Why is Frida Kahlo's work important? She was like this the most recognized Mexican artist in the world

Frida Kahlo's legacy 66 years after her death 3:07

(CNN Spanish) --

The image of Frida Kahlo is ubiquitous.

Her face and some of her works are easily recognized around the world and her image has been so promoted in all kinds of popular culture products, that it is easy to lose sight of the true legacy of this Mexican artist. .

Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo Calderón was born on July 6, 1907 in Coyoacán, Mexico, to a German father and a mother of Spanish and indigenous descent.

Although she was considered "mestiza," that is, a person of mixed European and indigenous descent, she closely identified with her indigenous heritage and loved the Mexican people.

He was born at the gates of the Mexican Revolution and grew up in the political chaos that led to the end of the nearly 30-year dictatorship and the establishment of a constitutional republic.

So much so that for many years, Frida said that she was born in 1910, to be identified as a daughter of the Revolution.

For many, Kahlo is considered an artist ahead of her time, a visionary and even a rebel who revolutionized culture not only through her painting, but also with her foray into politics, her sexual freedom, and the transgression from her body. and diseases.

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"Her personality has been adopted as one of the flags of feminism, disability, sexual freedom and Mexican culture," says a profile of her from the Frida Kahlo Museum.

"He is one of the emblems of our nation, of Mexico, both in the artistic part for his painting, for his very original and unmistakable artistic legacy," Armín Gómez, a dramatic literature researcher and screenwriting professor at the Technological University of Monterrey, told CNN. .

"Frida has a rebellious, rebellious attitude, different from what was expected of a woman of her time, and of course, with the terrible fortune of the suffering she experienced..." added Gómez.

"But beyond that, her attitude to overcome it and to go above her personal and historical situation."

Frida Kahlo's "Roots" fetched $5.6 million in 2006.

Frida, her personal life

From the age of six, Kahlo began to fight for her life.

At that young age she fell ill with polio, which, according to a biography of her in the Frida Kahlo Museum, left her with one leg shorter than the other.

In 1925, when she was 18, a terrible car accident left her with back problems for life.

This accident would redefine her life forever, since it was from then on that, driven by her convalescence, she began to capture her first drawings in plaster, and later, in the canvases that her parents gave her.

"Frida is an icon of popular culture, but also of Mexican culture, of women's culture, of the culture of the disabled. She is a phenomenon and more," Hilda Trujillo, general director of the Frida Kahlo Museum, told CNN. , during the celebration of what would be the artist's 113th birthday, in 2020.

Her marriage to fellow Mexican painter Diego Rivera, 21 years older than her, and who was an imposing figure next to Kahlo's small body, was tumultuous.

Her mother, Matilde Calderón, described this marriage as "the wedding between an elephant and a dove".

Frida Kahlo with her husband Diego Rivera in 1945 (Credit: Marly/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

The couple divorced in 1939 and remarried the following year.

They both had extramarital affairs.

Kahlo perhaps had one of the most outstanding with the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky, while he was in exile in Mexico.

Trotsky and his wife arrive in Mexico in 1937, surrounded by police and Kahlo.

(Credit: Getty Images)

"At first, Frida was in Diego's shadow, but very soon she came out of it," art historian Helga Prignitz-Poda told CNN of the couple's avant-garde artistic careers.

And about the importance of her life and work, Trujillo, the general director of the Frida Kahlo Museum, says that it is important to study it "because it can help us a lot in these times, where we need resilience when we feel so fragile. What makes us strong it is science, creativity, our ability to renew ourselves".

Kahlo, the image and the artist

"More than advanced, she knew how to perceive her historical moment. Being herself and saying

Trujillo previously told CNN.

But she wasn't the only one.

Frida was surrounded by other "very adventurous" women who were friends of hers, according to Trujillo, including the Mexican painter María Izquierdo (1902-1955) and the surrealist painter Leonora Carrington (1917-2011).

"It was a very important historical moment in Mexico that we must keep in mind," added the expert.

Her Tehuana dresses, representing the Mexican matriarchs, represent her personality, together with her figure and image as a strong woman, have endured through the years.

"She was dressed in the Tehuana dress, which represents the matriarch in a certain part of Mexico: the strong woman who fights for her rights, makes her own money. She wants to represent this type of woman," Prignitz-Poda said.

That matriarchal society helped Khalo build an image of herself "as an outsider": "Independent, but faithful to tradition, while at the same time adopting a modern and liberated lifestyle," Circe Henestrosa, co-curator of the exhibition

which was held at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in 2018.

And if you look through her portraits, you will find a serious woman, with masculine features and a rough eyebrow that stares back from the painting.

“She highlighted her mustache and her joined eyebrows because they show a masculine aspect to her personality, and Frida always wanted to be both.

She wanted to be a whole human being and not just the sweet wife, so this makes her look so strong," Prignitz-Poda noted.

"Both in her work and in her daily life - language, clothing, and decoration of her house - Frida sought to rescue the roots of Mexican popular art, and that interest is reflected in her work," says a biography of hers at the Museum of Frida Kahlo.

The importance of Frida Kahlo's art

From a very young age, Frida Kahlo was associated with important artists such as the photographer Tina Modotti and Diego Rivera himself, a well-known muralist at the time.

Her greatest muse was probably herself, as throughout her life she painted a large number of self-portraits depicting deeply personal experiences in stark detail.

"I think people are mostly fascinated by her paintings: Frida shows her inner life in a very authentic way. And I think there are very few artists who have painted so much of what they really felt," Prignitz-Poda told CNN.

"There's a certain honesty, and that's what people understand and feel," he added.

Through her paintings, the viewer can glimpse the darkest part of Kahlo's world.

"I paint myself because I am often very alone and because I am the subject I know best," the artist once said.

Curator Emma Dexter in front of "The Two Fridas" in London in 2005 (Credit: JOHN D MCHUGH/AFP/Getty Images)

Unlike the surrealist painters, Kahlo said that she did not paint her dreams, but her reality.

In addition, according to the Frida Kahlo Museum, the self-portraits are highly influenced by the photographic portrait worked by her father, Guillermo Kahlo.

During her artistic career, Kahlo had a series of international exhibitions that brought her international recognition.

In 1938 he had his first solo exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York.

The curatorial text was written by André Bretón.

A year later, the Louvre Museum buys his self-portrait The Frame, which is the first work by a 20th century Mexican artist bought by the museum.

He also participated in 1942 in two exhibitions at the New York Museum of Art.

She was also present in exhibitions at the Boston Institute of Contemporary Art, which included her in 1941 in the show Modern Mexican Painters and in 1943 her work was included in the exhibition Mexican Art Today at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Likewise, in 1940 he participated in a sample of surrealist artists, the International Exhibition of Surrealists at the Mexican Art Gallery of Inés Amor.

Among some of his most recognized works are "The Two Fridas", "The Broken Column", "Henry Ford Hospital", "A Few Picks", "The Wounded Deer", "Diego and I", "Diego in my Thought" , “My birth”, “Self-portrait with a velvet suit”, “Self-portrait with monkeys”, “Self-portrait as a Tehuana”, “Self-portrait with a medallion”, “Self-portrait with loose hair”, “Self-portrait with cut hair”, among others.

Years after her death in 1954 at the age of 47 from complications of pneumonia, in the 1970s, a movement called "Fridomania" began "in European feminist circles", in which her artistic work was highlighted and, says the Museum Frida Kahlo had achieved the admiration of important European artists such as Pablo Picasso, Marcel Duchamp, André Breton.

"The two readings, in one way or another, are exaggerated and at the same time, they are true."

A current sales record

Kahlo's influence does not end.

And his legend grows bigger with the years.

So much so that her works have sold for millions of dollars and she is considered by many to be the number 1 artist in Latin America.

"She was the first Latin American artist to break the million-dollar barrier at auction," Mari-Claudia Jiménez, president and CEO of Global Fine Arts at Sotheby's auction house, told CNN.

This was achieved in 1990 when she sold her painting

for US$ 1.4 million.

In November 2021, that same painting was sold for US$34.9 million.

"Frida in particular is a global cultural icon," Jimenez said.

"This status as an icon is what has really driven this extraordinary result" at art auctions.

-- With information from Sheena McKenzie, Marlen Komar, Leah Asmelash, Nadeem Muaddi of CNN and Marysabel Huston of CNN en Español.

Frida Kahlo