Frida
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149Stephen Dimitroff tried to charm his way: Stephen Pope Dimitroff, interviewed by Karen and David Crommie, and Lucienne Bloch, private interview.
149She would stop suddenly and say: Lucienne Bloch, private interview.
149At home, with Lucienne: Lucienne Bloch, private interview and diary.
150“My paintings are well painted”: Tibol, Crónica, p. 50.
151“Frida’s retablos do not look like retablos”: Rivera, “Frida Kahlo y el Arte Mexicano,” p. 101. Retablos have been made in Mexico from colonial times. Most often the saved person or his family commissions the work from a professional ex-voto painter, who considers himself an anonymous craftsman and does not sign the painting. The purchasers hang their retablos in chruches; sanctuaries dedicated to particularly effective saints are sometimes covered with these ex-voto paintings as well as with other votive offerings—crutches, photographs, trusses, and silver charms in the shape of the leg, heart, ear, or any part of the body that has been miraculously healed.
152Lucienne Bloch remembers how the painting came to be: Lucienne Bloch, private interview and diary.
152“In most nature religions” Bertram D. Wolfe and Diego Rivera, Portrait of Mexico, p. 49.
153“To tell you the truth”: Letter to Dr. Eloesser, July 29, 1932.
154On September 3 she received a telegram: Lucienne Bloch, private interview and diary.
155Frida wrote a letter to Diego: This letter was copied by Bertram Wolfe, and together with Diego’s reply, it is in his papers in the archive at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.
157“Frida returned to Detroit”: Rivera, My Art, My Life, pp. 193–94.
157The first of the series suggested by Diego: Lucienne Bloch said Rivera suggested the series to Frida (private interview).
157“how I imagined I was born”: Lesley notes.
157the Virgin of Sorrows . . . as “part of a memory image”: Lesley notes.
158“The mother’s face”: Rivera, “Frida Kahlo y el Arte Mexicano,” p. 101.
158“I wanted to make a series of pictures”: Lesley notes
159“Wife of the Master Mural Painter”: Florence Davies, “Wife of the Master Mural Painter Gleefully Dabbles in Works of Art,”: Detroit News, Feb. 2, 1933, p. 16.
CHAPTER 11: REVOLUTIONARIES IN THE TEMPLE OF FINANCE
161“heartless hoax on his capitalistic employers”: Wolfe, Fabulous Life of Diego Rivera, p. 312.
161“I admire Rivera’s spirit”: Ibid., p. 314.
161“the beginning of the realization”: Rivera, My Art, My Life, p. 200.
162teaching Mexican ballads: Lucienne Bloch, Crommie interview. Frida’s favorite was about a train crash that took place in 1895 and killed large numbers of people. Corridos, like retablos or José Guadalupe Posada’s engravings, often tell about real disasters. They are a form of musical journalism, with all the grisly details, plus date, place, and number of people killed and injured, set to verse. Besides accidents, corridos report on crimes, suicides, natural disasters, and weird occurrences such as ghostly apparitions, the arrest of forty-one male homosexuals, or the woman with one hundred husbands. Given their taste for the lurid, it comes as no surprise that both Diego and Frida loved to sing these songs.
162“Frida did all the worst ones”: Lucienne Bloch, private interview.
163“She stuck it under the bedcovers”: Suzanne Bloch, private interview, New York City, April 1977.
163“Frida went through dime stores”: Lucienne Bloch, private interview.
163Once when she was passing a pharmacy: Mary Sklar, private interview, New York City, September 1977.
163David Margolis . . . remembers: Margolis, private interview, New York City, June 1978.
163preferred to go to Brooklyn: Beryl Becker, private interview, Cuernavaca, Mexico, August 1977.
163“bored to tears”: Lucienne Bloch, private interview.
164“acted like the worst mischiefs”: Lucienne Bloch, diary.
164“Men at the Crossroads”: Wolfe, Fabulous Life of Diego Rivera, p. 317.
164“Rivera Paints Scenes”: Ibid., p. 325.
164“something could happen”: Lucienne Bloch, diary.
165“seriously offend a great many”: Wolfe, Fabulous Life of Diego Rivera, p. 325.
165“Workers Unite! Help protect”: Time, May 22, 1933, p. 25.
165“Save Rivera’s Painting”: Ibid.
166“I Paint What I See”: E. B. White, “I Paint What I See,” New Yorker, May 20, 1933, p. 29. Also published in Poems and Sketches of E. B. White (New York: Harper & Row 1981), pp. 35–36.
166Rockefeller Center mural was “reactionary”: Rivera, My Art, My Life, p. 210.
167Rockefeller came up to her: Lucienne Bloch, private interview.
167“Señora Diego Rivera”: Geraldine Sartain, “Rivera’s Wife Rues Art Ban," New York World Telegram, June 10, 1933.
168Rivera . . . announced: Wolfe, Fabulous Life of Diego Rivera, p. 334.
168twenty-one movable panels: The panels are now in the dining hall of Unity House, the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union Recreation Center in Forest Park, Pennsylvania.
168“Diego Rivera, Mexican Artist”: New York Times, May 16, 1933.
169the Riveras’ “house was always open”: Louise Nevelson, Dawns and Dusks, taped conversations with Diana MacKown. (New York: Scribner’s, 1976), p. 57.
169“We will go to dinner”: Marjorie Eaton, private interview, Palo Alto, California, November 1978.
169“We used to carry on”: Nevelson, Dawns and Dusks, p. 65.
170He showed his gratitude: Eaton, private interview. According to Eaton, Nevelson was embarrassed about the gift and did not wear it that evening when she joined Frida and Diego for dinner. She was greatly relieved when Rivera turned to her in Frida’s presence and asked, “Have you shown Frida your necklace?"
170Rivera was . . . with Louise: Lucienne Bloch, private interview.
170her right foot felt paralyzed: Begun, medical record.
170“Frida did not go out”: Lupe Marín, private interview, Mexico City, July 1977.
170“Oh, I hate to be alone”: Suzanne Bloch, private interview.
170“he wanted to be independent”: Lucienne Bloch, private interview.
172a lot of “bunk”: Lucienne Bloch, Crommie interview.
172“New York is very pretty”: Frida Kahlo, letter to Isabel Campos (Nov. 16, 1933), published in Tibol, Frida Kahlo, pp. 43, 46–47.
175“the George Washington Bridge”: New York Times Magazine, Apr. 2, 1933, p. 11.
175a heated argument: Lucienne Bloch, private interview.
176“We got together a group”: Nevelson, Dawns and Dusks, p. 59.
CHAPTER 12: A FEW SMALL NIPS
179“from a bohemian point of view”: Ella Wolfe, private interview.
179"[Diego’s] architectural theories”: Ric y Rac, “In-Mural," Excelsior (Mexico City), Aug. 14, 1949, sec. 2, p. 1.
180A Few Small Nips is based on a newspaper account: The story behind this painting was told in Loló de la Torriente, “Verdad y Mentira en la Vida de Frida Kahlo y Diego Rivera,” and in a private interview with a Spanish refugee painter, a friend of Frida’s, who wishes to remain anonymous. The drawing for A Few Small Nips is lost, but it is documented in a photograph of several drawings by Frida that was displayed in Frida’s retrospective at Mexico’s Palace of Fine Arts in 1977. It shows the murdered woman naked on a bed with the murderer and a small boy standing over her and weeping. A dove holds a ribbon in its beak. On the ribbon are the words "Mi chata ya no me quiere" ("My cutie doesn’t love me anymore"). In the upper right corner, the murderer’s words are put into verse: “My cutie doesn’t love me anymore, because she loves another bastard, but today she was snatched away for sure, now her hour has come.” At the bottom of the page his words continue: “A few small ’nips.’ It was not twenty stabs, mister.”
180“The verb [chingar, to screw]”: Paz, Labyrinth, pp. 76–77,
86. Violence to women who reject, disobey, or betray a man is a familiar theme in Mexican life and culture. There are, for example, numerous ballads about men’s violent retaliation against women; one that Frida kept among her papers tells the story of Rosita Alvarez, who was murdered by a man with whom she refused to dance (Frida Kahlo archive, Frida Kahlo Museum). In Mexico, crimes of passion like the one depicted in A Few Small Nips are often considered human foibles rather than heinous acts. Murders prompted by pride are deemed manly. “Murder,” said Octavio Paz, “is still a relationship in Mexico, and in this sense it has the same liberating significance as the fiesta or the confession. Hence its drama, its poetry and—why not say it?—its grandeur. Through murder we achieve a momentary transcendence” (Labyrinth, p. 61).
181“because in Mexico killing is quite satisfactory”: Lesley notes.
181a doctor. . . ordered him to be “reinflated”: Wolfe, Fabulous Life of Diego Rivera, p. 309.
181He was “weak, thin, yellow”: Frida Kahlo’s letters to Ella Wolfe are in the Bertram Wolfe archive, Hoover Institution, Stanford University.
182“My right foot”: Letter to Dr. Eloesser, Oct. 24, 1934.
182The foot was operated on: Begun, medical record. This was the first of several operations on Frida’s right foot. In 1935 she had another, and the doctors discovered that she had problems with sesamoids (small bony or cartilaginous nodules that can develop in tendons). This time her foot took six months to heal. In 1936, with a third operation, the sesamoids were removed. Once again, healing was slow.
182“she lives a little bit in . . . ether”: Letter to Ella Wolfe, dated “Wednesday 13,” 1938.
183Frida had been told by her doctors: Tibol, private interview, Mexico City, August 1977.
183“If I loved a woman”: Rivera, My Art, My Life, pp. 287–88.
185Frida actually consulted a lawyer: Gómez Arias, private interview.
185he bought Frida a set of blue . . . “moderne” furniture: Eaton, private interview.
185to furnish a flat for Cristina: Dr. Samuel Fastlich, private interview, Mexico City, November 1977.
185her friends: Annette Nancarrow, private interview, New York City, November 1979.
185“Look!” she cried: Gómez Arias, private interviews.
186The trip: Sklar, private interview.
186“As the flames of resentment died”: Wolfe, Fabulous Life of Diego Rivera, p. 357.
186“all these letters, liaisons”: Ibid., pp. 357–58.
186[Rivera] tells of an incident: Rivera, My Art, My Life, pp. 214–15.
187Frida said they stood for good and evil: Ibid.
188Memory . . . also may refer: In 1939, when Frida gave the painting to Michel Petitjean, she told him it was about how her 1925 accident had changed her (Petitjean, private interview, Paris, November 1981).
190“lyrical bright Mexican colors”: Kaufmann, private interview. Kaufmann also remembers that Remembrance “had a flat frame upholstered in velvet. The parallel sides were alternately upholstered in muted red and green which were less bright than the colors of the painting itself. It was all very lively.”
190She candidly told male friends: Julien Levy, private interview, Bridgewater, Connecticut, Apr. 1977, and Kaufmann, private interview.
CHAPTER 13: TROTSKY
192when Frida was angry at him: Sidney Simon, private interview, Wellfleet, Massachusetts, August 1978.
193Diego provided the money: This account of the Riveras’ financial affairs is derived from Wolfe, Fabulous Life of Diego Rivera, Ella Wolfe, private interview, and many interviews with Frida’s friends.
193when reprimanded, he would counter: Ella Wolfe, private interview.
193“Frida used to scold me”: Rivera, My Art, My Life, pp. 251–52.
193“There were times”: Ibid.
193A typical message from Frida reads: Frida’s letters to Alberto Misrachi and to his nephew (also Alberto Misrachi), dating from 1935 through 1946, are in the Alberto Misrachi, Central de Publicaciones, S.A., archive, Mexico City.
194When all was well: This account of the Riveras’ daily life is derived from van Heijenoort and Eaton, private interviews.
194an excursion . . . “to some little village”: Letter to Dr. Eloesser, July 12, 1936. In this same letter Frida mentioned the self-portrait: “I’m finishing my portrait for you painted by me, the one that you asked me for in your letter from Russia.” On December 17 she wrote asking him if she should send the pinturita (little painting) to him.
195“Always, from the age of four”: Isolda Kahlo, private interview.
195they wrote her loving letters: Isolda and Antonio Kahlo’s letters to Frida from August and September 1940 are in the Frida Kahlo’s archive.
196“I came for lunch”: Eaton, private interview.
196The bold spider monkey: Ella Wolfe, private interview.
196“some evenings”: van Heijenoort, private interview.
197Frida . . . began to carry a little flask: Frida’s drinking habits were described by Jean van Heijenoort, Ella Wolfe, Julien Levy, and others in interviews with the author.
197“You can tell Boit”: Letter to Ella Wolfe, dated “Wednesday 13,” 1938. Frida borrowed the witticism “I drank because I wanted to drown my sorrows, but now the damned things have learned to swim” from a close friend of hers, the poet José Frías (Wolfe, Fabulous Life of Diego Rivera, pp. 107–8).
198Lucienne Bloch remembers: Lucienne Bloch, private interview.
198“Frida had many girl friends”: van Heijenoort, private interview.
198Picasso . . . is reported to have said: Told to the author by Leo Steinberg, in fall 1973.
199“the indigenous nude”: Dolores del Rio, private interview, Mexico City, November 1977.
199"[Diego] considered Frida’s lesbian affairs a . . . safety valve”: van Heijenoort, private interview.
200“I loved her very much”: Isamu Noguchi, private interview, Long Island City, New York, April 1977.
200The two were planning: Eaton, private interview.
201Others say the affair: Roberto BeHar, private interview, Mexico City, October 1977.
201As Noguchi tells it: Noguchi, private interview. Frida was in the English Hospital for the operation on her foot.
201As early as 1933 . . . Diego had declared his sympathies: Margolis, private interview.
202Rivera decided to tell his side: Emanuel Eisenberg, “Battle of the Century,” New Masses, Dec. 10, 1935, pp. 18–20. Siqueiros had launched a crusade of insults against Rivera in the early 1930s. On May 29, 1934, for example, he published a vituperative attack on his old friend in The New Masses, calling Rivera “counterrevolutionary,” “painter of millionaires,” and “esthete of imperialism.” Rivera counter attacked, saying, in a December 1935 article entitled “Defense and Attack Against the Stalinists,” that Siqueiros was a tool of the Stalinists. (Both Rivera’s and Siqueiros’s articles are reprinted in Raquel Tibol, Documentation Sobre el Arte Mexicano, Fondo de Cultura Económica, Mexico City, 1974, pp. 53–82.)
203“the liveliest and strongest hopé”: Letter to Dr. Leo Eloesser, Jan. 30, 1937. Frida’s political concern expressed itself in a strange painting, which is now lost, but was reproduced in the Mexico City newspaper Novedades on July 17, 1955. The reproduction shows a scene that corresponds with the title Survivor (the name of a painting listed in Frida’s 1938 exhibition in New York) and with the title The Air Crash, given it by Bertram Wolfe in “Rise of Another Rivera,” publication of which was timed to coincide with that exhibition. Beneath the newspaper illustration is the caption: “A testimony of sufferings of a world in war” (Novedades, Supplement, “México en la Cultura,” July 17, 1955, p. 6). Very possibly the painting is an expression of Frida’s reaction to the horrors she had heard about firsthand from the Spanish militiamen. It shows a scene of carnage in which one lone survivor, a wounded man, looks at a burning, crashed airplane and at bloodied and mangled bodies—apparently civilians, since some ar
e women—strewn on the ground.
204[Trotsky] . . . came close to despair: Jean van Heijenoort, With Trotsky in Exile: From Prinkipo to Coyoacán, p. 89.
204On November 21, Rivera: Octavio Fernández, “Cómo Se Obtuvo el Derecho de Asilo para Trotsky en México,” La Prensa (Mexico City), Apr. 20, 1956, pp. 20–21, 39.
205Trotsky told the police: Robert Payne, The Life and Death of Trotsky (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1977), p. 391.
205a welcoming party: Leon Trotsky, Writings of Leon Trotsky, 1936–1937, p. 79.
205“It was to him above all”: Ibid., p. 80.
205“After four months”: Ibid., p. 79.
205A special train: Time, Jan. 16, 1937, p. 16.
206Trotsky embraced Rivera: Trotsky, Writings (1936–1937), p. 80.
206details of Trotsky’s safety: Payne, Trotsky, pp. 391–92.
206“We were on a new planet”: Joel Carmichael, Trotsky: An Appreciation of His Life (New York: St. Martins, 1975), p. 432.
207“Who are these people?”: Gómez Arias, private interviews.
207“At latest reports”: Time, Jan. 16, 1937, p. 16.
207“The experience of my life”: Isaac Deutscher, The Prophet Outcast, Trotsky: 1929–1940, vol. 3 of a trilogy (London: Oxford University Press, 1963), p. 380.
208During the months following the “trial”: This account of the activities of the Riveras and the Trotskys comes from Jean van Heijenoort (private interview and Trotsky in Exile).
208“If they were together”: van Heijenoort, private interview.
209In a Partisan Review article: The article is quoted in Wolfe, Fabulous Life of Diego Rivera, pp. 238–39.
209He was also a man with a vigorous interest in sex: van Heijenoort, private interview.
210“Frida did not hesitate to use the word love: van Heijenoort, private interview.
210“I saw myself in a mirror”: Jean van Heijenoort, “Correspondence of Leon and Natalia Trotsky, 1933–1938.” This unpublished manuscript is van Heijenoort’s English translation of the letters the Trotskys wrote to each other during the brief periods they were apart. The correspondence has been published in a French translation, also by van Heijenoort (Paris: Gallimard, 1980).