{...} Así es que puedo pintarla como si se hubiera suicidado con cámara lenta. El problema consiste en lo que voy a pintar alrededor del edificio y de las figuras. El hotel ve hacia el Central Park (tú quizá lo recuerdes pues es precisamente en las nalgas del Barbizan Plaza).
El Central Park fue lo último que ella vio antes de echarse, entonces pensaba yo que en la ventana (única que tendrá el edificio) podría yo pintar las cosas al revés: no pintar lo que estaba dentro de la ventana, sino lo que sus ojos vieron antes de matarse. ¿Qué te parece? Pero ¿qué pinto junto al edificio? ¿Solamente cielo y niebla? ¿O podría yo indicar cosas que ella pensó al morirse? Aquí te digo más o menos cómo pienso hacerlo: La cosa es que yo no sé realmente si la composición resultará muy mierdona, pues no se
me ocurre otra cosa más que eso {...} {…} This way I can paint her as if she had committed suicide in slow motion. The problem consists in what I am going to paint around the building and the figures. The hotel
overlooks Central Park (you may remember it because it is precisely in Barbizan Plaza’s ass), Central Park was the last thing she saw before jumping, I used to think that in the window (the only one the building will have) I could paint things upside down: not paint what was inside the window, but rather what her eyes saw before she killed herself. What do you think? But, what do I paint next to the building? Only sky and fog? Or could I indicate the things she thought as she was dying? Here, let me tell you, more or less, how I plan to do it:
The thing is, I really don’t know if the composition will turn out to be very shitty, but I can’t think of anything else other than that {...}
Treasures from the Casa Azul, Frida and Diego
Carlos Phillips Olmedo
To commemorate the centennial of the birth of Frida Kahlo (1907–2007), the Fideicomisos Museos Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo y Dolores Olmedo proudly exhibit part of the collection housed in the Casa Azul: drawings, printed materials, correspondence, photos, books, clothing and personal items. These objects came to light for the first time after years of being tucked away in boxes in different parts of the house. With the generous support of the non-profit organization Apoyo al Desarrollo de Archivos y Bibliotecas de México (ADABI), dedicated to supporting libraries and archives in México, and the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), these holdings were cleaned, classified and digitalized over the course of three years. Now, a selection of treasures is presented for the first time. The wonders that enrich the work of Frida and Diego are now made available for both researchers and general public, who will be able to enjoy them through different exhibits such as the one we are presenting today. Ricardo Pérez Escamilla, head curator, was in charge of the overall curatorial work and specifically the section on books and drawings. Alicia Azuela de la Cueva was responsible for Diego Rivera’s documents; Teresa del Conde, Frida Kahlo’s documents; Marta Turok Wallace, her costumes; Pablo Ortiz Monasterio, the
photographs; and Jean-Renaud Dubois Langlet, the museography. We are indebted to adabi, the Coordinación de Difusión Cultural unam, the Secretaría de Cultura del Distrito Federal, Conaculta, inba, Fonca, Comex, bbva Bancomer, Casa Domecq, Hotel Habita and Gilsama.
The Archives of the Casa Azul
It is a privilege to celebrate the centennial of Frida Kahlo’s birthday —a fascinating woman who shared her great love for México. What a joy to celebrate it by organizing her personal archives.
As we all know, archives are usually kept in warehouses filled with old, dirty, forgotten papers, visited mostly by mice, scorpions and moths. They usually interest only a curious few who are aware that within these papers history can be found. In July 2005, invited by the Diego Rivera and
Frida Kahlo Museums Trust Funds, our association Apoyo al Desarrollo de Archivos y Bibliotecas de México (ADABI), began the task of cataloguing the Frida Kahlo-Diego Rivera archive located in Casa Azul, with the help of a committed crew that took on the job of organizing the files. While sorting out the material, a rich variety of documents emerged —letters, notes, telegrams, postcards, photographs, writings, posters, maps, blueprints, lithographs, codexes, drawings, sketches and newspaper clippings, as well as a wide variety of subjects in the correspondence, notes and messages. This personal archive is a warm collection that shows us the political, artistic and cultural life of a couple whose art contributed to the greatness of our country’s history. It also reflects the vast sea that was Diego and Frida’s life, nurtured by multiple torrents of human expression —solidarity with the underprivileged, the vision of an art committed to humanity’s higher causes and, above all, the love of two beings who broke free from the narrow constraints of morality and the socially accepted customs of the time. The very richness of the contents set the guidelines for its classification; thus, documents were revised and grouped by topics, persons and other categories, creating a classification chart that underwent several modifications as we advanced through the revision of new documents. The main sections that comprise the archive are: Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, Frida and Diego, Notepads and Notebooks, Photographic Collection, Newspaper Clippings, Graphics, Artistic Work and Periodicals. Each section, in turn, includes several divisions, for example, the Frida Kahlo section includes: Banks, Accounting, Correspondence, Drawings and Sketches, Personal Documents, Writings, Exhibits, the Kahlo-Calderón Family, Pictorial Work and
Medical Services. Also, every section has several subsections; so, for example, in the Banks section we find the subsections of Foreign and National, which are in turn integrated by files concretely named after each bank, and so on.
Parallel to the classification process, we also undertook maintenance and preservation tasks, which consisted of cleaning the documents and placing them inside appropriate protective covers and boxes. In addition to this, the information was integrated into a database which researchers
will soon be able to consult, thanks to the digitalization project currently taking place. This task —slow and painstaking, in which you breathe dust, that is neither glamorous nor monumental and apparently goes unnoticed— is very rewarding. For this reason, I want to congratulate the guardian angels of the archive, who worked in organizing the estate: Margarita Parra Betancourt, Jorge Héctor Velasco García, Gabriela Cruz Téliz, Rebeca Ortega Pantoja and especially Stella González Cicero, director of adabi, who followed very closely this magnificent labor.
If México wants to know which way to walk, then we as Mexicans should ask ourselves who we are and where we are headed. What better way than turning our eyes towards the archives, depositories of our historic memory. These days, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera are reencountered through the documents kept away for so many years. This archive, made up of 22,105 documents, 5,387 photographs, 3,874 periodicals, and 124 graphics comprised of posters, maps and blueprints, will very soon be made available for research. Congratulations on the rescue of yet another Mexican archive.
Of Frida Kahlo’s Stages of Recognition*
* Fragment from the original text, to be published in its entirety in an upcoming publication.
Carlos Monsiváis
Seventh Stage: “No Myth is Invented Without its Consent” Suddenly, in the 70s, a downpour of admiration. Everything coincides: the first details of her relationship with Trotsky and with several women, the exhibits inside and outside of México, Paul Leduc’s movie starring Ofelia Medina, the river of visitors at Casa Azul in Coyoacán. Consensus is quick: Frida, so singular, is the primordial artist who, for lack of another subject, obsessively paints herself, Frida is the portrait of an era and is the era where portraits are inserted. The impact is simultaneous: Frida (the work, the figure, the life, the relationship with love and pain) is embraced by Chicanos, feminists, cultural nationalists, postmodern critics, radicals, movie stars, writers, lesbians, artists and playwrights. Of the legendary universal symbols from the decades of the “Mexican Renaissance” (1920-1940), Frida and her complementary landscape —the immense, delirious, photogenic and anti-photogenic Diego Rivera— are preferred. The inseparable couple and the isolated woman, the love and the flaming loneliness. Frida in the forefront, and Frida and Diego in the background, are the icons that complement and give full meaning to the landscape of Zapatas and Villas.
Observe the industry of metamorphosis: take a great artist, an example of political and moral dissidence, creator of terrestrial and physiological symbolisms, that pours dreams and suffering into visions of the cosmic couple, into self-portraits and lay altarpieces. Shake the memory up a bit
and then trade in the lot for an avalanche of biographies, book covers and magazines, calendars, dolls, puppets, plays, two movies, several documentaries, t-shirts, postcards, docudramas, paintings that quote her paintings, postmodern analysis, adoring declarations from Madonna and
Salma Hayek, overwhelming prices at the auctions… The inevitable question: is Fridamania a Christian-based cult, the transmutation of the artist into the national, grieving, generic virgin? There
is no shortage of Christian streaks in the work and myth of Frida or, at least, the artist sees herself with the rejoiced piety of one of those altarpieces that she so observed, collected and recreated. But nothing in the Fridamania suggests an effective passage from the earthly to the heavenly, but rather,
the inertia of the consecratory methods ingrained by centuries of Christian cultures and its scaffoldings of reproductive adoration. Basically, the myth of Frida is a lay reality of esthetics, hence the transit of Fridamania into popular passion.
Eighth Stage: The Couple and the Amorous Obsessions A religion where divinity, the saints, the ceremonies and the temples are simply called Diego Rivera, a creed that goes from love to cosmogony, from affliction to meditation:
No one will ever know how I love Diego […]
if I had health I would give it all to him,
if I had youth he could take it all.
I am not only your mother, I am
the embryo, the germ, the first cell that
—potentially— engendered it.
I am he from the most primitive […]
the most ancient cells that with time
became “sense”.
Impossible to know what was happening. What is a fact is the compulsive way of placing the great reference:
Do not let the tree
for whom you are the sun,
that treasured your seed,
go thirsty.
“Diego” is a name of love.
Love is, by excellence, the territory of the poetic, just as Frida conceives this overflow. Even new poetic words are justified in her idea of verbal beauty, as long as the primordial substance (surrender) remains. Frida writes:
“Classic” love…
(without arrows)
only
with sperm.
Diego on Frida’s forehead in her self-portrait, Diego in the endless disputes, the forgiveness, the anguish. In the mythology now only consistent of images, Frida and Diego are the unique beings that transcend sex, quarrels, mutual and numerous infidelities, to become the origin of a new species that, for reasons most likely unknown, is extinguished with them. Ninth Stage: The Metamorphosis of the Masses Since the decade of the 90s, and more and more so in the throws of
the xxi century, Frida Kahlo becomes an object of mass devotion, for evident reasons —international fame, the multiplication of images, the transformation of an era into a paradise lost in time— and for secret causes known only to each person. The Fridaic explosion of 2007 is part of a cultural demand, an informational urgency, a contagion of admirations, and the compelling need of great referents. And always, over explained and inexplicable, she remains “like a rocket like a grenade like shattered glass like the news like a telegraph like the blood” (Salvador Novo). Frida Kahlo may not have a statue but, in exchange, she has millions of memory niches. And other stages are to be expected.
The Anniversary of Frida Kahlo
Hilda Trujillo Soto
Even though there are vast and numerous studies regarding Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, these
great artists continue to surprise us, and maybe even play with us… The archives and personal
objects that are just now surfacing in the Frida Kahlo Museum stand out in both quality and quantity. They not only speak of the artists’ creative force, but they also give us an ample view of the cultural scene of the first half of the Twentieth Century, both in México and the rest of world. Before dying, Diego Rivera explicitly asked his friend and patron Dolores Olmedo that one bathroom, in which we found important documents, should remain closed for fifteen years. However, in another bathroom, trunks, armoires, drawers and boxes were closed off as well… freezing time. In the room mentioned by Diego, we basically found political documents, while in the remaining spaces we found letters, photographs and objects of a much more personal and intimate nature. Curiously, at a distance, the latter are the ones that move and touch us the most.
The first problem we were faced with regarding the exploration of the archives was the lack of financial resources, since the Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera-Anahuacalli museums are non-profit institutions —both inherited by Diego to the people of México, through a Trust Fund administered by the Banco de México— that have to obtain their own sources of income in order to open their doors to the public and preserve their treasures. In view of this, we approached Isabel Grañén Porrúa, who is always sensible and generous and, above all, has a clear vision of the value of history
and its repercussions on the future. Through adabi, she granted us the support needed to organize the archive. We were also fortunate in having the valuable consulting and support of the Coordinación de Difusión Cultural UNAM, so generous and enterprising when it comes to avant-garde projects.
The classification task took more than three years —documents, photographs and artistic works were catalogued, calligraphies deciphered, books were grouped, dresses were identified, the textiles analyzed and restored, as were the magazines and newspapers. During this time, many anecdotes worth sharing occurred, like the day when we found more than thirty drawings by Frida stuck behind a bookcase, including Las apariencias engañan [Appearances Can Be Deceiving]. Or when, inside a piece of furniture where the artist kept her toys, we found a box containing an exquisite portrait made by her in ink. Equally surprising was the moment when we opened a plastic box and found the hand-shaped earring that was given to Frida by Picasso.
The process was truly exciting, particularly when, leafing through the books, we found many of Frida’s annotations. It is impressive to see how she marked, intervened and made the books her
own, so that they became part of her life. Now we have the certainty that Frida left in them, with
flowers and birds’ feathers, testaments of the themes that inspired her work. It was just as important to classify and digitalize the estate, making it available to researchers, as it was to find out exactly what we had in our hands. Because of this, the second challenge was putting together the selection of works that conform the exhibit now on display and, while still lacking the necessary resources, calling up the curators, who carefully selected the best of the archive. To achieve this task we received the support of the Comisión de Cultura de la Cámara de Diputados who channeled resources through the Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes. Thus, we were able to put together this exhibit and call in the specialists, who came to gauge the caliber of all that was found. Underneath their scientific rigor, an explorer’s enthusiasm flourished. The excitement of the team was justified twice over: in admiring the objects and then in observing the faces of the curators who, accustomed to marvels, marveled once more. The excitement to touch something that is known to be a part of history, to discover objects and confidences that have the impromptu of a classic, was manifest. We watched as an oil painting —that the maestro Ricardo Pérez Escamilla,
chief curator of the exhibit, with his expertise and rigorous documentation accredited as being Diego Rivera’s— emerged from a box of eggs. Pablo Ortiz Monasterio verified the existence, in the photographic archive, of images taken by masters of the camera such as Edward Weston, Tina
Modotti, Man Ray, Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Gisèle Freund, Nickolas Muray, among many others, of
whom there are only a few works in México. Only a specialist like Marta Turok Wallace was able to discover the delicacy, the detail, the surprising richness and creative participation that Frida herself put into the assembly of her wardrobe. Alicia Azuela and Teresa del Conde selected, from among thousands of documents, true jewels. Among them, Frida’s unknown letter describing the creative process of her painting El suicidio de Dorothy Hale [The Suicide of Dorothy Hale] or the hilarious letter where she describes her stay at André Breton’s house. To organize the exhibit and present it in all its dignity, we approached several companies and institutions who sponsored us and joined in our effort: Comex, bbva Bancomer, Fonca, Secretaría de Cultura del Gobierno del Distrito Federal, Fundación Domecq, Hotel Habita and Gilsama. None of this would have been possible without a group of people that firmly believes in the culture and art of this country, or without Diego
Rivera’s vision in creating a private-public Trust Fund through the Banco de México, bequeathing
his earthy possessions to the Mexican people. Because of this, the project is due to many people, fundamentally the President of the Trust Fund, Carlos García Ponce; the General Director of the Dolores Olmedo, Diego Rivera- Anahuacalli y Frida Kahlo Museums, Carlos Phillips Olmedo; the Secretary of the Trust Fund, Guadalupe Rivera Marín; its members Graciela Romandía Macías de Cantú, Irene Phillips Olmedo, Emilio Gutiérrez Moller, Silvia Pandolfi Elliman, Roberto Gavaldón Arbide, Diego López Rivera, Juan Pablo Gómez Morín Rivera and Walter Boesterly; as well as its trustees and attorneys José Luis Pérez Arredondo and Fabián Ortega Aranda; their staff and the staff of the Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo museums. Thanks to them all, this project has become a reality. All this is nothing more than a gift, another one of many, generously bequeathed to us by Diego and Frida.
The Universe of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo
Ricardo Pérez Escamilla
In the Casa Azul of Coyoacán, Frida and Diego created their own world surrounded by all the
things they loved: the house with its gardens that they planted and tended; the studio where Frida
worked; the kitchen with its clay pitchers and pots; their books; drawings; photos; personal mementos; folk art and furniture; naïve nineteenth-century paintings; portraits of children and women; and letters —especially those written by Frida— to friends, doctors, and luminaries in the world of art and science. And to make sure there was nothing missing from their realm, they had a pyramid built in the middle of the garden. After Frida’s death, Diego asked the poet Carlos Pellicer, their longtime personal friend, to design the installation for the Museum of the Casa Azul that later became a visual poem in honor of Frida’s memory. Diego gave instructions that a part of the archives and her personal effects —such as orthopedic corsets, letters, and photos— were not to be exhibited. They were packed in boxes and placed in a warehouse inside several pieces of furniture, and even inside the bathrooms adjoining the couple’s bedrooms.
In his will, Diego stipulated that the material was not to be touched until fifteen years after his death. However, it was not until now —on the centennial of Frida’s birth and the fiftieth anniversary of Diego’s death— that all of these testimonies have been rescued and classified. After three years of work, the task has finally been completed and today we can exhibit these invaluable objects for the first time in Treasures of the Casa Azul, Frida and Diego. The Casa Azul is still alive because its owners still make their presence known. As exhibition curator, I have been a part of Frida and Diego’s world. I have interpreted it, giving new meaning to the archives, collections, drawings, and correspondence as if they were there, speaking to me while I was listening to them.
The purpose of the exhibition is for visitors to share in this experience with the couple, through their work and their beloved objects; elements that convey the vibrant feeling and inexhaustible creativity of both artists. Therefore, Diego, Frida, and the Casa Azul, with all that this implies, are presented here, fully integrated into an inseparable unity of life and work, existence and art. The genius of both artists conceals the mystery of the infinite, the immeasurable, which is why today we can understand how they generated such marvelous myths. Frida is a myth because she is inexplicable, because there is no way to understand such depths of passion. Frida and Diego were intense people, terrible at times, poetic and touchingly tender at others. Their passion and overflowing sensuality consecrated them. On Frida’s unique character, her physician, Dr. Leo Eloesser, wrote her a letter from San Francisco, dated August 15, 1941, in which he said to her:
My one and only darling:
Heading the list of the five heroines that grace the nation,
you should put: 1. Frida, then 2. Frida and 3. Frida, then
4. Frida, and finally 5. Frida. The others would follow
much later, Malinche, Sor Juana Inés, and Company
For their awareness, their importance, their humanistic culture with deep roots fueled by Mexican identity, Frida and Diego are the culmination of pre-Hispanic Mexican art, Mexican folk art, and contemporary Mexican culture. They are also the glorified expression of what it meant to be Mexican during the first half of the twentieth century. Frida and Diego were equals. This sensational pair opened the doors of modern life as a couple and with that, they left an everlasting mark on the direction taken by twentieth-century marriages, for in theirs, there were elements of equality
between the man and the woman. Both were active in the fight for social causes, individuals liberal in ideology, renowned creators who admired each other, who conformed a two-way feedback system without ever losing their individuality. We can bear witness to a unique case as we stand before the emblem of a new breed of love in a new México. They were front-runners; they were a watershed in history; they were far ahead of their times. Both had an unlimited body of art, a singular expressive creativity, a deep sense of themselves as individuals and as leaders. Both shared a thirst for justice that inspired them to be relentless fighters for social causes, which put them on equal footing to establish a fertile dialogue on life and art.
In this exhibition we find drawings by Frida that speak of her pain and anguish, and drawings by
Diego that are as brilliant as his overall personality. A veritable find are the stencils for his first mural
La creación {The Creation} (1920–1921) —in the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria. These are moving
images for they embody the fusion of aesthetic and historical values, an epic representation of México’s development. The display continues with a selection of documents from Frida and Diego’s archives studied by Dr. Teresa del Conde and Dr. Alicia Azuela de la Cueva, respectively. The holdings are composed largely of revealing letters documenting the friendships of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, their daily life, and the relationship and feedback between the two of them.
The exhibition also includes a selection of books proclaiming their international, scientific,
philosophical, and aesthetic interests; and Diego’s humanistic culture. There are also some of the books and magazines illustrated by Diego Rivera, volumes devoted to artistic techniques and lithographs from the nineteenth century that he valued, —knowing them very well— consulted and used as a point of reference in his murals. On the other hand, books on medicine bear witness to Frida’s obsession with her desire to live, while the small group of publications that we present here —some of them with her casual drawings— reveal her extremely broad visual culture. Similarly, the couple’s active struggle against imperialism and in favor of socialism and a very “Mexican” style of communism is documented in a number of texts discovered recently. At the same time, manifestos of the socialist movement in México were studied and selected.
Some were from the Spanish Civil War and others an outcry against American domination, attesting to Frida and Diego’s activism for peace. In addition, there are posters for exhibitions as well as political and artistic events, although a commercial poster was also found that is a key piece of unquestionable worth, for it seems to be the only one Rivera ever made for the National Lottery.
Another jewel in this artistic treasure is the collection of facsimile editions of Pre-Cortesian codices and sixteenth-century documents that Diego knew and loved. He drew upon them heavily in interpreting the Pre-Hispanic world in his murals. The photographic treasure, the fine selection
made by Pablo Ortiz Monasterio, presents us with a series of self-portraits by Frida’s father, Guillermo Kahlo —a significant precedent for her creative passion for self-portraits. Furthermore, a
group of photos of major figures who were friends of the couple or somehow connected with their
circle are also exhibited. With pride, Pablo Ortiz Monasterio shares with us two photos that Frida
signed on the back, marking the starting point of Frida as a photographer. In turn, Marta Turok Wallace delved into and selected a large number of garments that stand out for their relationship with paintings or particular situations in the life of both artists. Frida’s apparel was the result of original creations that she consciously chose as a unique, inimitable figure; her attire was also very much in line with her support for indigenous people and her love for México.
Treasures of the Casa Azul, Frida and Diego shows Frida’s intimate world in such a way that one of
her dresses, a headdress, a book, a corset, or a poster is sufficient enough to reconstruct her as a
faceless portrait. Ending the exhibition, there is a section of the treasure that we might call “miscellaneous.” This includes medicines, items from her dressing table, and Mexican folk art toys still infused with the affection and loving comprehension of the couple that collected and kept them.
Today, it is with great pride that Frida and Diego’s Casa Azul and the Fideicomiso del Banco
de México present this selection. Although conditioned by the limited amount of space, the exhibition will no doubt open doors to new research and interpretations that will enrich our knowledge of these two giants.
Frida Kahlo, New Readings
Teresa del Conde
The research undertaken at the Casa Azul has produced something that all of us who are interested in the painter’s life and artwork have long clamored for. We have been aware of a good
part of Frida’s personal correspondence —for she was clearly one of the great epistle writers of
the twentieth century in México— particularly through the works of Hayden Herrera and Raquel Tibol. For years, the latter devoted her attention to the task of gathering the painter’s letters researching published books and archives. However, we were unaware her correspondents’ responses. Now these letters are coming to light, through a selection that attempts to exemplify the type of replies —whether sentimental, artistic, existential, or clinical— that she received from her friends and admirers, such as the responses sent by her most assiduous doctor, confidant, and at some point, lover: Dr. Leo Eloesser. Frida met Eloesser in 1930, shortly after she and her husband, Diego, moved to San Francisco. Although she had already produced of several pictorial works, but she had still not attained the prestige and artistic status that she achieved soon thereafter.
There is ample documentation of her earlier years beginning with Frida’s enrollment in the school known as the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria, after completing studies at the school known as the Escuela Normal Primaria para Maestras, headed by the distinguished educator Ana María Berlanga. By the first semester of 1922, Frida was attending high school in San Ildefonso,
where she met the greatest (but not only) love of her early youth: Alejandro Gómez Arias. He became her young lover following a romantic courtship punctuated by doubts and different
avatars in the context of Los Cachuchas {The Caps}, the group she hung out with, which included
Miguel N. Lira and Agustín Olmedo, among others. Frida’s letters to Gómez Arias and those he wrote to her —some of them extremely long— came to an end early in 1929, when she had already
started a relationship with Diego Rivera, whom she married in August. In the letter exhibited in
Treasures of the Casa Azul, Frida and Diego, Gómez Arias, the leader in the struggle for university
autonomy —won that year— asked her for the now well-known Autorretrato con traje de terciopelo
{Self-Portrait Wearing a Velvet Dress}, a painting that Frida had nicknamed “Your Botticelli”, for she
had originally painted it for him. The artist had “given” it to him in 1926, without actually turning
it over to him physically, because she had kept it until “Alex” firmly requested it as an ex-voto of
their love story. Many years later, she wrote to Gómez Arias again, treating him as a good friend
from her youth. Her letters and messages to Diego form another section. What stands out are the missives written from Paris, and above all, the one dealing with the painting she was working on at that time: El suicidio de Dorothy Hale {The Suicide of Dorothy Hale}. She began this canvas in New York during the last quarter of 1938, before her November exhibition in the Julien Levy Gallery. The letter —previously unknown— reveals the degree of friendship, complicity, dependence, and humor
that Frida and Diego shared, not only at that time, but even during the time of their divorce, which lasted from November 6, 1939 to December 8, 1940.
The tone of Frida’s writing changed depending on whom she was writing to. This was particularly
evident when there was a deep affinity or amorous connection, as in the case of Nickolas Muray. The photographer, adopting Frida’s playful tone, called her “My dearest wench”, {Mi querida chamaca}, the term of endearment that Gómez Arias used to refer to her in his letters. Diego
called her chicuitita {“littl’un”} or “niña adorada de mis ojos” {“the apple of my eye”} as late as 1952
in a letter he wrote to her —knowing how much Frida appreciated his letters— for their twentythird
wedding anniversary: “I can see you again when you took me to the Secretaría de Educación
Pública to show me your paintings and when we kissed here on the street in Coyoacán and the
streetlight went out.”
In a letter he wrote once the divorce was final, Diego mentioned a marvelous red flower to her with which she had decorated a present: “It is bisexual, in other words, perfect, which is why it cannot be forgotten nor replaced, nor can one cease to love it. Also the ribbon was not around a bomb full of explosives [alluding to André Breton’s description of her work as “a ribbon around a bomb”], but rather around an envelope containing photos and a marvelous letter from the Niña [his pet name for Frida], that is to say, venomouspsychological but supersoft perfumes.” Frida carefully kept the letters of her admirers. One of them was the pianist Ella Paresce and another, the abstract painter from Switzerland, Sonia Sekula. The missives, in fact, reveal amorous ties, but not sentimental fixations, as the one she evidently maintained with Nick Muray, the handsome photographer of Hungarian origins who was the male lead in the most intense relationship she had with a man in the second half of her life. Muray openly pointed out childish attitudes that he saw in her and also in that other enormous child —Diego— who, in his opinion, kept her from taking herself seriously, as the mature painter she was.
Between 1935 and 1936, the great Japanese- American sculptor Isamu Noguchi was in México,
as part of the team painting the murals in the Abelardo Rodríguez. Noguchi, who shared
commercial ties with the Misrachi Gallery, also succumbed to Frida’s extreme powers of seduction. We are unaware of the letters she wrote to him, but we do have the ones he sent to her, kept in their respective envelopes. “How alone I am without you,” he lamented to her from Orizaba. “I want to see you again soon,” he said in another letter before sailing on the steamer S.S. Orizaba to return to New York, via Havana. The sculptor expressed certain concerns: “I have been inarticulate with you and also with myself. Please forgive me.” Noguchi —who was extremely handsome— met Frida again in New York during one of her stays there, when she was accompanied by her sister
Cristina to be operated on by Dr. Wilson. Later, Noguchi wrote her friendly letters, all in 1947.
He also sent her clippings of poems or riddles to cheer her up. Even his wife, Tava, sent her a letter the same day she left on a trip to India. Frida had a way, like no one else, of turning her lovers into everlasting friends, although it is true that a decade had transpired since her affair with Noguchi and their reencounter in Manhattan. It is touching to read the advice given by curator and art critic Walter Pach, who was enamored with México and who wrote to her with his perfectly legible Spanish and impeccable spelling. Pach urged her to see the great art treasures in Paris and, if possible, also in Italy —as an extension of the trip to the French capital that never took place— when Frida traveled to the City of Lights from New York at the request of André Breton. Pach was also the one who put her in touch with the Duchamp brothers —Marcel and Jacques Villon— and with Roland Balay, connected with the renowned Knoedler Gallery. “If you go to visit galleries,” he tells her, “you needn’t do more than see Nôtre Dame . . . If you wish to see another, even better, example of Gothic art —with original sculptures, because those of Nôtre Dame are mere copies— go to Chartres”.
However, Paris struck Frida as “bloody damned” and so she ended up seeing little of it. Through her letters to Nick Muray we know of her distaste for the city where André Breton lived, the magnificent impression she had of little Aube —the young daughter of André and Jacqueline Lamba, and finally the attack of colon bacillus that she came down with and thus forced her to be hospitalized much to the dismay of her faraway guide: Walter Pach. The critic had been bent on having Frida go to Arezzo to see the frescoes by Piero della Francesca, among other wonders that were portata di mano close at hand such as Delacroix’s paintings in Saint Sulpice. The Paris stay marked the most effervescent stage of her love affair with Nick Muray. Perhaps it was the interruption of what could have become a long-term relationship that prevented Frida from fully enjoying the City of Light and all the attention she got from Marcel Duchamp and Yves Tanguy, among many others. Picasso also gave her a warm reception, although not with a letter, but with a pair of “surrealist” earrings in the shape of a hand, recreated in at least two of her self-portraits. And although Frida did not return to the Old World, she continued to travel through her writings and those that others dedicated to her. As one can feel by reading the selection of letters assembled here and the sentences culled from different letters, Frida was predestined to meet the most outstanding figures in the intellectual and art circles of the time, and she managed to fascinate them all.
Diego Rivera, an Open History
Alicia Azuela de la Cueva
The opening of this documentary archive is a major event for anyone interested in the life,
work, and times of Diego Rivera, whether specialists or laymen. The variety and importance
of the documents in this collection are derived from the importance of Diego Rivera as an artist
and public figure on the national and international scene. This documentary archive encompasses
materials as varied as his correspondence with friends, family, admirers, government agencies,
and public figures, cultural and political agencies, social organizations, and political parties.Among
the personal documents, there are interviews, notes, texts on art and politics, songs, and poems.
Another section concentrates references to his murals, graphics, and exhibitions. The archive
also includes an inventory of his collection of Pre-Columbian pieces and a good compendium
of propagandistic material and postcards. The personal documents span from 1895 to 1952 and are composed of agendas, identity papers, letters, checks from her study grants, diplomas, awards,
legal papers, immigration documents, and wills. As for Diego Rivera’s life and work, the collection
contains texts from lectures, articles and books published in México and abroad. It also preserves invitations to lectures given by the painter in prestigious venues such as The International Worker’s
School Hall, New Workers School, New York Urban League, Confederación Universitaria Bolivariana, and many others.
Rivera had a special knack for writing and possessed an extremely broad cultural base, qualities
reflected in thousands of notes, drafts of texts, writings, songs, and poems that flowed from his pen.
The muralist dealt with subjects as varied as art theory, the work of contemporary and past artists
—such as Paul Cézanne, Joaquín Clausell and José María Velasco, and indigenous Pre Columbian and folk art. He also referred to figures and phenomena from the political arena nationwide and worldwide, such as fascism, World War I and II, and the Spanish Civil War. Diego spoke of his relationship with Trotsky, Stalin, Vicente Lombardo Toledano and many other figures. Furthermore, he attested to his participation in artistic, political, and social groups; obviously there are an abundance of somewhat vain autobiographical notes.
The information on political parties and social organizations form a microcosm, not only of Rivera’s
active militancy, but also of the panorama and individual and institutional actors in the political
events from the first part of the twentieth century. Thanks to Rivera’s collaboration with national and
international groups and parties, and due to the painter’s major ideological shifts, the reader may find a diversified range of documentation referring to the Partido Comunista Mexicano (Mexican Communist Party), the Partido Ferrocarrilero Unitario (Unitary Railroad Worker Party), the Partido Popular (Popular Party), the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (Institutional Revolutionary Party), and the Partido Revolucionario Obrero Campesino (Peasant Worker Revolutionary Party). Regarding this latter group, there is interesting information —for example— on the reasons why this leftist party had to support the candidacy of Juan Andrew Almazán in 1940. At the same time, there is abundant material on the diverse national and international leftist groups, such as the Liga de Comunidades Agrarias y Sindicatos Campesinos (League of Agrarian Communities and Peasant Unions). The information on Trotskyite organizations is one of the most abundant. It contains data on The All-America-Pacific Bureau of the Fourth International, The Independent Labor League of America, and the Fourth International. Among the documents, we can also find Trotsky’s opinions on matters of national politics, as well as his different disagreements with the pcm. This documentary archive also sheds light on specific subjects such as Rivera’s role in the negotiations to grant exile to Trotsky in México, the way the negotiations affected his relationship with both the Fourth International and the Mexican government, and his later distancing from the Russian politician.
The family life of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo is amply documented in telegrams, letters, and
postcards in the Rivera Barrientos, Kahlo Calderón, and Rivera Marín archives. In addition to this
material are communiqués with friends in México and abroad which at the same time concern personal matters, art, and politics. This section is the largest, it includes 333 letters writen solely by friends and overall, it recreates Rivera’s life from 1906 to his death in 1957.
The abundant documentary body referring to different political individuals and groups is especially
important. In addition to revealing the artist’s broad, varied, and controversial militancy, it is an essential source of information on Mexican and foreign groups, such as the pcm, the International Communist (ic), the Fourth International, and the Liga Obrera y Campesina (Workers and Peasants League). The wide range of subject matter and the significance of the documentation will make it possible to advance knowledge in art history, history, and the social sciences in general, to topple myths, clarify doubts, and to open the doors to new fields of study and interpretational approaches, in addition, obviously, to satisfying the curiosity of anyone interested in the life of Diego Rivera.
Photography in the Archives of Frida and Diego
Pablo Ortiz Monasterio
Since she was a child, Frida was close to photography. She used to accompany her father,
Guillermo Kahlo —a well-known photographer of German origins and Hungarian heritage—
she helped him in the darkroom, retouching photographic plates. This valuable archive containing more than five thousand images, which for many years remained dormant alongside drawings, stories, clothing, and medicine, is the product of Frida’s perseverance, for she worked, enjoyed, and cherished these pieces. It clearly reflects the artist’s major interests over the course of her turbulent life: her family, her love for Diego and her other loves, her damaged body, art, politics, and science, all of this wrapped in the great passion she had for México and all things Mexican. Frida treasured old family portraits, both on her maternal and paternal sides of the family and of course, those that Don Guillermo took of her, her mother, sisters and close friends. Self-portraits stand out from this group, which from an early age and throughout her life were the ones taken by Frida’s father.
During the early nineteenth century, the invention of photography democratized access to images. Ordinary people could have their portrait taken and preserve visuals that showed their appearance with surprising fidelity on a paper covered with silver salt emulsion. In 1854 A. Disdéri patented the carte-de-visite, an ingenious system to make eight small portraits on a single plate. This led to the custom of exchanging portraits. Frida and Diego participated in this, by then, old-fashioned practice with pleasure.
They exchanged and collected portraits of their close friends, well known personalities from the world of art and politics, as well as major historical figures whom they admired or disrespected, such as Porfirio Díaz, Zapata, Lenin and Stalin. The first half of the twentieth century was a time of extremes. Revolutions and world wars broke out, while prodigious avant-garde art movements
emerged. In this period, photography played a central role in culture as a communications media and a form of artistic expression. Frida Kahlo knew and was photographed by some of the great creators of that time: Nickolas Muray, Martin Munkácsi, Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Fritz Henle, Gisèle Freund, Edward Weston, Lola Álvarez Bravo, Pierre Verger and a long list of others. The painter’s archives contain works by these and other photographers; the images includ not only portraits made of Frida, but also photos she took herself, such as Munkácsi’s cat, which Frida painted in the famous work Autorretrato con collar de espinas y colibrí {Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and
Hummingbird}, 1940, or the photo that served as a model for the Retrato de Alberto Misrachi {Portrait of Alberto Misrachi}, 1937.
Uncovered Identities: Frida’ s Wardrobe
Marta Turok Wallace
Background: Emblems and Certainties A small wooden closet in Frida’s bathroom —a piece of furniture that also served as her armoire— is another one of the treasures recently discovered in the Casa Azul. Since 2002, the meticulous restoration and cataloguing of the almost three-hundred pieces of clothing, shoes, and accessories recovered there reveal to us the eclectic style forged by Frida; a style full of color, texture, and creativity; an extension of her art and her very being.
Frida’s wardrobe was composed of blouses, huipiles, rebozos and embroidered shawls, different types of skirts, belts, capes, outfits, trousers, slips, bags, stockings, hospital clothing, orthopedic corsets, shoes, boots, and ribbons and yarn ornaments. This list took on life as the classification process advanced and the place of origin of each garment was identified. The corpus has been analyzed from a visual and documentary perspective, tied to the occasions when Frida was
photographed wearing any of these garments, depending on the pieces we can correlate with her self-portraits and according to the testimonies describing her form of dress and the impact it produced.
On the occasion of the centennial of Frida’s birth and as a first step in the dissemination of this emblematic collection, we have selected a representative sample of her attire and accessories, based on a thematic outline exploring the artist’s influences, search, identity, archetypes, ethnicity, creation, and accessories. Influences and Search: Multiple Readings Frida grew up in a world of transitions. Her mother saw the shift from the nineteenth-century use of the asphyxiating corset and crinoline accentuating the waist, to the relaxed garb of the 1920s. An outfit composed of a lace blouse and skirt with hand-sewn sequins —which she surely kept among her mother’s belongings— refer us to her parents wedding photo, Guillermo Kahlo and Matilde Calderón, in February 1898, which served as a source of inspiration for Frida in her painting Mis abuelos, mis padres y yo {My Grandparents, My Parents, and I}, 1936.
Throughout her youth, Frida constantly transformed herself. Her search for identity is reflected in photos in which she appears dressed as a man, as an artist-worker equipped with everything including a cap, jeans and work shirt, in a sort of cocoon metamorphosis among her first
circle of intellectual friends, Los Cachuchas (The Caps), and the political and artistic awakening that would mark her the rest of her life. According to Isabel Campos, Matilde Calderón de Kahlo was a superb seamstress who created Frida’s styles as a girl, styles admired by her classmates who were her partners in crime.1 Soit should come as no surprise that Frida had a taste for silk and cotton cloth, soft to the touch and with an elegant drape, as shown in her many skirts, ruffled bib blouses, and impeccably made capes. When she accompanied Diego to the United States from 1930 to 1933, she was photographed in different contexts wearing a skirt and silk shawl. On other occasions, she wore an elegant velvet cape and a lamé skirt. Although parallel to this, the artist evolved her sense of ethnic expression; during the time she was divorced from Diego (1939-1940), Frida resumed her taste for European fashion, dressing in “chic Manhattan modes . . . twitching her hips along the Manhattan sidewalks in a parody of the confident strut of a Manhattan socialite.”2 At that time, between trips to San Francisco and New York, Frida was fascinated by her visits to Chinatown, where she bought beautifully embroidered silk and velvet garments.
Identity and Ethnicity: To Image and Likeness Frida moved back and forth between her self-portraits and photographs dressed in the fashion of Zapotec women from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec,
converting this style into an archetype of her indigenous identity. However, the myth that Diego encouraged her to assume this attire began to crumble with the discovery, in the treasury of the Casa Azul, of a fascinating photo that opens new lines of research on the origins of her mother Matilde. Several men and women appear in the image, most of them dressed in Western style. However, another small group is dressed in the style of Juchitán and includes two young women: an older woman with a halo-like headdress typical of the zone and a man wearing rough, cotton cloth garb and a kerchief. In her own hand, Frida identified one of the young women as
Matilde, her mother, who in the past had only been identified as the daughter of a Spanish father.
In terms of her ethnicity, it should be made clear that Frida did not limit herself to Zapotec attire. The artist prized brilliant primary and secondary colors, forming contrasts, mingling cosmic diamond patterns, flowers, or birds springing forth from dozens of beautiful huipiles, rebozos, and garments both mestizo and indigenous in origins from diverse Mexican and Guatemalan ethnic groups: Purépecha, Nahua, Ñahñu, Mixtec, Mazatec, Chinantec, Maya, Mam, Kekchí, Cakchiquel and Quiché. These garments were acquired from artisans or through close friends, such as Carlos Mérida, Luis Cardoza y Aragón, Concha Michel, Alfa Pineda de Henestrosa and Lucha Reyes, among others.
The long skirts with a waistband or ruffles or flounces on the lower hem favored the painter, as suggested by the more than forty skirts (wraparounds or with waistbands) found in her collection, but Frida stated it was not merely by choice, but rather she had to use them “now that my sick leg
[the right one] is so ugly.”3
Accessories and Creations: From Head to Toe
Yarn and ribbons in fuchsia, purple, royal blue, or apple green, which Frida used as headdresses are still intact, as if they were waiting for Julien Levy who told us: “The hair preparation was a fantastic liturgy.”4 At times, Frida used them as appliqués on blouses she created with her seamstresses. For this bricolage, she used different types of fabrics from cambayas and pieces of skirts to fine commercial cloth for curtains. We know her shoes in pairs or as singles, ankle boots or boots, the shoes for her right foot with an orthopedic heel. Chinese red leather boots embroidered with gold thread; everything down to the shoelaces and little bells were also found. Arturo García Bustos remembers them for the curious sound they made, announcing her passage as she walked by.5 In another pair of Chinese footwear —some purple silk half boots, what stands out is the left foot, from which hung a small medal that said: “From Pita and Olga for Frida with love.”6
Today, more than ever, we can be certain: the textiles and garb that Frida painted were part of her personal belongings, arising from her striking taste for unique combinations. Formerly reflected largely through black and white images, today her wardrobe is revealed in its maximum splendor.
Frida fully emerges like a butterfly in Las dos Fridas {The Two Fridas} of 1939, magnificently expressing her European-Mexican, indigenous from the Isthmus, multiple identities with which she felt as comfortable as if there were mirrors in her heart. But it is also in the mirror attached to the canopy of her bed, where carefully dressed and coiffed, she portrayed herself again and again.
1 Commented by Martha Zamora in Frida: El pincel de la angustia,
México, author’s edition, 1987, p. 162.
2 Hayden Herrera, Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo, USA, Harper Perennial, 1983, p. 163.
3 Julien Levy, 1938, cited in Herrera, Frida: A Biography..., p. 234.
4 Ibid, p. 235.
5 Arturo García Bustos, personal communication, June 1, 2007. Carleta Tibón in Herrera, Frida: A
Biography..., p. 419.
Huipil mazateco de Oaxaca y saco de origen guatemalteco. 6 This refers to Pita Amor and Olga Costa, friends of Frida.
A Short Biography
Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo Calderón was born on July 6, 1907 in México City. At the age of six, she came down with poliomyelitis (polio). Her shorter, right leg did not prevent her from completing high school at the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria. When she was eighteen, she was in a serious accident in which a trolley car crashed into the bus she was riding. Frida injured her dorsal spine. Due to the forced immobility during the first months of her recovery, she began to paint. This is when she met Diego Rivera, whom she married in 1929. Diego’s infidelities led to their divorce in 1939, but a year later, Frida and the muralist were remarried. As a faithful leftist activist, Frida was a member of the Partido Comunista Mexicano. She was also a teacher in the national painting and sculpture school known as the Escuela Nacional de Pintura y Escultura La Esmeralda, where she formed a group of young painters known as Los Fridos. The artist
The Casa Azul, a World between Walls
Frida Kahlo was born, lived and died at Casa Azul. Built in 1904 by the artist’sfather, the house was later modified by Frida and Diego on two occasions. The first in 1937, when Diego bought the adjoining lot to give Leon Trotsky asylum, and the second in 1947, when Rivera built a studio for Frida. In 1955, a year after the artist’s death, Diego Rivera donated Casa Azul to be turned into the Frida Kahlo Museum, which opened its doors to the public on July 12, 1958. The museum is preserved and operates thanks to the generosity of a great patron: Dolores Olmedo Patiño. Today, Casa Azul has become one of the most visited museums in the country, not only because
it reveals the intimate world projected by Frida and Diego, but because in here, every corner, every object —traditional attires, toys, folk art— is present in the work of this unique artist.
Texts: Virginia Hernández Reta
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