“Feet, what do I need them for if I have wings to fly.”
― Frida Kahlo
What people say around there is that there are times in life that are difficult for everyone, but that are necessary to grow and improve as people. These are moments that, because they are difficult, have a lot to show and teach and in the long-term people are grateful to have lived them. Once upon a time, in a Mexico’s city named Coyoacan, a girl was born who was named by her parents Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo Calderon. “Feet, what do I need them for if I have wings to fly”, Kahlo said. It is a of her famous phrase written a year before of her death (1954). It means that although a person sometimes does not have the basics to achieve his/her goals, s/he will always have immense potential within him/her to exploit. Frida Kahlo’s life was marked by many illnesses and tragedies but those events did not stop her to become a great painter. She was a living example of how some difficult circumstances change anyone’s life and make them to become somebody better.
At the age of eighteen, one of her misfortunes occurred. She had an accident; the bus where she was going from school crashed with a streetcar. Several people died, and she suffered serious damages: an iron handrail impaled her through her pelvis fracturing the bone. She also fractured several ribs, legs, and collarbone. Many, including doctors, thought she wouldn’t make it. She proved wrong after surviving various surgeries. While she was recovering at the hospital is when she discovers her love for painting and taught herself to paint by studying Italian Renaissance. She began painting portraits of family members and still life from her bed. Therefore, a fatal accident made Frida Kahlo to become the great artist that she was.
Four years after of her accident, she got married to Diego Rivera, a famous Mexican muralist too, and she really wanted to have babies but after her accident, it was very difficult to occur. During a time that she lived in The United States (3 years), she had a miscarriage. It was a painful situation. People who knew her said that it affected the most deed of her sensibility and inspired two of her most valued works: “Henry Ford Hospital” y “Frida y el aborto” (“Frida and Abortion”). In Addition, she had two more abortions. Those abortions made her work more to be able to be a better artist. “Painting has filled my life. I have lost three children and another series of things that could have filled my horrible life. Painting has replaced everything. I think there’s nothing better than work.” She said, in an occasion.
“Las Dos Fridas” (The Two Fridas) is the most popular work of Frida Kahlo. “Las Dos Fridas” are identical twins seated figures holding hands and sharing a bench in front of a stormy sky. It was inspired after a new circumstance, her divorce with Diego Rivera (1939). She really loved Rivera so after her divorce, the physical and emotional pain led her to drink alcohol in excess and felt in addition to alcohol. But this did not stop her, as it has been said this event was the muse for her to paint this work. She said: “They thought I was a Surrealist, but I wasn’t. I never painted dreams. I painted my reality,” said Frida Kahlo describing her art work.
From the beginning Kahlo did not intend to become an artist. She was attending school at The Preparatoria (Preparatory) to become a famous doctor but all those situations made her more strong and able to express her life through the paints and how she said “Feet, what do I need them for if I have wings to fly”.
Written by Yasony De Los Santos
