two friends”: Tibol, Crónica, p. 21.
8she said she was about two: Frida Kahlo, interviewed by Parker Lesley, Coyoacán, D.F., Mexico, May 27, 1939. Henceforth, Lesley notes.
8“I have my father’s eyes”: Tibol, Crónica, p. 23.
8Her Mexican grandparents: Lesley notes.
CHAPTER 2: CHILDHOOD IN COYOACÁN
10“I was nursed”: Lesley notes.
10she began to suffer: Tibol, Frida Kahlo, p. 138.
11who had been placed in a convent: Not surprisingly, Margarita and María Luisa retain unpleasant memories of their stepmother, recalling a small-minded, vain, selfish woman (Margarita Kahlo and María Luisa Kahlo, private interview, Mexico City, November 1977). Another family member, Mercedes Calderón, recalls that she rarely saw Frida’s parents when she visited on Londres Street: “They were always disappearing behind heavy wooden doors” (Mercedes Calderón, private interview, Mexico City, February 1980).
12“it was with great difficulty”: Tibol, Crónica, p. 22.
12They mortgaged the house: Gómez Arias, private interviews.
12“She did not know”: Tibol, Crónica, pp. 20–21.
12“My mother was hysterical about religion”: Ibid., pp. 26–27.
13“When I was three”: Ibid., p. 24.
13“In play I pushed her”: Ibid., pp. 24–25.
13calling him “Herr Kahlo”: Gómez Arias, private interviews.
13“When I was seven”: Tibol, Crónica, p. 26.
14Matilde used to come: Margarita and María Luisa Kahlo, private interview.
14“Maty now comes”: Frida Kahlo, letter to Alejandro Gómez Arias, July 22, 1927. Gómez Arias, personal archive.
14“very nice, active, intelligent”: Tibol, Crónica, pp. 21–21, 26.
14“could not stop crying”: Lucienne Bloch, private interview, San Francisco, November 1978.
14stricken with polio: Frida Kahlo’s medical history compiled by Dr. Begun says that Frida had a normal birth, and except for the usual childhood diseases—measles, chicken pox, and tonsilitis—was a healthy child until 1918, when she had an accident and hit her right foot against a tree stump. This caused a slight deformation of her foot, which turned outward. Several doctors diagnosed the problem as polio. Others said Frida had a “white tumor.” The treatment consisted of sunbaths and calcium baths.
14“It all began”: Tibol, Crónica, p. 26.
15“My toys”: Ibid., p. 28.
15“The leg remained”: Ibid., p. 26.
15“We were quite cruel”: Aurora Reyes, private interview, Mexico City, November 1978.
16“She was extremely well coordinated”: Adelina Zendejas, “Frida Kahlo: En los Diez Años de su Muerte (1910–1954),” p. 1.
16In a 1938 painting: The painting, entitled They Ask for Planes and Only Get Straw Wings, is lost, but it is recorded in a photograph in the personal archive of Michel Petitjean.
16the painting recalls “the time”: Wolfe, “Rise of Another Rivera,” p. 131.
17The village square is “empty”: Lesley notes.
17“which is the whole thing about Indians”: Ibid.
17“It is burnt up”: Ibid.
17“death: very gay”: Ibid.
18“because he is weak”: Ibid.
18"Frida, lieber Frida”: Gómez Arias, private interviews.
18“Frida is the most intelligent”: María Luisa Kahlo, private interview.
19“philosophy makes men prudent”: Ibid.
19the link between his art and her own: Emmy Lou Packard, private interview, San Francisco, November 1978.
19Guillermo Kahlo’s . . . paintings: Three of Kahlo’s watercolors are in the collection of Isolda Kahlo. One is a still life, another is a barnyard scene with two fuzzy calves that appear to be entranced by a mother hen who puffs up her chest proudly to protect her chicks, and the third is a copy of Caspar Metscher’s The Lace Maker, in the Wallace Collection in London. The first and third are dated 1938. The barnyard scene is undated.
20Frida is yet another instance: In her article “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” (in Thomas B. Hess and Elizabeth C. Baker, Art and Sexual Politics, New York: Macmillan, 1973), Linda Nochlin observed that there are many examples in art history of women artists whose fathers were artists. Beyond that, women artists of the nineteenth and twentieth centur
ies often “had a close personal connection with a strong or dominant male artist” (p. 30). Frida obviously had the benefit of that as well.
20a “kind of fearful mystery”: Lesley notes.
20“Many times when he went walking”: Tibol, Crónica, p. 28.
20used the word “tranquil”: Ibid., p. 21.
21effect of the staccato marks: The background conveys a feeling of anxiety in the same way that the flowered wallpaper in the background of Van Gogh’s La Berceuse (1889), painted at one of the moments when Van Gogh became mentally ill and finished during his recovery, intimates distress. One senses in both Frida’s portrait of her father and Van Gogh’s La Berceuse that the image is a private icon, reflecting the painter’s extreme need for the portrait subject. Writing about his intentions in this portrait, Van Gogh said that he wanted to create the kind of image that could comfort and ease the “mournful isolation” of fishermen. Like the Dutch master, Frida seems to have tried to create something that was at once commemorative and consoling.
CHAPTER 3: THE NATIONAL PREPARATORY SCHOOL
23“will be our motto”: Baltasar Dromundo, Mi Calle de San Ildefonso, p. 43.
24“Idealists, persist”: Ibid., p. 46.
24to be founded on “our blood”: Octavio Paz, The Labyrinth of Solitude: Life and Thought in Mexico, p. 152.
24“Men are more malleable”: Jean Chariot, The Mexican Mural Renaissance: 1920–1925, pp. 87, 93.
24“The Spirit Shall Speak”: Paz, Labyrinth, pp. 146–47.
24“We do not speak of a time”: Andrés Iduarte, “Imagen de Frida Kahlo,” clipping from a Caracas newspaper (Aug. 12, 1954), Isolda Kahlo archive.
25the school’s cry: Dromundo, Mi Calle, p. 28.
25“madhouse” on wheels”: Ibid., p. 78.
25“Formidable Affray”: Chariot, Mexican Mural Renaissance, pp. 115–16.
25one father allowed his daughter: Elena Boder, private interview, Los Angeles, November 1978.
26“a fragile adolesecent”: Alejandro Gómez Arias, “Un Testimonio Sobre Frida Kahlo,” n.p.
26like a German high school student: Ibid. Gómez Arias says that before entering the Preparatoria Frida had studied briefly at the Colegio Alemán, the German School in Mexico City, but her parents found the tuition beyond their means and Frida found it too strict (Gómez Arias, private interviews). Frida is also said to have studied two years at the Normal School for Teachers, an institution founded in 1887 for the training of elementary school teachers (Teresa del Condé, Vida de Frida Kahlo, p. 13).
26“Que niña tan fea!”: Alicia Galant, quoted in Gabriela Rabago Palafox, “Frida Vive en Coyoacán,” 1982 newspaper clipping in author’s archive.
26carried a schoolboy’s knapsack: Gómez Arias, “Frida Kahlo,” n.p.
26Frida considered most girls to be cursi: Isolda Kahlo, private interview, Mexico City, October 1977.
27Among the Contemporáneos: Zendejas, “Frida Kahlo,” p. 1.
27Frida’s real cuates: For this account of the doings of Frida and the Cachuchas I have relied—unless otherwise noted—on the memories (both written and communicated in private interviews) of members of the group, especially Alejandro Gómez Arias, but including José Gómez Robleda, Manuel González Ramírez, and Jesús Ríos y Valles, and of such other contemporaries as Baltasar Dromundo, Adolfo Zamora, and Adelina Zendejas.
28their escapades: Baltasar Dromundo, private interview, Mexico City, November 1978.
28“it was the joking attitude”: Manuel González Ramírez, “Frida Kahlo.”
28“we can’t take it anymore”: Zendejas, “Frida Kahlo,” p. 2. It is hardly surprising that Antonio Caso did not want to investigate socialist thought in the Preparatoria classrooms. He did, however, make a critique of positivism, forming a philosophy of intuition and action, feeling and Christian charity. He was against imperialism and for constitutional government, but he felt that progress comes through outstanding individuals and that there was too much stress on the masses (J. Frederick Rippy, Latin America: A Modern History, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 1968).
28“Gómez Arias. . .left the school building”: José Gómez Robleda, private interview, Mexico City, April 1978.
29Frida was expelled: Bertram D. Wolfe, The Fabulous Life of Diego Rivera, pp. 240–41.
29“lend me your Spengler”: Dromundo, private interview.
29Zendejas . . . recalls: Zendejas, “Frida Kahlo,” p. 2.
30The two girls loved to loiter: Ibid.
30Carmen Jaime: Ibid., and Dromundo, Mi Calle, pp. 153–60.
30She could read a text once: Antonio Luna Arroyo, Juan O’Gorman: Autobiografía, Antología, Juicios Críticos y Documentatión exhaustiva sobre su Obra (Mexico City: Cuadernos Populares de Pintura Mexicana Moderna, 1973), p. 103.
30she would sit just outside a class: Adolfo Zamora, telephone interview, Mexico City, February 1980.
30she handed Adelina Zendejas a note: Zendejas, “Frida Kahlo,” p. 2.
31“He is not a teacher”: Arroyo, Juan O’Gorman, p. 103.
31“We would set them on fire”: Gómez Robleda, private interview.
31She stole food: Wolfe, Fabulous Life of Diego Rivera, p. 241.
32Frida liked to hide: Ibid., p. 242, and Diego Rivera, My Art, My Life, pp. 128–29.
32“My ambition”: Wolfe, Fabulous Life of Diego Rivera, p. 241.
32When Adelina Zendejas protested: Adelina Zendejas, interviewed by Karen and David Crommie for their film The Life and Death of Frida Kahlo, 1968.
32“Old Fatso”: Antonio Rodríguez, “Frida Kahlo: El Homenaje Postumo de México a la Gran Artista,” p. 49.
32“One night”: Rivera, My Art, My Life, pp. 128–29.
33“Optimism, sacrifice, purity”: Dromundo, Mi Calle, p. 262.
33“a fresh, perhaps ingenuous and childlike manner”: Gómez Arias, private interviews.
33Alejandro wooed his “niña of the Preparatoria”: Dromundo, private interview, and Zendejas, “Frida Kahlo,” p. 1. The phrase “niña of the Preparatoria” comes from several of Frida’s many letters to Gómez Arias written between 1922 and 1927. All of Frida’s letters to Alejandro Gómez Arias are in Gómez Arias’s personal archive.
34the flow of the words is rarely measured: Frida wrote the way she talked. My translations of her words from the original Spanish follow her punctuation except where lack of punctuation makes the meaning unclear.
34“One tipo ideal”: Letter to Gómez Arias, Sept. 14, 1924.
34Frida developed a personal emblem: González Ramírez, “Frida Kahlo.”
35“Tell me if you don’t love me”: Letter to Gómez Arias, c. Jan. 15, 1925.
36It is said that on Christmas Eve: Dromundo, Mi Calle, p. 166.
36“I am sad and bored”: Letter to Gómez Arias, Aug. 4, 1924. The following quotation is from a letter dated July 25, 1925.
40“sexually precocious”: Gómez Arias, private interviews.
42“I do not know what to do”: Letter to Gómez Arias, 1924. Frida did not give the exact date, but instead wrote “Day of the gringos.” My information about Frida’s jobs comes from her letters to Gómez Arias as well as from his recollections.
43“They pay 4 to 4.50”: Letter to Gómez Arias, Jan. 8, 1925.
43a woman employee: Gómez Arias, private interviews.
43initiation into homosexual sex: Jean van Heijenoort, private interviews, Mexico City, New York City, and Cambridge, Massachusetts, Apr. 1978–May 1982.
43“enormous talent”: A statement Fernández wrote about his apprentice hangs today in the Frida Kahlo museum next to some of Frida’s first drawings under Fernández’s guidance. It says that Frida came to work with him because he was a close friend of her father’s, and goes on: “In view of the enormous talent that she showed in drawing, I thought I would have her dedicate herself to etching and dry point engraving. I put into her hands a book with reproductions of the marvelous works by Anders Zorn and truly I was surprised by the skills
of this marvelous artist. She copied directly, freehand with a pen without using any indications other than a few, very small pencil lines. She copied with an ease and accuracy that can be appreciated in these original drawings which I fortunately kept and which with pleasure I donate to Frida’s Museum.”
Enclosed in a frame with this statement are three pen-and-ink drawings by Frida juxtaposed with reproductions of the engravings by Zorn (1860–1920) that served as models. One can see Frida’s skill, but her struggle to make a faithful copy is just as obvious: her line is looser and her hatching far more sketchy than in the original.
CHAPTER 4: ACCIDENT AND AFTERMATH
48“A little while”: Tibol, Crónica, p. 31.
48“The electric train”: Gómez Arias, private interviews.
49“It was a strange collision”: Tibol, Crónica, p. 31.
49Her spinal column: Begun, medical record.
49“I lost my virginity”: Tibol, Crónica, p. 32. Frida was probably speaking figuratively. According to Gómez Arias, she was no longer a virgin at the time of the accident (Gómez Arias, private interviews).
50“They had to put her back together”: Baltasar Dromundo, “Frida Kahlo: Vida Cercenada Mil Veces por la Muerte," El Sol de México, Apr. 23, 1974, p. D3.
50“My mother was speechless”: Tibol: Crónica, p. 32.
50“They kept us in a kind of horrifying ward”: Ibid.
50“In this hospital”: Gómez Arias, “Frida Kahlo,” n.p.
51“I am beginning to grow accustomed”: Letter to Gómez Arias, Dec. 5, 1925. Letter to Gómez Arias.
53“one of the sadder houses”: Letter to Gómez Arias, Apr. 12, 1926.
58“Although I have said I love you to many”: Letter to Gómez Arias, Sept. 28, 1926.
CHAPTER 5: THE BROKEN COLUMN
62thirty-two surgical operations: Olga Campos, telephone interview, Mexico City, February 1980.
62“She lived dying”: Andrés Henestrosa, “Frida.”
62the doctors at the Red Cross Hospital: Reyes, private interview.
62“no one paid any attention”: Tibol, Crónica, p. 32.
63“The second plaster corset”: Letter to Gómez Arias, May 31, 1927.
Frida Page 55
