Intellectual Equals: Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera

Diego Rivera becomes an artist

Passionate at drawing from the beginning, Diego Rivera entered the National School of Fine Arts at the age of ten. After years of tutelage under traditional Spanish painter Santiago Rebull and local landscape painter José María Velasco, Rivera traveled to Europe in 1909, where he immediately studied the masters, including Francisco de Goya, El Greco, and Diego Velázquez. He then moved on to the Spanish avant-garde, following his friends in the Dada circles to France, where cubist painters Pablo Picasso and Juan Gris lived most of their lives. A short stay in London exposed him to J.M.W. Turner and William Blake. He returned to Mexico in 1910, on the eve of the Mexican Revolution.

Diego Rivera, Dream of a Sunday Afternoon (1947), Alameda Central Park, Mexico City

Frida Kahlo is born out of a revolution

The Mexican Revolution ousted the Western-financed dictator Porfirio Díaz. Mexico was ready to shed its colonial past and a new cultural nationalism was born. Archeological excavations of ancient ruins revealed the country’s rich Aztec and Mayan histories. Education was restructured to focus on local and indigenous cultures. Literacy campaigns were initiated and women were integrated into the school systems.

Frida Kahlo was born in 1907. She contracted polio when she was six and fell behind in her studies. So she often lied about her age, claiming she was born in 1910 to coincide with the revolution. It was the single most significant event in her childhood and she certainly would embody its spirit throughout her life.

Frida Kahlo, Self Portrait with Cropped Hair (1940), MoMA, NYC

When school integration was implemented, Kahlo’s academic performance allowed her entry to the National Preparatory School in 1922. It was a progressive center for thought, a post-revolutionary experiment in public education. She was one of only 35 female students. Always rebellious, she wore men’s clothing and became even more outspoken. She learned to read in three languages, fell in love with poetry and Da Vinci, and gravitated toward an intellectual group known as the Cachucas. Its members shared strong political views as well as interests in history, art, literature and philosophy.

A turning point in her life happened in 1925. A horrible bus accident impaled her torso, causing several fractures on her vertebrae and uterus and lifelong wounds all over the rest of her body. She barely survived. Bedridden in her recovery, her parents gave her art supplies. And with a mirror over her bed, she began to paint herself – something that, like her wounds, will also become lifelong. Afterwards, she wore layers of dress to hide her broken body.

Frida Kahlo, Marxism Will Give Health to the Sick (1954), Frida Kahlo Museum, Cayoacan

Los Tres Grandes

The new education minister, José Vasconcelos, soon commissioned paintings for public buildings. The murals were to depict the newly-rewritten history of Mexico, including the Spanish conquest, subsequent uprisings, the hardships of the working class, and even local folklore. José Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and Rivera would paint all over the country and become known as the The Great Three. Rivera’s first commission was Creation (1922) at the Símon Bolívar Amphitheater at the National Preparatory School. It marked the birth of the so-called Renaissance of the Mexican mural movement. It was also when he and Frida would first meet.

Diego Rivera, Man Controller of the Universe (1933), National Museum of Fine Arts, Mexico City

The paintings of Los Tres Grandes not only celebrated Mexico’s culture and history but would redefine the concept of fine arts all over the world. Up until then, art had been more of an elitist ideal, confined to salons and reserved for the wealthy. The murals were created in the belief that art should be for the enjoyment and education of the masses. The outburst of creativity that came out of the Mexican Revolution spread not just in painting, but in film, philosophy, literature, and every aspect of life.

Diego Rivera, Bath of Tehuantepec (1956), Museo Soumaya, Mexico City

Free from European pretentiousness and religious conservations, Mexico City became a vibrant and modern mecca for forward-thinking artists and activists. And when the Russian Revolution broke out in 1917, it further galvanized a worldwide movement for leftist ideals. Siqueiros and Rivera joined the Communist Party and included Marxist elements in their works.

Diego Rivera, Russian Revolution (1933), National Museum of Fine Arts, Mexico City

Kahlo and Rivera wed

Enamored by Rivera and Marxism, Kahlo took her paintings to him to ask if they were good enough. There would be times when he would later admit that they were better than his. And from that moment on, she became “the most important thing” in his life. They were married on August 21, 1929. She was 22, he was 43. Though some people were shocked at the mismatched pair, Rivera’s fame granted Kahlo entrance into the burgeoning international art world.

Diego Rivera, The Building of a City (1931), San Francisco Art Institute

They began to travel all over Mexico and the U.S. to fulfill Rivera’s mural commissions. In 1930, in San Francisco, Kahlo met art patrons and philanthropists to whom she would gift her paintings. It was one of her happiest times. But it didn’t last long. In the following years, while Rivera had a major exhibition at MoMA and created murals for the Rockefeller Center and the Detroit Institute for the Arts, Kahlo suffered complications from her accident, a miscarriage, and the death of her mother. Her painting began to turn more visceral and anguished. She became so sad and homesick, Rivera was forced to return to Mexico with her.

Frida Kahlo, Frida and Diego Rivera (1931), SFMoma, San Francisco

And have polyamorous affairs

Just like Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Satre, and Anaís Nin and Henry Miller, Rivera and Kahlo were intellectual equals who had polyamorous affairs.

Rivera’s infidelities were legendary. He said monogamy was nothing but a bourgeois practice. Unhappy in Mexico, he had a doctor proclaim him medically incapable of being able to be with only one partner. Kahlo consoled herself by believing the other women were beneath her, but deep down she was desperate and heartbroken. And nothing hurt her more than when he took her own sister as his new lover. The following separation was one of many. Eventually she forgave them and reconciled her marriage. But afterward, she took on lovers – both male and female – for herself. Her new view on life was to “make love, take a bath, make love again“.

Kahlo’s relationships may have been fleeting, but they were fiery and passionate. Among them was the Hungarian photographer Nickolas Murray, who took some of the most famously stunning images of her. She even kept one in the room she shared with Rivera and would often look at it while they made love. In the end, Murray would leave her, saying, “Of the three of us, there were only two of you. I always felt that. Your tears told me that when you heard his voice.” All her lovers always knew that no one could take the place of Rivera, although Murray perhaps came the closest. She loved him.

Nickolas Murray, Pink Green Blouse, Cayoacan (1938), MOLAA, Long Beach

The most famous of her affairs was with the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky. In January 1937, he and his wife, Natalia, arrived in Mexico after being granted political asylum. Rivera himself campaigned for them until President Cárdenas agreed. Both Kahlo and Rivera admired Trotsky for his role in the revolution and stature in the world. Their home had been a hub for international supporters of leftists, and they sheltered the couple at Casa Azul. The fences were heightened and the house was enclosed, surrounded by 24-hour security.

Kahlo soon began an affair with Trotsky. They communicated in English so that his wife won’t understand. They slipped each other love letters and met for long passionate trysts. When the affair ended, he and his wife moved to a new house nearby, where, after several failed attempts, he would be assassinated under orders from Stalin.

Leon Trotsky’s House Museum, Cayoacan

In 1939, Kahlo was invited by André Breton to exhibit in Paris. There she had affairs with his wife, Jaqueline, and the dancer Josephine Baker. The relationship with Baker was born out of the mutual admiration and sheer attraction they had for each other. Both were fierce, talented, and independent, and the bisexual, interracial couple pushed the line on social conventions even more.

While her liaisons helped reaffirm her self-confidence and diminish the pain of Rivera’s affairs, she always returned to him.

Kahlo’s rise to fame

It was the same time as all these affairs that marked the most prolific of her career, and the resulting works cemented her renown as a Surrealist artist. While Rivera’s paintings were grand and ambitious, hers were intimate. Following a landmark solo exhibition at the Julian Levy Gallery in New York, The Louvre purchased one of her self-portraits, The Frame (c. 1938). It was the first work by a contemporary Mexican artist in their collection, surpassing a milestone even Los Tres Grandes did not achieve. She continued to sell her paintings and garner critical acclaim.

Frida Kahlo, Fulang Chang and I (1937), MoMA, NYC

When she returned to Mexico, Rivera asked for a divorce, partly because he had a new lover and partly because he was deeply spurned by her affair with Trotsky. Again she consoled herself with painting. “I think that little by little I’ll be able to solve my problems and survive. Because at the end of the day, we can endure much more than we think we can.” She was in the midst of her despair, and what followed would be her finest paintings and the only large-scale canvases she made in her lifetime – The Two Fridas (1939) and The Wounded Table (1940).

Frida Kahlo, The Dream (1940), Nesuhi Ertegun Collection, NYC

But then her health began to deteriorate rapidly. Worried, Rivera, who was in San Francisco, sought a doctor, flew her out, and cared for her. It was at the height of her fame, but her body was in shambles. At this time, she’s had over twenty operations from complications from her earlier accident, and only metal rods and braces were holding her body together.

The return to Casa Azul

Again, Kahlo became homesick, and longed for a familiar setting, her own home and studio. In Mexico, they say it’s a blessing to be born and to die at the same house. She returned to Casa Azul in 1941. It would become her final refuge. Rivera added a new wing with the largest room as her studio. She created a pictorial autobiography, continued to paint from her bed, and filled her journals with sketches and drawings that were like love letters for him.

El cielo, la tierra, yo y Diego, Diego Rivera Studio, San Angel

She decorated the home with mosaics and bright colors. She collected folk art and sculptures, surrounding herself with beloved objects. “I am not sick. I am broken. But I am happy as long as I can paint. In spite of my long illness, I feel immense joy in living.” Despite her declining health, it was the most serene of times in their marriage. Their mutual affection was evident to everyone around them.

In 1953, her once-schoolmate and gallery owner Lola Álvarez Bravo put on a retrospective of Kahlo’s work at the Gallery of Contemporary Art in Mexico City. It was widely successful, with other galleries from all over the world calling to ask about the show. One critic said, “It is impossible to separate her life and her work. The paintings are her autobiography.” It was the first and only exhibit she would live to see of her own work in Mexico.

Frida Kahlo’s last painting, Viva la Vida (1954), Frida Kahlo Museum, Cayoacan

Kahlo died the following year. She was 47 years old. Rivera admitted that it was only after her death that he finally understood the power of her love. He would lock himself in his room for long periods of time, musing, “I didn’t think I would miss her this much… Too late now, I realize that the most wonderful part of my life had been my love for Frida.” He followed her into the dark just three years later.