Frida Kahlo’s Photo Album – At Home With Mrs Diego Rivera

Intimate photographs of the woman who became perhaps the world's most famous female artist

“Never before has a woman put such agonized poetry on canvas”
– Diego Rivera on his wife Frida Khalo

 

Frida lying on her stomach by Nickolas Muray, 1946

Frida lying on her stomach by Nickolas Muray, 1946

 

Photographs of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo (1907-54; nee Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderon) at home with friends and in pain, the star teacher and his pupil, the fluid young woman dismissed as a plucky amateur and prop in this 1933 headline in a US newspaper, “Wife of the Master Mural Painter Gleefully Dabbles in Works of Art.” Kahlo’s art is riveting and achingly intimate and intense. We get to stare at Frida Kahlo as she turned herself inside out on canvas. Here we to get study her in her bedroom at La Casa Azul, the Blue House, in Coyoacan, Mexico, where she suffered miscarriages, got strapped into corsets that kept her upright after polio and a tram accident at 18 broke her spine in three places, ordered a pair of red boots decorated with bells so her prosthetic leg could match her good foot, shagged Trotsky and felt the emotional pain of Diego’s affair with her sister Cristina.

In A Love Letter from a Stray Moon, Jay Griffiths walks us through Casa Azil, now the Frida Kahlo Museum:

“I can’t get over this hangover,” a tequila-drinking parrot squawked in the courtyard. The household seethed with monkeys, tiny Itzcuintli dogs, an osprey, tame doves and a pet fawn: companions and perhaps child-substitutes for their artist-owner Frida Kahlo. Lemons, watermelons and flowers filled the house and an organ cactus scraped the sky. Near so much life, death jangled a different music: she kept a foetus which a doctor had sent her as a gift in her bedroom, as a Mexican-style memento mori; a cardboard skeleton wore Frida’s clothes; and the bed’s canopy had a huge mirror so that, when bedridden, she could paint herself, a still life, a stilled life.

 

Frida painting in bed, anonymous photographer, 1940. © Frida Kahlo Museum

Frida painting in bed, anonymous photographer, 1940. © Frida Kahlo Museum

Frida Kahlo by Guillermo Kahlo, 1926

Frida Kahlo by her father Guillermo Kahlo, 1926

“There have been two great accidents in my life. One was the trolley, and the other was Diego. Diego was by far the worst”

 

Frida Kahlo at home

Frida Kahlo at home

 

“Of my face, I like the eyebrows and eyes. Aside from that, I like nothing”

 

frida kahlo mexico

 

“I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone, because I am the subject I know best”

 

Frida in the New York Hospital by Nickolas Muray, 1946.

Frida in the New York Hospital by Nickolas Muray, 1946.

Frida and Diego with friends, anonymous photographer, c1945.

Frida and Diego with friends, anonymous photographer, c1945.

“I lost three children and a series of other things that would have fulfilled my horrible life. My painting took the place of all of this”

Frida Kahlo in ned

Frida Kahlo Diego

Frida and Diego

By Bernard Silberstein Frida Kahlo

By Bernard Silberstein

Frida Kahlo in the Casa Azul, anonymous photographer, 1930

Frida Kahlo in the Casa Azul, anonymous photographer, 1930

Frida Kahlo after an operation by Antonio Kahlo, 1946.

Frida Kahlo after an operation by Antonio Kahlo, 1946.

Nickolas Muray and Frida Kahlo by Nickolas Muray, 1939.

Nickolas Muray and Frida Kahlo by Nickolas Muray, 1939.

Frida Kahlo by Bernard Silberstein

Frida Kahlo by Bernard Silberstein (via )

Frida Kahlo by Bernard Silberstein Frida Kahlo

Bernard G. Silberstein:
Frida Kahlo in Rivera Living Room with Figure of Judas, ca. 1940

Frida Kahlo and photographer Nickolas Muray

Frida Kahlo and photographer Nickolas Muray

 

Via: MOLAA

Would you like to support Flashbak?

Please consider making a donation to our site. We don't want to rely on ads to bring you the best of visual culture. You can also support us by signing up to our Mailing List. And you can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. For great art and culture delivered to your door, visit our shop.