"I'm not calm; I am fire, I am living, I am color. I am essence, I am pleasure, I am rebellion. I am instinct, I am skin, I am revolution. I can be anything but calm." -Frida Kahlo
Frida Kahlo is one of the most prominent Mexican artists today, and is arguably one of the most recognizable faces in the art world. Born Magdalena Carmen Frieda Kahlo y Calderón, her art was largely unrecognized throughout her lifetime, and for many years, she was mostly known for her marriage to Mexican artist Diego Rivera. In recent years, however, her art has seen a huge surge in popularity. People have become captivated with this woman's image, with her face adorning everything from socks to phone cases. But how much do people really know about Kahlo besides her infamous unibrow?
When people see Frida Kahlo's self-portraits, they tend to see it at face value. They try to look past her thick facial hair (which she loved and purposefully exaggerated) to see a somewhat attractive young woman. But her art was never about her own appearance, it was about the story behind it. Kahlo used a paintbrush to tell stories able to portray profound poignance and depth, drawing her inspiration from the pain in her heart. And Kahlo had no shortage of pain. Throughout her life, she experienced miscarriages, life-altering diseases leaving her often bed-ridden and a tumultuous relationship with husband Diego Rivera. Kahlo teaches us that even the most devastating tragedies can be turned into something beautiful.
Her reputation as a painter, however, tends to overshadow her revolutionary ideals. Frida Kahlo was an openly bisexual woman, and it has even been rumored that she would have affairs with many of the women with whom Rivera had affairs. She frequently challenged the gender ideals set by the West, often dressing in men's clothing and participating in "masculine" activities, such as boxing and smoking. Additionally, given that she grew up during the Mexican Revolution, it is no surprise that Kahlo was an active revolutionary. She was a devoted communist, and she and Rivera befriended Leon Trotsky when he was exiled to México from the Stalinist Soviet Union. In 1954, Kahlo contracted pneumonia and was ordered by her doctor to remain in bed; however, she disobeyed and traveled to Guatemala to protest U.S. intervention instead.
Frida Kahlo was a woman that did not fit into the molds of what she "should" be by any means. And she never cared. She was unapologetically individualistic, a revolutionary, a woman so in love with her country that she fudged her own birthdate to coincide with the start of its revolution. Kahlo was a genuine radical leftist even by modern standards, and to not look past her appearance is to not truly understand the amazing woman behind it. Reducing her to a kinda-pretty brown woman on an Urban Outfitters t-shirt is not just distasteful. It is an abomination of such a multidimensional woman and all of the values she stood for.
