ღღღAHSTimes--Issue 4ღღღ

Frida and her life barriers and how she became an artist.



"I suffered two grave accidents in my life...One in which a streetcar knockd me down and the other was Diego."



At the age of 18, Frida was seriously injured in a bus accident.She was on her way home with Aljandro,when they were hit by a large tram. "The arms of theseat went through me like a sword into a bull." said Frida when she recalled the accident.Frida spent over a year in bed recovering from fractures to her spine, collarboneand the ribs,a shattered pelvis, shoulder and foot injuries. Frida also endured more than 30 operations in her lifetime, and during her convalescence. From that time, her obsession was to begin again, "painting things just as I saw them with my own eyes and nothing more to combat the boredom and pain.I felt I still had enough energy to do something other than studying to become a doctor. Without giving it any particular thought, I started painting." Thus, as the accident changed her path, many things prevented her from fulfilling her desires which everyone considers normal than to paint what had not been fulfilled.



At 22,she married Diego,20 years her senior.Their stormy, passionate,relationship survived infidelities, the pressures of careers, divorce, remarriage,lesbian affairs,poor health,and inability to have children.She felt insgnificant to Diego and was deeply betrayed by him having an affair with her sister and was in sorrow's trench then.She cut her hair short and dressed like a boy then but wore Tehuana costumes when she went to see him.Frida loved Diego extremely.Her great spiritual attack caused her to feel even more alone and confined herself very often, painting self-portraits that were usually one-eyebrowed, long necked, full lipped.


However after they divorced, Diego repented and fell for Frida again after spending longer time with each other and felt that they could nt live without each other.They remarried.She at times lived in two different worlds and was torn between her love for Diego and the love for her native Mexico.

Frida was unable to give birth and had three miscarriages. She was so upset that she painted many pictures of her birth and her mother's death, "Frida's family" and was filled with fetuses and birth processes.Frida was left childless and often turned to her pets and dolls for comfort during times of despair and loneliness. She smoked, she drank, at parties she often used foul language to shock her friends and was not above "stretching" the truth to embellish the stories she told.

There are two 1954 paintings that bear witness to the devastating affect the drugs had on her paintings. It is difficult to look at those blurred smeared blotches of paint on canvas knowing that she was once a master of detail. One look at those paintings and it was obvious that she was being robbed of her talent. One can only imagine the emotional pain and frustration Frida must have felt when she too looked at these paintings. It was not uncommon for Frida to destroy a painting that she didn't like. She may have wanted to destroy these two crudely executed paintings but they were both probably spared because they were politically related.

(next issue --exclusive Frida art pictures and other info from other websites)