Kahlo often said her life consisted of three accidents: the bus accident in her youth, meeting Diego Rivera and losing a child.
Having just read Judy Chicago’s remarkable new book on Frida Kahlo’s paintings, I dove into Frida’s letters (compiled by Martha Zamora) – Cartas Appasionadas. How could one not weep for most of one’s life? “The only good thing is that I’m starting to get used to suffering.” This in a letter at eighteen – three months after the bus accident, the monstrous wounds and breaks, and still in the hospital, where she would return again and again. We think we know pain – and pain creeps into unique forms we cannot imagine….she knew pain as a foreboding shroud she inhabited as a young girl, filled and concealed for the rest of her life to express only in her letters briefly, and in the metaphors of painting.
Frida had the gifts of a poet: this quote from a letter to Alejandro Gomez Arias – “…I was a girl walking in a world of colors, of clear and tangible shapes. Everything was mysterious and something was hiding: guessing its nature was a game for me. If you knew how terrible it is to attain knowledge all of a sudden – like lightning elucidating the earth! Now I live on a painful planet, transparent as ice. It’s as if I learned everything at the same time in a matter of seconds. … I grew old in an instant and now everything is dull and flat. I know there is nothing behind; if there is something I would see it.”
Found it! I think you are too modest about the Frida Kahlo blog. This is cool.
Yours for Truth and Beauty,
E
Interesting – I want to hear more! And to see what Kahlo painting you would post if you could only post one.
Dear Perdita: Thanks for reading! Judy Chicago’s book offers most of her paintings and I would have a hard time picking one. When I think of it the first one that comes in to my head vividly is “The Broken Column.” And there are so many others that are powerful.
I’m now reading the Kahlo biography, Frida by Hayden Herrera-awesome!