Source: WTL research files.
Painting: "Frieda [sic; her father's German spelling of her name, which she later chose to make more Spanish by dropping the 'e'] y Diego Rivera" by Frida Kahlo (1931).
Comments: In 1913, Frida Kahlo contracted polio, the permanent result of which was that her right foot was deformed. In 1922 she went to the national prep school to become a medical doctor. At the school she watched Rivera paint the mural called "La creación" (Creation; see: <= Diego Rivera #6). In 1925, she suffered a terrible accident between a bus she was riding in and a train (tram or trolley). She spent a month in the hospital. In 1928, she joined the Mexican Communist Party, where she again met Rivera, and they fell in love. They married in 1929. In the same year they both leave the Communist Party. In 1930, she suffers her first abortion. In 1931, her pain becomes severe, and her right leg becomes even more deformed. In San Francisco, she meets the doctor who will treat her for the rest of her life, Dr. Eloesser.
Humanities question: What are the main characteristics that Kahlo chooses to depict herself and her husband?
Photographs of Frida and Diego: Both artists, each in their own way, and the two of them together, first married, then divorced, then married again. Both were celebrities of the first magnitude in both Mexico and throughout the world. Rivera was photographed as much as Kahlo was and they together were also the object of many photographers of all kinds and degrees of photographic talent. As with the small sampling of of photographs focusing on Frida, it is equally worth viewing a few more of the photographs of the pair. See the series starting with: => Frida and Diego #7a.