The Morton house will auction this Saturday a batch with unpublished photographs of the last goodbye that the Mexican people gave to Frida Kahlo between July 13 and 14, 1954. The artist's body was veiled for an entire day in the lobby from the Palacio de Bellas Artes, a distinction received by the great representatives of culture in Mexico.
Black curtains covered the walls, columns, and the stairway in the hall. Enjoyed and surrounded by flowers, Frida Kahlo was fired by friends, family, authorities and personalities. Among those who were her husband, Diego Rivera, the former president Lázaro Cárdenas, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Lola Álvarez Bravo, Concha Míchel, Adelina Zendejas, Andrés Iduarte, Juan O'Gorman, Andrés Henestrosa, Efraín Huerta and Arturo García Bustos, one of his closest students, who placed a Communist Party flag with the hammer and sickle on the coffin. The gesture cost Andrés Iduarte the dismissal as director of Fine Arts the next day.
The images of Diego Rivera -who would die of cancer three years later- stand out next to the coffin of his great love, dejected, with downcast eyes. The seven images that now come to light are by an unknown author and are valued between 16,000 and 20,000 pesos (700 and 900 dollars). They measure 12.8 by 18.6 centimeters and on the back you can read annotations such as: "Kahlo Frida fired", "Srio de Lázaro, son of Lázaro, son of Mugica (sic) and other communist cards". Members of the Communist Party paid tribute to the artist, the chronicles of the time tell that there were so many people who took turns standing in long lines on both sides of the coffin, as can be seen in the photographs.
After veiling the body, the procession went to the Dolores pantheon where Frida's remains were cremated and deposited in a clay pot shaped like a toad. In the images that are now seeing the light, Diego Rivera, Lázaro Cárdenas, the engineer César Martino and Andrés Iduarte, holding Rivera's arm, are seen walking behind the hearse on a rainy day. Frida's ashes are currently in the La Casa Azul museum, where the painter lived much of her life. The museum receives thousands of visitors each year.
One of the most bitter anecdotes of Frida's life is that she could never see her work exhibited in Fine Arts. The artist's first exhibition was in 1977, more than 20 years after her death. It was in the gallery of Dolores Álvarez Bravo where the artist showed a part of her work for the first time in Mexico, a year before her death, in 1953.
Due to her deteriorated state of health, the painter received her guests inside the gallery bedridden, as Martha Zamora tells in her book El pincel de la angustia . Frida Kahlo's death will be shrouded in mystery as no autopsy was performed on her. Martha Zamora exposes two hypotheses that will forever accompany the artist's myth: the first, death from pulmonary embolism in her bed due to poor health; the other, suicide by overdosing on Demerol - a pain medication similar to morphine - that helped Frida alleviate her chronic pain. “Adorned with her favorite rings and a silver chain that is used in Guatemala as a wedding bow, she entered her coffin, which when closed, caught all the loneliness that she feared so much and all the colors of her rainbow,” says Zamora. .
The author tells in The Brush of Anguish that while her body was cremated, friends, students and funeral attendees sang the National Anthem and La Internacional to bid her farewell. "I look forward to the departure and hope never to return," was the last known Frida Kahlo wrote in her personal journal.
Charles Lindbergh in Mexico
In the auction on Saturday, you can also bid on another lot with photographs of the flight of aviator Charles Lindbergh to Mexico. The images show the crashed Lindbergh plane and another photograph of Plutarco Elías Calles and General Álvaro Obregón in December 1927. The initial bid is 8,000 pesos ($ 355).
Follow Verne México on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and don't miss your daily ration of Internet wonders.