“They thought I was s Surrealist, but I wasn’t; I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality” Frida Kahlo, 1953

Hello lovely readers, I missed you

welcome back!

Yesterday it was my 5th anniversary in Germany and I somehow felt attached to this wonderful woman Frida Kahlo, so I thought this was a nice way to come back to beautiful (online-)life and I hoped that even though she was not a writer, you would appreciate some very interesting facts about her as smart and curious as you, my pretty and beloved readers, are.

So here we go!

16 facts you need to know about Frida Kahlo

1- Frida Kahlo was mixed raced

She was the daughter of a Jewish-German Photographer, Wilhelm Kahlo, and a mixed raced Mexican-Spanish woman, Matilde Calderón

2- She lied about her age

Her actual birthdate is 06/07/1907 (She would be 111 years old today!) but as an active communist she was, she once told the press to have been born in 1910, year of the Mexican Revolution

3- Her birth and death happened inside “La Casa Azul”

La Casa Azul was the house of her parents when she was born. Later when her parents died it became part of her heritage, after her death, this –now– iconic house became a Museum and you can find it in Coyoacan, Mexico City

4- She suffered from Polio

This sickness forced her to always wear long skirts to hide her legs. Her right leg was strongly weakened by this status and was way thinner and shorter than the left leg. At school, they used to call her Frida Pata de Palo (Frida Wooden Leg)

before the accident, she was planning to become a doctor, but the months in bed that followed inspired her to paint self-portraits to express her pain using a mirror across the bed. Her poor health shaped her art. If you pay enough attention to her paintings, they hurt!

8- she painted 55 self-portraits

In total, she painted 143 pieces and 55 were self-portraits!

“I paint myself because I am so often alone and because I am the subject I know the best”

These pieces are mostly interpretations of physical and psychological wounds.

9- She married Diego Rivera… TWICE

“The Elephant and the Dove” people often referred to them as that because of their difference in size and age (he was 20 years older than her).

Despite being each other’s greatest fans and supporters, their marriage(-s) was(were) full of pain, affairs, and trouble.

10- She was a bisexual and had an affair with Leon Trotsky

yep.

Going back to the affairs they had, when it comes to Frida she had both women and men, this including Leon Trotsky, as he was receiving asylum by the Mexican government. Frida and Diego (as communists they were) hosted Trotsky and his wife in La Casa Azul.

11- a Proud woman of her heritage

Despite having lived in New York, San Francisco, and Paris, Frida was a proud Mexican who always loved her country. She wore long colorful Mexican skirts and loved the traditions and people of her country.

12- unibrow and mustache

as a feminist she refused to be defined by others and captured her self-love in her portraits painting her natural unibrow and mustache, leaving aside the concerns over gender roles and body

13- She arrived at her first solo exhibition in an ambulance

if not Frau Frida, who? As she was sick in bed and against all odds, she refused to miss her exhibition and had an ambulance take her there inside the bed.

14- She died at the age of 47

“I hope this exit is joyful- and I hope never to return”

until today it is unclear if she died because of her sicknesses and endless wounds or if she committed suicide taking an overdose of medicine. This is the last thing she wrote in her diary and no one really knows what she meant. She also wrote that she wanted to kill herself but her love for Diego was too strong to do that.

15- She is a feminist icon

During her lifetime she was “Diego Rivera’s wife” but in the 1970’s in the apogee of the feminism, her artwork became more popular and widely acclaimed until the roles changed and now Diego is known to be her husband. Well done, Frida!

Nowadays feminist theorists embrace Kahlo’s deeply personal portraits for their insight into the female experience.

Thank you, Frida- and may all my readers find such love.