HOW SAN FRANCISCO IGNITED THE RIGHT STUFF IN FRIDA KAHLO

 

Time Flies by Frida Kahlo

THE EVOLUTION OF FRIDA

Though much has been written about Frida Kahlo, one of the most celebrated women artists of our time, little is mentioned of her travels in the United States and specifically San Francisco in the 1930s, a period that shaped her voice as an artist. Her year in San Francisco also made a lasting impact on the city's local art scene.

Frida in America*—The Creative Awakening of a Great Artist, by Celia Stahr, documents her time in Gringolandia, as Kahlo nicknamed her neighbor to the north. According to Stahr, no other author has explored her body of work while living in the States in depth and there hasn't been a major Kahlo biography since Hayden Herrera's in 1983. However, Suzanne Barbezat's 2016, Frida Kahlo At Home, does an excellent job portraying key aspects of the artist's life and works with many visuals. 

BY TRAIN TO SAN FRANCISCO

Shortly after her marriage in 1929 to Diego Rivera, known for both his art and politics, they traveled from Mexico City to San Francisco. Rivera had been commissioned to paint a mural at the Pacific Stock Exchange, now the City Club. This would be Frida's first trip outside Mexico. After a stop to see friends and art dealers in Los Angeles, they headed to San Francisco by train. 

The tracks followed the Pacific, and sitting in the train car she sketched a picture of San Francisco which she had dubbed long before seeing it, "the city of the world." This drawing, now lost, included a city scene with rectangular skyscrapers and the ocean along with a self-portrait.

Ralph Stackpole, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, San Francisco 1930

At 23, more than 20 years younger than her world famous husband, she was a novice painter while Rivera was at the height of his creative powers. When they stepped off the train, Rivera recalled he was "almost frightened to realize her imagined city was the very one we were now seeing for the first time."

FAMILY TIES

Born to Guillermo Kahlo, her German father, and Oaxacan/Tehuantepec mother, Matilde Calderón, Frida had long planned to go to medical school and studied at the Prepa in Mexico City. Her university plans changed abruptly in September 1925 while riding a city bus that was hit full speed by a trolley on her way home from a shopping trip. In the accident, a metal pole impaled her pelvis, leaving her spinal column broken in three places along with a broken collarbone, pelvis and some ribs. She was in the hospital in a full plaster body cast for a month, but returned home six weeks later. 

Frida's parents Guillermo and Matilde

Though told she would never walk again, with fixed determination, she began to walk haltingly in three months. No doubt part of her rapid recovery after the excruciating accident was due to the strength training she received with her father's help after contracting polio at age six. Guillermo trained her to be a strong athlete which provided her the freedom that usually only came to males in that era.

THE ACCIDENT'S EFFECTS

Kahlo's horrifying accident irreversibly changed the course of her life—from a former student studying medicine to a budding player in the creative world of art. After the interruption of her medical studies, her drawing and painting took on greater significance as her physical movements were curtailed. 

Before the accident, Frida always accompanied her father, a professional photographer, on his photo shoots. He suffered from epilepsy and Frida's presence was a safeguard for both her father and his equipment should a seizure occur while he was working. It created a very close father-daughter bond. While her father tested out various settings, she would often serve as a model and learned to pose at an early age which served her well in the future as she gained fame.

Bus accident, Frida Kahlo, pencil on paper

Because of her physical limitations from the accident, she could no longer assist her father. Her mother realized the girl needed a creative outlet and hired a carpenter to create a lap easel. Matilde also suggested placing a mirror atop the bed's canopy for self-portraits. Soon after, Frida began applying pigment to small canvases and began drawing what she knew best—her friends and family. One of her early influences was the art of Leonardo Da Vinci and she tried using his techniques and symbolism in her paintings and iconic retablos.

COMRADE FRIDA

After the accident she was introduced to the Communist party through a friend, Tina Modotti, an Italian American photographer and political activist who'd lived in Mexico since 1923. Through Tina's influence, Kahlo committed herself to communism after extensive reading about the Russian Revolution. In Tina's group, she was re-introduced to muralist Diego Rivera. She'd previously met him while he was painting a mural at the Ministry of Education where she goaded him to come off his scaffold and look at one of her paintings. He was duly impressed and later said her painting revealed "an unusual energy of expression and precise delineation of character."

Mexican Folkways, 1929

By 1928 they began seeing each other after his divorce from second wife, Lupe Marín. Though he was a notorious womanizer, something about Frida kept him coming back. It could have been her blunt honesty or her raw talent as an untrained artist, Stahr writes. Along with that, her unconventional beauty was combined with a quick mind and sharp wit. Their interest in both art and politics ignited the relationship, plus they were attracted to the importance of creativity, black humor, and a passion for social justice.

MEXICANIDAD 

They'd see each other at Tina's meetings and Rivera would take her home. There they'd discuss painting and its importance to a new post-revolutionary indigenist movement, Mexicanidad, which was often a topic in Tina's magazine, Mexican Folkways, where Rivera served as art director. Mexican Folkways' articles discussed excavations of Aztec sites, regional crafts and music traditions, children's art, and photos of diverse people and regions in Mexico.

In 1929, as her relationship with Rivera evolved, she joined the Communist Youth League. It was at this time she went into her full gender-neutral fashion look, wearing overalls or work outfits, no dresses, completed by a little black iron and sickle pin she wore on her collar.

A NEW LOOK

But when they married late that summer, Frida stepped out with a new look. Her wedding ensemble was a long ruffled skirt, white peasant blouse, and rebozo shawl, considered to be simple street clothes. To Frida, this outfit aligned her with working class indigenous women, indicating she was part Indian, thanks to her mother's family roots. Soon after, she began wearing a prominent jadeite necklace engraved with an Aztec symbol, the olin, found on the carved Aztec Calendar Stone. The carved glyph represented movement or the movement required to shift from one world into another, said Stahr. 

Frida Kahlo

METAPHYSICS AND SYMBOLISM

Kahlo was a student of metaphysics and revered alchemy, the transformation of matter. She was well aware of symbolism and how it could stir the masses. Her peasant blouse emphasized her leftist leanings as a woman of the people as well as her purity as a young bride. She identified as a mestiza who was proud of her country's revolutionary ideals. 

In her marriage dress and in her first portrait painted as a married woman, Self Portrait, Time Flies, she laid out an intricate mythic framework of her desired alchemical union with Rivera, author Stahr stated. Rivera came to mysticism through his father, a Freemason and Rosicrucian. Kahlo came to it through her studies in all schools of philosophy at Prepa and through books friends shared with her. Metaphysics was at its height worldwide in the 1920s and 30s and the inquiring mind of an intelligent teen was like a sponge in water. Frida soaked it up and went on to use many symbolic principles in her paintings and retablos.

In San Francisco, from the moment they stepped off the train, she literally stopped traffic. Her ensemble had locals halting mid-street to stare at her in her huaraches under a long peasant skirt, green striped shawl, and dangling earrings as they made their way to Montgomery Street, part of the old Barbary Coast where the artists' co-op they'd live in was located. "Even in this bohemian section of San Francisco," remarked photographer and friend Edward Weston, "the sight of this unknown Mexican woman created excitement."

LA INDIA BONITA

Weston's photos of Frida during her San Francisco stay along with those of Imogen Cunningham would come to be known as the best taken of her in that period. Weston captured her physical strength in strong arm and back muscles, along with her political strength as an indigenous woman. His photos helped establish this important symbol of her identity. She proudly wore her rebozo which conveyed allegiance to indigenous women throughout Mexico. His photos showed a striking, thoughtful, indigenous woman.

Frida Kahlo by Edward Weston, 1930

"Frida was creating a new persona of the indigenous Mexican woman by combining the traits of beauty and intelligence," Stahr wrote.

Some of Kahlo's caricature can be attributed to a beauty pageant that took place in Mexico when she was 15. A newspaper sponsored a beauty pageant for indigenous women called La India Bonita. Publisher Felix Palavicini, a former revolutionary, wanted to validate Indian female beauty and the pageant was the thing. A young Nahuatl-speaking 14-year old woman from Sierra Norte de Puebla won, becoming the new face for Mexican indigenous women. This inspired Kahlo. 

In San Francisco she solidified her "La India Bonita" persona and brought together indigenous pride with a modern twist. Her long peasant skirts also served another purpose: they covered up her right leg and injured foot.

Diego's studio was on the top floor of the co-op where he worked daily on sketches for his new mural. With Diego absent, Frida painted "quite a lot, almost all day long," she wrote her mother. She wanted to have an exhibition in San Francisco and worked hard to create enough paintings for one. From the beginning of their relationship, said Stahr, they related to each other as painters and things didn't change in San Francisco.

WOMEN ARTISTS

Rivera and Kahlo hung out with artists, rubbing shoulders with prominent writers and photographers. Kahlo met and bonded with Dorothea Lange shortly before her Depression era photographic journey through America. Meeting women artists was an additional benefit to Kahlo on their west coast sojourn. These friendships became a great source of strength. She made art weekly with two women from the co-op where they painted wildly inappropriate things, swore, smoked, and laughed. 

For Kahlo, this was a time of creative freedom allowing her to delve into taboo topics, helping her to find her own voice. San Francisco's MOMA stated "Her style moved from a broad, mural-like handling to a folkloric mode based on 19th century Mexican portraiture."

In that era, women had to take advantage of any opportunity that came their way. Soon Frida's experimentation would pay off. Though women were banned from the Bohemian Club where male artists gathered, they formed the San Francisco Society of Women Artists with organized exhibits at the Legion of Honor. Though not a member, Frida benefited. Her American art debut took place at one of the society's annual exhibitions and in it, she displayed her marriage portrait.

A PHYSICIAN WITH HEART

During their time in the city which included long meandering walks, late nights, and hours of painting, her leg began to ache more and more. At this time she met Dr. Leo Eloesser, who from day one would become a stabilizing force in her life. He gave her thorough examinations and recommendations that proved beneficial to her physical and mental well being. The doctor clicked not only with Kahlo but with Rivera as well and their friendship was lifelong. Frida said he had the heart of a musician, which he was. With a medical practice by day, he played viola at night. He also spoke fluent Spanish making communication easy. 

Frida's most profound experiences on the west coast would occur north of the city. When neighbor and sculptor Ralph Stackpole and his girlfriend Ginette whisked the two away to Bohemian Grove in Monte Rio, 70 miles north, she was in awe. Though off limits to women, Stackpole would have been able to get Frida in as a guest. She wrote her mother that she felt reverence when she stepped onto the grounds, in the presence of thousand year old sequoia redwoods.

LUTHER BURBANK'S INFLUENCE

Shortly after that adventure, Stackpole and Ginette took them to Luther Burbank's house in Santa Rosa. Though the horticulturist had been dead four years, his widow Elizabeth discussed at length her husband's legacy. Burbank had created more than eight hundred varieties of hybrid fruits; he had been inspired by Charles Darwin, writing, "Nature selected by a law the survival of the fittest...the fitness of the plant to stand up under a new or changed environment."

Luther Burbank by Frida Kahlo

They walked his gardens to feel his presence. The grounds were "magical," Frida said. Already an avid admirer of alchemy, "Luther must have seemed an alchemist, transforming existing varieties of plants into new ones," wrote Stahr. Back in her studio, Kahlo's mind went to work painting Burbank. Her 1931 Portrait of Luther Burbank shows him partly as soil and partly human, a major departure from any of her paintings up to that time. Many art scholars consider this work to be her creative breakthrough.

PERFECT STORM

Scholars also say that by living in a foreign country as she was beginning to define her artistic path, she was being exposed to a kaleidoscope of new sights, experiences, artists, and ideas. Her encounters at the Bohemian Grove's ancient redwoods and viewing Luther Burbank's gardens had a profound affect on her, along with the weekly creative experimentations she enjoyed with her women artist friends. 

Though her art drew upon a vast body of knowledge rooted in her Mexican upbringing, she synthesized it with new experiences she'd gained in California. It was the perfect storm for a creative-inventive-intuitive like Kahlo. Not only did San Francisco have the right stuff, but so did Frida Kahlo. 

Part 3 of Frida in America explores the next step in their U.S. journey as she and Rivera head to New York and Detroit. Stay tuned.

*Frida lived in Mexico which is North America. The author Stahr's Frida in America refers to the United States of America.

If you enjoyed this post, check out  Where the Sky is Born: Living in the Land of the Maya, on Amazon. My website is www.jeaninekitchel.com. Books one and two in my Mexico cartel trilogy, Wheels Up—A Novel of Drugs, Cartels and Survival, and Tulum Takedown, are also on Amazon. And my journalistic overview of the Maya 2012 calendar phenomenon, Maya 2012 Revealed: Demystifying the Prophecy, is on Amazon.

HOW DID FRIDA KAHLO BECOME AN ICON?

 

Frida with the Monkey

My introduction to Frida came through an arts lecture given by a Kahlo authority whose name I can’t recall. I was writing for an indie paper in a California college town and that was my feature assignment for the week. The lecture included a slide show of Kahlo’s works. I was intrigued, mesmerized—at times startled—by her art. I loved the colors, her style, the woman (Frida) as center of the universe. 

Two words described her—No fear.

MEXICO CONNECTION

And then there was the Mexico connection—her flamboyant, indigenous clothing, her raven hair parted in the middle, pulled back in a tight bun or gloriously wild, the artsy jewelry. She appealed in all her gutsy wonder. 

I was not alone. She appealed to everyone, though long had she lived in her husband’s shadow. By the 1970s, Frida was breaking out and breaking the mold. She was becoming—dare I say it—as popular as her famous husband, muralist and revolutionary, Diego Rivera.

PRESENTING FRIDA

Frida became an icon because the world was finally ready for her. 

A strong woman who stood equally alongside an alpha male, years his junior, but as powerful in her way as he was in his. Rivera had encouraged her and mentored her. A star was born. Did she overshadow her husband? Who can determine which painter held more power? That so many Kahlo paintings were self-portraits, symbolized a different spirit. She had been through hell and back (maybe never back) first suffering through polio as a youngster and at 18 being hideously injured in a trolley/bus accident in Mexico City. 

She wore a metal body brace her entire life. Her poor tortured frame would not allow her body to push out a baby and each time she got pregnant, not only did it not come to full term but her body suffered due to additional pressure on her lower torso. That did not stop her from portraying her suffering in her artwork for all the world to see. Suffering was the gateway to her art.

 FRIDA AS ARTIST

Though she never carried a child full term, as artist, she pressed on. Years later in my bookstore in Puerto Morelos, Mexico, her paintings 

hung front and center on the walls. My favorite was Frida in the jungle with the monkeys. Love you, Frida. You have been an icon for decades. Not only because of your oversized talent but also because of your staunch independence, your genius, your anarchistic politics, your free spirit, your shock value and your bravery. And because you resonated with a spirit that became a universal spirit. Thank you for the beauty and the pain you were not afraid to share. We love you Frida.

If you enjoyed this post, check out  Where the Sky is Born: Living in the Land of the Maya, on Amazon. My website is www.jeaninekitchel.com. Books one and two in my Mexico cartel trilogy, Wheels Up—A Novel of Drugs, Cartels and Survival, and Tulum Takedown, are also on Amazon. And my journalistic overview of the Maya 2012 calendar phenomenon, Maya 2012 Revealed: Demystifying the Prophecy, is on Amazon.

MARRIED TO THE MOB—A MEXICANA NARCA FALLS HEAD OVER HEELS FOR HER BODYGUARD

In Wheels Up—A Novel of Drugs, Cartels and Survival, Layla Navarro falls for her bodyguard, Carlos. This excerpt, a back story on how their relationship unfolded, was not included in Book 1 in the trilogy.

LAYLA AND CARLOS (Mexico City)

Layla often wondered how she'd gotten herself into the crazy relationship with Carlos, her bodyguard. For someone who was supposed to be smart—she was the accountant for the Culiacan Cartel for godsake—she often found herself consumed with emotion because of her feelings for a handsome, overbearing hulk of a man.

On their last business trip to Mexico City, known as CDMX to locals, they almost came to blows. Problems were happening more frequently, not unlike small temblors foreshadowing a substantial seismic shift, the cosmic wake-up call.

They decided to leave Carlos' Escalade at their hotel parking garage and take a taxi over to see Don Ernesto at the Marquis Reforma, a fashionable Art Deco property on Paseo de la Reforma. Ernesto was the Culiacan Cartel's main man for distribution for Mexico City's cocaine and delivery systems, and Layla was in high anxiety mode as she mentally prepared to cram all his expertise into her head at their upcoming meeting.

That night, Carlos had started out all right, no big problems, or no bigger than usual. But when communications with Don Erneseto got down to a higher level of disclosure, the capo gave Carlos a nod and he slunk away but not before giving Laya one of his poisonous "get ready" looks.

He excused himself to the don before exiting the suite. To Layla he said, "I'll be in the downstairs bar. Should I call you?"

She told him to ring up to the room in an hour, which he did. She noticed his voice had a slight slur, not common, but since he didn't need to drive—they'd be taking a taxi—she thought nothing of it. 

"I'll meet you by the elevators in five," she said. She gave Don Ernesto a quick goodbye kiss on both cheeks, then a handshake and finally her requisite, "Ciao." 

She knew things had gone south the instant the elevator doors opened. She could spot trouble and there it stood in the form of her bodyguard. He gave her a hard stare, barely motioned his head in a non-assuming way and moved towards the exit at a slow jog. From that moment she was practically running to keep up with him. Chinga! He was her bodyguard, that were in Mexico City, not some rural pueblo, and he was running away from her. How absurd! 

As they tore out of the hotel's go-round doors onto the lavish drive-up entrance where the bellmen stood, a valet called out, "Taxi, señorita?" 

"No gracias!"

She quickened her pace to keep up. He was way ahead of her and moving fast. For a man his size, he could move.

"Carlos!" she yelled. He didn't turn around. Louder now, "Carlos!"

Then he did a quick twist and yelled back at her as he crossed the street, "Leave me alone. You're nuts! You're the one who's screwed up, not me."

She felt like she'd been hit in the gut with a baseball bat. Passing from the opposite direction was a well-dressed man, mid-thirties, who'd seen Carlos at a near run and Layla, striving to catch up. By this time they were sprinting. The passerby obviously sensed her anguish and called out in passing, "Don't believe him. He's the crazy one, not you."

At that moment she wanted to throw her arms around this total stranger and thank him because she wondered what mistakes she'd made, how much she herself was to blame for their explosive relationship. Somehow Carlos always managed to make her feel like crap no matter what. 

He was pulling ahead. She was losing him now. Damn the heels. He'd crossed yet another block and she was farther behind. She couldn't be alone on these streets; it was Mexico City for God's sake.

"Carlos!" This time she yelled it loud and long. To hell with anyone who might see her running after some man on the street like a common trollop. "Please stop!" 

At that he turned, gauged her distance, took off his coat and tucked it under his arm but moving all the while. He seemed surprised she wasn't farther behind. With that look she knew she had him. She ran with abandon as fast as she could and soon caught up. She was no lightweight but she couldn't be alone in a CDMX hotel room in her line of work. It was unacceptable. Of course she could handle a gun but that wasn't the point. Hijole! What the hell were they paying him for anyway? El Patrón insisted she have protection.

When she caught up with him he was breathing heavily. "Why did you chase me? Chinga!" 

"You will not leave me alone here!" she shouted, surprised by her own show of force. "Do I need to remind you? You're on the payroll." 

In retrospect she realized she should have taken Patrón up on his offer to reassign Carlos a few years back. Her uncle had a knack for reading people and no doubt sensed trouble. That suggestion was his way of letting them both off the hook. Otherwise, Carlos would surely have been expendable. You didn't quit the cartel. The cartel quit you. 

Hijole! Why hadn't she listened to Patrón? Oh, now it seemed totally clear: what she should have done. But back then, they were still too good together, at least in the bedroom. There was the sex, so much sex. The on-going sex, the break-up sex, the make-up sex. And yes, also the fighting and a whole lot of it. Drama and tears, walk-outs and disasters. Hurling names at each other like javelins. No brutality, just two screeching cats, fighting it out. 

Too late now, and this charade had gone on too long. What was it with the men in her life? Were they all pendejos? Did she pick these guys or did they pick her? Even Reynoldo, her brother, God rest his miserable soul. He'd also treated her like dirt. And how long ago was that? She'd been a teenager and he was dissing her back then. She needed one of those internet courses that taught self esteem. You could learn that, right? Or was she stuck in this loop forever, a mere doorstop, even though she commanded all negotiations in Mexico on cocaine and marijuana for the cartel? What the hell was going on? 

Maybe it was time to see Our Lady of Guadalupe at the Basilica of the Virgin. Do penance to Mexico's patron saint, and a woman at that. So maybe she was actually a goddess? Forget about the Virgin Mary. Sure Mexicans pretended they believed all that Catholic stuff. She'd even been forced to go to church herself when her father put her in parochial school before he died. 

Mexico's twisted alternate history ran through her mind. The conquistadors ravaged the land and converted the sinners, or so they thought. What was really happening centuries ago and to this very day was the sly coverup each and every Mexican knew so well. The Virgin Mary wore blue; their sacred and beloved Guadalupe wore blue. Yes, there was a close resemblance, but the dual icons were worlds apart in significance. Go into a church in any Mexican pueblo and who did you see about the altar? Our Lady of Guadalupe, not Mary, Mother of God. And Feast of Guadalupe, December 12th, was more revered that Christmas. 

Mexicans converted the various saints to align with their gods. Catholic holy days coincided with their sacred days. The missionaries were never the wiser. Not unlike the cartels, they were all about volume; they wanted to boast to the European powers how many natives now worshipped their savior. As part and parcel of the Catholic Church, they cared only about numbers. 

It was a thinly veiled conspiracy. The Mexican, Aztecs, the Nahuatl, the Maya, they all pretended they'd been saved by the blood of the Lord. But they had merely converted Christianity into their form of paganism. In Oaxaca, Chiapas, the mountains of Michoacán, where the indigenous people were strongest, that's where shaman still ruled the villages and the ancient calendar, Aztec or Maya, governed lives. Not the book of the Lord. The calendar was the way. And the local shaman, who at times would pose as a priest, served as every pueblo's mayor and major domo. He settled disputes, gave readings, sanctioned marriages, named children from their calendar make-up not unlike astrology, divined dreams, cured illnesses and helped choose life paths for his flock.

Lost in thought, she stared at Carlos, her hotheaded bodyguard and lover, still huffing from their Olympic style run. For some reason she flashed on shaman Don Cuauhtemoc's reading from so long ago: "The woman is coming." God, she hoped it actually meant something.

If you enjoyed this missing excerpt from Wheels Up—A Novel of Drugs, Cartels and Survival, order a copy from Amazon. Also on Amazon, Where the Sky is Born: Living in the Land of the Maya. My website is www.jeaninekitchel.com. Find book two in my Mexico cartel trilogy, Tulum Takedown, on Amazon. And my journalistic overview of the Maya 2012 calendar phenomenon, Maya 2012 Revealed: Demystifying the Prophecy, is on Amazon.