Research Paper On Frida Kahlo Y Calderon

Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderon, aka Frida Kahlo, was born on July 6, 1907 in Coyoacan, Mexico, and third daughter of Guillermo and Matilde Kahlo-Calderon. She is considered to be Mexico’s greatest artists; once she began painting after she was severely injured in a bus accident; she mostly painted surrealist portraits. She later became a political activist in communist regime and followed communist artist Diego Rivera in 1929, and whom she married twice. Before her death, her paintings were shown in Paris and Mexico.

Her father, Guillermo Kahlo, born Carl Wilhelm Kahlo in Pforzheim, Germany coming from a long line of German Lutherans. In 1891, Wilhelm sailed to Mexico and changed his surname Wilhelm to its Spanish resemblance,
‘Guillermo.’ During the Nazi regime in the 1930s, Frida spelled her name to Frieda to assert her German heritage.

Her mother, Matilde Calderon y González, was devoted Catholic of indigenous and Spanish descents. She and Guillermo embarked in long years of unhappy marriage, though they had four daughters together.

Around the age of 6, Kahlo contracted polio, which caused her to bedridden for six months.
During her recovery, she would limp while she walked- the disease damaged her right leg and foot.

In 1922, she was enrolled at the National Preparatory School. She was one of the few female that were given the opportunity to attend the well renown school. Kahlo left the memories of her colorful clothes, love of her tradition, and cheerful spirit. During the same year, she met famed muralist Diego Rivera. He went to her school to work on a project of his. Kahlo was incredibly smittened by the muralist. According to reports, she told friends that she was going to carry Rivera’s baby someday.

While attending school, she surrounded herself with people that shared her political intellect and even became involved with one of them, Alejandro Gomez Arias. On September 17, 1925, Kahlo and Gomez were on a bus together traveling when the bus collided with a streetcar. As a result of the accident, a steel handrail went through her hips and out the other side causing her to suffer several serious injuries which include fractures in her spine and
pelvis.

After staying at the Red Cross Hospital in Mexico city for weeks, she returned home to recover even more. At home was where she began painting her first self-portrait, which she gave to Arias. During recovery, Kahlo became even more political and joined the Young Communist League and the Mexican Communist Party.

In 1928, Kahlo and Rivera reconnected.
He truly believed in her work thus he encouraged her to paint more, and they began a relationship. The following year, they got married. The couple's’ marriage was very rocky: infidelity and miscarriage. Both were known for having numerous affairs and openly bisexual Khalo dated both men and women. The two knew of the other’s affair, Rivera was OK with Khalo being with women, but her affairs with men angered him. After the affair Rivera had with Cristina, Kahlo’s sister, she cut off her long black hair. The two divorced but reunited in 1940 and remarried. She desperately wanted to have a kid, but sadly, she had a miscarriage in 1928. Through periods of rocky marriages and separation, the two came together to house Soviet communist Leon and Natalia Trotsky in 1937 at the Blue House (present day Frida Kahlo museum. Trotsky and Kahlo had a brief affair during this
time.

On July 13, 1954, Frida Kahlo died. Some claim that her cause of death was suicide, but the official reports say that it was due to pulmonary embolism (an autopsy was never performed to confirm the speculations). Before her death, she was incredibly ill: right leg amputated to the knee due to gangrene, and bronchopneumonia that left her frail. There is a museum in remembrance of her existence and artwork at her former home, La Casa Azul (the Blue House) in Coyoacan, and a pre-Columbian urn holds her ashes.