Frida Kahlo: Making Her Self Up at the V&A

"There is art that is so highly personal in nature that it becomes universal."
Carlos Philips Olmedo, Director-General, Museums Dolores Olmedo, Frida Kahlo y Diego Rivera Anahuacalli

Iconic, enigmatic, compelling... Frida Kahlo was one of the most fascinating artists, and indeed, people, who ever existed. One of the original wonder | wander | women!

Image by Nickolas Muray, courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum

In her lifetime, even when she was endlessly photographed and her art displayed in New York and San Francisco galleries, she was still known as 'Mrs. Diego Rivera'. But now she's known in her own right as one of the icons of modern art, alongside Georgia O'Keeffe, Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali.

Frida Kahlo, Self-Portrait with Monkeys (1943)
Courtesy of AnOtherMag

After her death, her husband Diego Rivera ordered all of Frida's possessions locked up in their Mexico house of Casa Azul for 50 years. In 2004 this treasure trove was finally unlocked and the objects restored for exhibition in Casa Azul, which is now the Museo Frida Kahlo.

Casa Azul/Museo Frida Kahlo, courtesy tripsavvy.com

Now the Museo's director Hilda Trujillo has collaborated with curator Claire Wilcox of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London to produce the exhibition Frida Kahlo: Making Her Self Up. The Bank of Mexico and the Director General of the Museums Dolores Olmedo, Frida Kahlo y Diego Rivera Anahuacalli worked with the V&A to bring Frida's buried artefacts to London.

Courtesy of the V&A

The Casa Azul is a building that 'constitutes a living spring of passionate experiences', according to the museum director Hilda Trujillo. You could say the same of Frida herself. Most admirers of her art also know the bitter story of her health: not only did she contract polio at 6, leaving her with a bad leg she was very conscious of, but a horrible accident in her teens left her with severe internal injuries and a lifetime of pain.

Frida Kahlo, Memory, or The Heart (1937)
Courtesy of fridakahlo.org

She had to wear a battery of medical paraphernalia: plaster and leather corsets, spine braces, a prosthetic leg and orthopaedic shoes. These were found among her effects, along with many bottles of rubbing alcohol, painkillers and medicines she had to take throughout her life. Even these did not conquer her: she decorated several of her plaster braces, turning them from a whole-body shackle into something more like a breastplate and often displaying them to friends.

Courtesy of the V&A

Over these she began to layer the vibrant traditional look the world would know her by: hand-stitched flounces, overskirts and tunics, pre-Columbian jade and stone beads and various bespoke jewellery.

One of her devoted lovers and photographers Julian Levy described the ritual Frida had of braiding and rebraiding her hair with yarn, flowers and precious objects. She was known and admired around the US for her distinctive dark hair, her famous monobrow, and red lips and nails. Frida built a persona around her pain-wracked body like armour: La Mexicana, a bewitching creature of colour and dazzle with a magnetic gaze, bedecked in the fabrics and jewels that enriched her home country.

Image by Nickolas Muray, courtesy of the
Victoria and Albert Museum

The idea of constructing an identity has seldom been taken as literally as Frida took it. Frida's illness, pain and disability was inextricable from her art and her self. But she never let it keep her from creating, from living a full and riotous life, from anything or anyone she loved. If she was bedridden, she could still paint and see friends. If she was up, she was painting, or working in her beloved garden with her pets, or helping her husband with his murals even to the point of climbing around the scaffolding with him.

Images by Gisele Freund, courtesy of the V&A

Some people with disabilities are not so lucky as to be able to afford the treatments and surroundings that Frida had. But she also proved that a disability, however large a part of our life it may be, is only one part of our self-created identity. Our pain is not all that we are or can be. Our hearts and bodies, even broken, are strong enough to love, and even to inspire.

Image courtesy of Nickolas Muray Archives