Name: Bedtime Biography: Frida
Rating: 4.5 (50 reviews)
Author: Hayden Herrera

Introduction

Bedtime Biographies are best when listened to. Check out the audio version to get the full experience!

Even if you don’t know Frida Kahlo’s name, you’ve surely seen her face. This Mexican artist’s striking and surreal self-portraits have become cultural touchstones, gracing everything from coffee mugs to tote bags. But there’s so much more to Kahlo than her iconic visage.

Her extraordinary life story is filled with both passion and tragedy. A testament to her strength and resolve, Frida Kahlo drew on her vibrant imagination and unique flare for haunting imagery, and produced some of the most stunning artworks of the early twentieth century.

So settle in as we explore the artist's fantastical life and immense impact she had on the culture and politics of the world around her.

Chapter 1

Frida Kahlo’s story begins in a small, unassuming stucco home in Coyoacán, a neighborhood in Mexico City. While official records state that Kahlo was born in 1907, the artist herself always dated her birth to 1910, the year of the Mexican Revolution. Such was her flair for dramatic self-mythologizing.

Kahlo’s parents were Guillermo Kahlo, a successful architectural photographer of German-Jewish heritage, and Matilde Calderón, a Mexican woman from the southern region of Oaxaca. Both her parents had strong, austere personalities, and their distinct cultural backgrounds would later influence Kahlo’s work.

Chapter 2

By 1928, Kahlo’s love of painting had brought her in contact with a new social circle. She fell in with a crowd of politically oriented bohemians and artists and, with their encouragement, eventually joined the local Communist party. It was through this network of friends that she once again crossed paths with Diego Rivera. Now in his forties, Rivera was the most famous artist in Mexico. His grand murals were celebrated for their monumental scope, revolutionary imagery, and distinctly Mexican style. For Rivera, art was a way to cast aside bourgeois individualism and galvanize social change.

Despite being famously ugly, Rivera was constantly – and successfully – wooing the women he encountered. Yet Kahlo captured his focus like no one before. He was impressed by her strong personality, dark humor, and, most of all, her idealist approach to the world of art and politics. The two quickly began dating. Shortly after meeting, he even painted her into one of his murals as a bold Communist leader. For her part, Kahlo was continuing to refine her visual language. Paintings from this period display a refined technical ability and a sharper, more pointed use of bright colors.

Chapter 3

While Kahlo’s fame was ascendant in Europe and America, her marriage to Rivera was on its last legs. In 1939, the couple finally decided to divorce.

Still, the two artists remained friends and were often seen together in public. The separation was obviously bittersweet for Kahlo. On the day the divorce was finalized, she finished what would become her best-known work, The Two Fridas. In it, two images of the artist sit side by side, holding hands, each with their literal hearts exposed through open chests. In one Frida, the heart is damaged and destroyed; in the other, it remains healthy and intact. The duality evokes not only the artist’s mixed feelings about divorce, but also her complicated relationship with her blended heritage, her role as a woman, and the disconnect between her real and imagined self.

Worum geht es in Bedtime Biography: Frida?

Narrated by Alex Vincent

Frida (1983) tells the story of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. You've seen her striking art on tote bags and t-shirts, but how many of you know of her extraordinary life. Frida explains how Kahlo's upbringing and political awakenings underpinned her art. It also shines a light on her relationship with muralist and fellow political activist, Diego Rivera.