Frida Kahlo information,
Frida Kahlo Calderon, full name (Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo Calderon), 6 July 1907 / 13 July 1954, Mexican painter who became a popular culture icon of the 20th century.
Beyond his painting, he is known for his volatile private life and political views. Although her painting was defined as surrealist, Frida Kahlo rejected this definition and she is the wife of Painter Diego Rivera.
On September 17, 1925, when the bus she was in collided with the tram while returning home from school, many people died in the accident, and one of the metal bars of the tram entered Frida Kahlo’s left hip, causing serious injury.
Kahlo, who spent her whole life in corsets, hospitals and doctors after the accident, had to undergo 32 surgeries, living with constant pain in her spine and right leg, and her right leg, which was disabled due to polio, was amputated in 1954 due to gangrene.
A month after her accident, Kahlo started painting to escape the pain and distress she was experiencing with the encouragement of her family from the hospital. She made self-portraits looking in the mirro
r on the ceiling of her bed. His first self-portrait was “Self-Portrait in Velvet Dress”.
Kahlo, who had difficulty walking for a long time, started walking at the end of 1927 and started to get closer to the art and politics circles during this period.
They met photographer Tina Modotti and Cuban leader Julio Antonio Mella and became very close friends. Together, they began to participate in the debates of the socialists by attending the invitations of famous artists of the time, and Magdalena Carmen applied to the Mexican Communist Party in 1929 and became a member of the party.
This work, which was exhibited at the annual exhibition of the San Francisco Women’s Artists Society, was her first painting to be included in an exhibition. Frida Kahlo, whose health deteriorated for a while, turned to painting with all her attention and strength to cope with the unbearable pain she suffered.
Kahlo opened exhibitions not only in her country, but also in America and France. Particularly, the exhibition he opened in New York in 1938 brought him great fame, and he received much praise with the Paris exhibition in 1939.
Kahlo, who started teaching at a newly opened art school called La Esmeralda in 1943, continued to teach for 10 years despite her poor health. Frida, who could not go to Mexico City due to health problems, was giving her lessons in her own home.
Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo Calderon died on July 13, 1954 with the diagnosis of pulmonary embolism; The last painting Kahlo Frida left behind was a still life called Long Live Life. The next day, his body is cremated and his ashes are kept in the Blue House. The Blue House, where the ashes were found, was donated to the state by Rivera in 1955.
There are 143 paintings of Magdalena Carmen and 55 of them are self-portraits. The painter, who had to spend most of his life looking at a mirror that stood on his head in bed and which he described as “the executioner of his days and nights”, drew self-portraits all the time. The mastery of his works made even Pablo Picasso say, “We don’t know how to draw human faces like him.”
