Feet, what do I need you for when I have wings to fly?
Frida Kahlo
Frida Khalo faced possibly the three worst fears a parent has regarding their children: severe sickness, a life-impairing accident, and the impossibility of bearing children on their own. A tragic existence, a sad love story, and a life lived with every possible color in the rainbow.
Magdalena Carmen Frida Khalo y Calderon was a Mexican painter, born on July 6th of 1907, from a German father and a mestiza mother. Relatively unknown during her life and overshadowed by her famous husband –painter Diego Rivera, her popularity exploded in the recent era. Frida Khalo is a beacon among those trying to embrace the Mexican culture, a postcolonial identity; she is also a potent symbol for women worldwide. Her paintings permeate the pain and tears she endured and shed due to life events that marked her existence.
Her mother was intelligent and a religious fanatic that clashed against Kahlo's free spirit and wild temper. She became close to her father and preferred to spend her days helping him in his photography studio. This experience and the endless list of artists that stayed at her house or visited enriched her cultural taste. Although she never thought much more of it.
When she was only eight years old, Polio struck her, and so she became disabled. Amazed by the human body and learning about her own disease, she flirted with the idea of attending medical school to become a doctor. Frida was a passionate student, fully committed to her goals. One terrible morning –when she was only eighteen years old –she boarded a bus that got hit by a streetcar whose driver lost control of it. The accident killed many people and barely hurt Kahlo's companion. Unfortunately, during the crash, an iron handrail crossed her pelvis (she would later describe it as a "sword piercing a bull"); she also suffered from many other fractures and bone crushes. After a month in the hospital and two more in bed rest, she returned to work. Frida Khalo would never be the same, physically and mentally.
They thought I was a Surrealist, but I wasn't. I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality.
Frida Kahlo.