Frida Kahlo & Diego Rivera

Quinn: Hello and welcome back to Pictorial on Relay FM. I’m Quinn Rose. I am someone who did not go to art school, but I love to learn new things about art and artists, and that's what we're doing here today.

Betty: And I’m Betty. I’m also someone who did not go to art school, but I am someone who has been working at an art gallery as a gallery guide for the past eight years. And once again, I have seen a show that features the artist we're going to talk about today. So I self-proclaim myself as a sort of expert, but maybe not.

Quinn: "Sort of expert, but maybe not”: the tagline of this podcast. 

Betty: Exactly. 

Quinn: We also are, we’re just doing like the greatest hits of every exhibit you've ever seen at the AGO.

Betty: Pretty much, yeah. Well, I seem to, I was talking to you the other day. It's kind of when ideas come to me when I'm at the AGO, cause I'm surrounded by art. And then I'm like, I want to talk about this and this and this and this, but now that, you know, because of lockdown, I haven't been there. I feel like, I feel like my ideas and my art inspiration has been drained. So hopefully this doesn't last too long, but we'll see.

Quinn: You would think the episode we did about squares would be like two months into lockdown, but that really was an idea we had before we even entered lockdown mode. That's just us on a normal day. So imagine how weird it's going to get pretty soon.

Betty: Yeah. Eventually we'll just be talking about like the color red, but like only one shade of it and it'll last 45 minutes. 

Quinn: Yeah, it’ll be great. But we're starting off much more broad than that today because we're going to do a little overview about the relationship between one of the most famous artists couples of all time, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera.

Betty: Yeah, and this is, I guess, kind of a continuation of our series, I guess now there's two episodes of it, of artists couples. Last time we talked about Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. So this time we'll be talking about the Mexican version, maybe. 

Quinn: If you thought Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz had an intense relationship, not even on the same level.

Betty: No, not even in the same time zone. 

Quinn: So this is a couple who does share a couple of things in common with the previous artist couple that we talked about, namely, that Diego Rivera was much older than Frida Kahlo. My favorite thing to happen in a couple, he was 20 years older than her. So I just want to start there because that kind of sets the stage for how they met. They actually met briefly for the first time when she was a student, when she was like 14, 15 years old. And he was an adult man painting a mural at her school. 

Betty: Can I read like his quote from, I guess I think his diary of what he said about Frida when they first met during that first encounter—

Quinn: I hate this quote, but you should read it.

Betty: It is so creepy. So he says, so it was night and Diego was painting on a scaffolding and he was painting with his wife at the time, Lupe, and she was working below. So then they heard somebody downstairs, opened the door, and a girl shows up. And so he says, okay, “all at once the door flew open and a girl who seemed to be no more than 10 or 12 was propelled inside. She was dressed like any other high school student, but her manner immediately set her apart. She had unusual dignity and self assurance and there was a strange fire in her eyes. Her beauty was that of a child and her breasts were a very well developed.”

Quinn: I hate it, I hate it so much.

Betty: It’s so gross. And the fact that, I mean, she was 15, so still under age, but he's like, yeah, she's like 10 or 12. And her breasts were very well developed.

Quinn: And so these was pulled from interviews that were done later in his life, like after he had been married to this woman, and like, they'd had this relationship. So one can hope that these are not the actual thoughts he had in his head when he first met this child. Like maybe he's embellishing, because he did have a relationship with her later, but also… It's quite possible that these were just the raw, unfiltered thoughts he had that he thought he met a 12 year old and he was like, great boobs though. And I hate it.

Betty: Yes, exactly. She was there and she wanted to watch him paint. So she asked if she could watch him work. And he was like, yes. And actually in fact, he said, “no young lady, I'd be charmed.” So, and then apparently while she was, she watched him paint for like three hours and then his wife was like super jealous. And I guess was like yelling at her and stuff and then she eventually left. But, yeah, that was their first encounter.

Quinn: Yeah. Now luckily for us they did not start a relationship at this point. It wasn't until five years later that they re-met and that he realized that this was that young girl that he had met that one time who apparently had made such an impression on him. But they ended up meeting later when she was at least a legal adult. So he was 40 and she was 20 and they pretty quickly started a relationship. He was married at the time. This man got married a lot.

Betty: Yeah. He was married like five times.

Quinn: Yeah. That was kind of one of his hobbies.

Betty: Although to be fair, twice to Frida. So, you know…

Quinn: Yeah we’ll get to that soon. They started a relationship very quickly and, he had divorced his wife, like quite swiftly to be in this relationship with Frida. 

Betty: I did kind of like that when they met for the second time, she went up to him and she asked for him to look at his paintings. Cause she wanted like, you know, an opinion from someone who's an established artist. And then, you know, he agreed and then they, he looked at her paintings and of course he was like immediately impressed and you know, just thought her work was super unique and was, you know, of course complimenting her on how great her paintings were. But she apparently, you know, people have told her that Diego is kind of like a womanizer. So she was like, she basically didn't want him to just compliment her to get in her pants. And so she, you know, she said, hey, you know, or I'm kind of paraphrasing, but she basically says like, you know, I want you to tell me what you really think. Cause I want to be a good artist and I want you to give me your honest opinion. And of course he's like, you know, it is my honest opinion that it's great. Obviously, you know, a few days later they ended up like making out and whatever, but she did initially want his like honest professional opinion.

Quinn: Yeah. That did seem to be a thing I was noticing with her sort of perspective on their relationship is that they clearly had a very passionate relationship and she did love him and was like proud to be his wife, but she also definitely had a very strong focus on her own art and our own work. When she was visiting America I believe there was an interview where she basically was like, oh, I'm a much more important artist than he is. She was very confident in her own work and definitely was not here to play second fiddle to her husband.

Betty: Yeah, I think it's, it’s really great that she didn't see herself as a secondary or, you know, somebody who's just Diego's wife. Like she really took her art very seriously. So, you know, and I'm sure we'll talk about specifically some of her, some of her work.

Quinn: Before we go on, we should note that this second meeting between Frida and Diego happened after Frida Kahlo’s accident, which would basically define her entire life. When she was 18 I believe, she was in a bus accident that left her in chronic pain for the rest of her life. She was incredibly injured. She couldn't walk for several months. She was bound into bed and she continued to have these injuries follow her for the rest of her life. And they deeply affected her path in life. She was going to go to medical school. And that's, she ended up turning to art because that was no longer an option for her. It deeply affected her art, and the pain of that followed her until she died. And so sort of like with everything that happens over the course of her entire life and her relationship, like these injuries changed everything. 

Betty: And then I guess it's also worth mentioning that she also had polio as a child. So that was a part of her disability as well. So I guess, you know, it's pretty sad that her entire life was just, she suffered through injuries and illness pretty much the whole time. And it really comes through in her art. 

Quinn: Yeah, absolutely. 

Betty: As far as we know, they, their relationship was quite open. One of the people, one of her friends who are like, you know, sorta introduced Frida to Diego, her name’s Tina Modotti. She was a photographer. She was a friend of hers, but also, you know, with somebody who, you know, had a relationship with Diego around the same time that she did. And she herself had also, even after they were married, had relationships with other people as well. So yeah, it is, I think, important to point out that they were pretty much like open to having relationships or like sexual relationships with other people. Although there were some lines that you probably don't want to cross, which we'll get to.

Quinn: Yeah. I saw this in various places. Like some places described it as they had an open marriage and some places are like, they constantly cheated on each other. And I think like both are kind of true. They were not loyal people.

Betty: No, and I think, well, it just depends on sort of the perspective, cause I think, you know, probably open relationships weren't very accepted back then, maybe even now. And so you know, some people call it cheating, but other people, I mean, I think it wouldn't be cheating if your spouse literally is like, yeah, that's totally fine for you to sleep with him or her, but it would be if they didn't know about it. So exactly what happened between them obviously, I don't think it's possible to know every detail of, if every single time they slept with somebody else, they went, hey Diego, I'm going to have sex with Allen across the street, is that cool? Like, I'm not sure if that happened every single time. But they definitely did do that. And, and the thing is like, you know, whether the other person really was okay with it, or if there were emotionally affected or jealous, we don't know that either. It could be possible that, you know, you say, oh yeah, that’s totally cool that you sleep with other people, but inside you're like, no.

Quinn: They did get divorced at some point. So clearly something was affecting them. And they also, I mean, they were having affairs with like—Frida Kahlo had an affair with Leon Trotsky. Like these are not just run of the mill people. They ran in some very interesting circles. And also, and then, and Frida was bisexual as well. So she was sleeping with men and women. And just like, she was out here.

Betty: Yeah, the line was crossed when Diego ended up sleeping with Frida’s sister, Christina, and she was not okay with that for sure. And, I mean, I'm not sure if this was the only thing, but it definitely contributed to the breakdown over their relationship eventually. And also there's a painting that Frida did, I think, I think in reference to that betrayal that she felt. The painting is called A Few Small Nips. It's a pretty brutal painting. It's not brutal in Frida standards, cause a lot of her paintings does depict her, you know, pain and suffering. You know, whether it's through physical pain and suffering or emotional, this one’s probably both. And so she, yeah, she's, it's a frame where she's in a room and she's lying on her bed naked and there's a guy over her with a knife, I think, who seems to have stabbed her like a hundred times and she's bleeding all over the place and there's so much blood that it spills onto the frame of the canvas. So it's not a very subtle expression of her feelings of physical and emotional pain. 

Quinn: Most of her work was pretty brutal as you alluded to. I mean, she was most famous for her portraits that are self portraits and, I mean, she did not have an easy life and she not, not only did she not have an easy life for herself, she also was very involved in the communist party and was like very anticapitalist and sort of very attuned to the ills of the world. So she was not exactly an optimistic person. And I think that she definitely was very focused on people's pain as well as dealing with her own chronic pain. So she got a lot of paintings like this. 

Betty: Yeah. So yeah, she definitely did paint quite a few paintings as well, self portraits that are pretty gruesome. Although, you know, there were some less violent pictures for sure. She did paint a painting of her and Diego, I think shortly after they got married, so she painted a wedding portrait. So it was a portrait of her and Diego standing next to each other, holding hands. Diego’s holding a paint pallet and paint brushes. And Friday’s just, she's wearing like a really huge like red scarf. And she's like in this, in this portrait, she's like, you know, she's much shorter than that him. Although I think, I think I read that it is actually to scale, like she's not actually painting herself smaller, like she thinks she's less important. Like she literally is like a foot shorter than him and like half his size. Cause he was quite large. 

Quinn: Yeah. They said her parents called them the elephant and the dove because he was so much physically larger than her.

Betty: Yeah, that's true. And then, yeah, in a few years, or more than a few years later. Maybe like about 10 years later, she also did another self portrait or she did a bunch of self portraits with her, her face and Diego painted on her forehead. So I think this is a painting called, I want to say like “Diego On My Mind.” And so she’s painted Diego like literally on her head. So he's literally on her mind, but she also wrote in her diary that Diego was like her everything. So she wrote “Diego equals my husband. Diego equals my friend. Diego equals my mother. Diego equals my father. Diego equals my son. Diego equals me and Diego equals the universe.” So literally everything.

Quinn: That's very concerning.

Betty: Yeah it is a little bit so, I would say, yeah. But I mean, she definitely, you know, loved him very much. But that expression, you know, it is a little obsessive, I guess.

Quinn: Yeah, there’s so much in the depiction of him in her art. There wasn't as much of her that was like put into his art or at least that hasn't sort of like withstand time as much. But the, the wedding portrait that she did of them is sort of the iconic image of them as a couple, partially because it, even in this like wedding portrait that was done just a few years after they got married and it's supposed to be this idea of marital bliss or whatever, they don't look particularly happy in the portrait. They're awkwardly posed. He almost seems like he's pulling away from her. They're holding hands very loosely. And again, I cannot stress enough how much they do not look happy in this portrait. And then all these images that she did, where she depicts him, like it's face physically painted on to her likeness where it's this this obsessiveness idea where it's not only that he's on her mind, it's that he's imprinted on there. It gives me the sense of inescapability.

Betty: Hmm. The one that I was talking about, the one where she's painted him, like she is painted in this, like what looks like a cobweb. It almost looks like she's trapped in a web. So I think, yeah, inescapability is a pretty accurate depiction. I mean, so yeah, Frida did show up in a few of Diego’s artworks. He did paint a picture, or sorry, he did draw a picture of her, in a seated nude with raised arms position during the first year of their marriage. So it's, I believe it's like a pencil sketch and then he did paint a portrait of her in 1939 where it’s kind of just like her face, straight on. And then she is featured in a couple of his murals and one of them is a mural called a “Dream of a Sunday afternoon in the Alameda Central.” So it's a mural in Mexico City and it depicts some historic people and events in the history of Mexico. And Frida is, she's kind of left of center in the mural and she's wearing like a purple dress. I’m not exactly sure who she thought she supposed to represent or maybe herself. So, and then another pretty well known mural is he in, I think it's also in Mexico. He did a, he did a painting on the walls of the Ministry of Public Education and it has a Frida Kahlo as a communist militant, I think she’s dressed in red, she has a red star and she has like, her hand is holding a gun that somebody is giving to her. So, yeah. So, I mean, I do—this one I think is one of the more interesting ones that he's depicted Frida cause it is interesting. Cause he's kind of like he sees her as like a communist figure, rather than, you know, his wife in this particular context.

Quinn: To be fair, she was a communist figure. [laughs]

Betty: [laughing] Yes. It's true.

Quinn: To be fair, they both were extremely involved in communism.

Betty: Yes. For sure. 

Quinn: This is not coming out of nowhere. 

Betty: It's not like, yeah, yeah.

Quinn: They were, they both did lead fascinating lives and they both were so involved in politics. And their social circles included like every prominent communist of the era in that part of the world, which is fascinating. I mean like Frida Kahlo was like suspected of being involved in Leon Trotsky's assassination. This is the level that these people are working on. And I also find it interesting that her work was largely unknown. I mean, she was known, and the two of them were both successful, but relatively speaking, it really wasn’t. And then her work was sort of rediscovered in sort of the 1970s, 1980s, when people were, or like, hey, women exist. Weird. We should check in on them. And now she's one of the most recognizable artist in the world. Her face is on everything. Which if you call back to 60 seconds ago, and I talked about how much of a communist she was, she would hate.

Betty: True.

Quinn: But capitalism ruins everything, but that's where we're at.

Betty: Yeah. I feel like this is a kind of like a similar parallel to our Alfred and Georgia episode. Like he probably was more well known and more successful during his lifetime. I mean, he was invited to paint murals all over the place, despite the fact that, you know, he's a communist, he painted murals in, you know, San Francisco, Detroit, New York City. And in 1931, as early as 1931, a couple of years after they got married, he had a huge retrospective that was held at MoMA. Although, so Frida, like she did gain, I guess, a little bit of recognition when she was alive. So she had, she did have a pretty successful exhibition in Paris in 1939, and so successful that the Louvre actually purchased her painting The Frame, and it actually made her the first Mexican artist to be in the Louvre collection, not just like first Mexican woman, like first Mexican artist at all to be in the Louvre’s collection. So that was, pretty significant. But although she did die pretty young and definitely didn't achieve the level of success Diego did when he was alive. And yeah, I would say now, I mean, I don't know, I don't, I haven't done a survey, but I almost feel like Frida is more well known than Diego.

Quinn: I dunno if she is in Mexico. I don't have a sense of like how well known either relatively are in Mexico. But I think that definitely in other parts of the world that she is, partially because like her work, I just think has been so celebrated in different parts. And also because I think that her just, her, her face is on everything. This is so weird to me. I don't know why people became obsessed with the face of Frida Kahlo, but they really did. And they, she’s got a lot of merchandise now… Which I dislike, but I also just think that people have discovered, like she can, she is an available figure for so many different groups of people. I mean, she was a female artist, she was Mexican, she was bisexual, she was disabled, and suffered from chronic pain her whole life. Like I feel like, and she channeled all of those things into her art and managed to achieve a lot in a society that didn't want her to achieve a lot. And so I think that that is also really inspirational to a lot of people. Diego Rivera also did a lot of super interesting things and was a great artist, and also like dealt with a lot of hardship in his life, but not to make this the Oppression Olympics—but I do think that partially, I think that part of it is because she is an inspirational figure for a lot of people as well.

Betty: Plus she’s just got such kick ass eyebrows. 

Quinn: She's got great eyebrows. I do think that is a lot of the reason of sort of why her face has become famous. People are fascinated with her unibrow and that's become such a distinctive thing.

Betty: Yeah it's just so iconic and so easy, easily distinguished that you just slap a unibrow on a face and people are like, oh, Frida.

Quinn: Yeah, it's sad but true. 

Betty: So another painting that Frida did that really struck me, and I think this was one of the paintings that I saw in the exhibition of Frida and Diego that we had at the AGO, probably like 10 years ago. So the painting is called Henry Ford Hospital by Frida in 1932. So this painting was done after 1930, so during this time Frida and Diego were traveling around the United States. Diego, like I mentioned earlier, was invited to paint murals in like San Francisco and New York. Interestingly he did one mural in New York at the Rockefeller center, but because he had this like huge painting of the face of Lenin, they actually ended up tearing down the mural because that was too communist for them.

Quinn: Classic.

Betty: But in any case, yeah, while he was doing that, so Frida was pregnant and she—that was when she suffered her first miscarriage. She actually ended up suffering three miscarriages in her, in her lifetime. And her and Diego never had a child that was born alive, unfortunately. So she did a painting called Henry Ford Hospital, which I presume was the hospital that she was in when she suffered her first miscarriage. So it's a painting of her lying on a bed. And it says Henry Ford Hospital Detroit on the, on the bed. So this may have been when he was painting the mural in the Detroit Art Institute. But anyway, she has these what looks like umbilical cords coming out of her hand slash stomach. But there's six of them and that one's tied to a fetus, one’s tied to a snail, another one's tied to like a, it looks like an anatomy sculpture of a pregnant belly, and then there's a pelvis bone. There's a flower. And then I'm not sure what the sixth thing is it. I think it's like a metal anchor of some sort. And anyway, and then there's like blood on the bed and there's an industrial Detroit looking landscape in the background. Anyway, so. Yeah, again, like all her other paintings, it's quite brutal. There's blood everywhere. And it's like, there's actually a single tear coming out of her eye. Like that's pretty graphic and pretty traumatic. And it’s a pretty good example of what a lot of Frida's paintings are, are like. And I think one of the reasons like she's so, so many people, you know, relate to her or so many people have such a strong reaction with her paintings is the fact that they get to you so much, like you, pain is one of those things that's just so hard to convey to another person that, you know, when you describe how much you're suffering to someone else like, there's almost no words. And Frida is so good at being able to convey just how painful it is that by viewing the painting, I mean, it's obviously, you know, you can never achieve the same level of pain and suffering as experiencing it yourself, but it's like, you almost can by looking at it.

Quinn: Yeah. I think that is one of the things that her art does so well. And is one of her extraordinary features as an artist. And then this painting in particular, it's like, it feels… like it is graphic and it is hard to look at, but what it shows you is that you understand that you're only getting a sense of the amount of pain that she went through. And you can look at that and understand like, like the amount of pain and tragedy that she's going through and that she's carrying with her—it’s not that all of that can be depicted in a painting, but it's that, that she has the ability to make you understand that it existed and that the person as the viewer couldn't imagine it unless they were also going through it.

Betty: For sure. And so, yeah, I think like after I saw the show of hers and Diego's, and obviously like, you know, I also very much admire Diego's work and he was definitely very significant as someone who, you know, kind of brought like Mexican mural art to, to the forefront of the international stage. But I just think I definitely connected with Frida's work much, much more, than Diego's.

Quinn: Yeah, I think that's fair. I think that as we've previously discussed, perhaps modern society agrees with you. And that's possibly also because I think that a lot of Frieda's work was more concerned with this idea of personal pain, rather than a more general, more outside of yourself than political idea that I think a lot of Diego's work was. So speaking of tragedy, we've alluded, I think a few times, to Frida Kahlo passing away young. She died when she was only 47 years old. And it's a little unclear as to how she died. The official cause of death was a pulmonary embolism. But there is an argument to be made that she deliberately died by suicide. She was in a lot of pain at the time, and had taken a significant number of painkillers past her prescription amount, but either way, like basically she died of illness, both physically and mental illness that had only increased over the past few years of her life until the point that she did pass away. And this was absolutely devastating to Diego. I mean, he actually remarried after she died, which you know what? What the hell. But he always described her as like the most important relationship in his life and that he loved her until he did die. And he only passed away a few years later, only three years later. And of course he was 20 years older than her, so he was almost 70, but, yeah.

Betty: I would say, you know, it's a pretty tumultuous and pretty, quite sad love story, unfortunately. I mean, yeah, they did, they did spend, you know, quite a number of years with each other. As we mentioned, they got married, got divorced, then got married again. So they were married for the second time when, when Frida died. But yeah, like her, she definitely was suffering a lot towards the last few years of her life. And it's quite sad. And then of course, this is one of the reasons probably to why, you know, her work wasn't widely known until much after her death.

Quinn: Yeah. In the end, their story’s just actually quite sad. Cause they, they had such a tumultuous life and relationship. They both went through significant hardships and were both like fighting many battles in terms of their personal lives and political lives, and their art and all this stuff. And then, and at the end they died painful deaths. So I don't like, there's no uplifting message at the end here. I can't really spin this.

Betty: Well, I would say, you know, I guess if there were to be a silver lining to this, I mean, it is the fact that Diego, I think he, he was very successful in terms of like bringing Mexican art as well as kind of like, even like the history of Mexico. Cause he depicted a lot of that through his murals to the whole world and specifically, you know, places like the United States. And I think because they're large murals and they're on the side of buildings, like it's not just like a painting that you have to go into a gallery to see. I think he had a pretty significant impact, you know, to the, just the general public by having these huge works. So you know, that that's, that's nice. And in terms of Frida, like she, you know, she really ultimately became known as kind of like, not only like a feminist icon, but also like an LGBTQ icon and just somebody who, you know, was relatively openly bisexual in such a time and also somebody who was quite, you know, independent and very motivated in her art practice. So despite all these challenges, and as you know, you mentioned, you know, also having the disabilities that she had all her life. And like, I think she definitely serves as an inspiration for a lot of people. So I would say if there was any there's any good thing to come out of, this is how, you know, inspiration the two of them have been for a lot of people. 

Quinn: Yeah, you’re right. With everything that they went through in their lives, they did leave a hell of a legacy behind. And that is a legacy that is going to continue to impact people for many years to come.

Betty: For sure.

Quinn: Thank you so much everybody for listening today. If you want to find us on Twitter or Instagram, you can do that @PictorialPod. There's a link in the description of if you want to suggest any topics for us to talk about or other artist couples, as we mentioned at the beginning, we will be running out of ideas soon. So if you could just suggest anything that you would want to hear about, we’ll see if we can talk about it. You can find me on Twitter or Instagram @aspiringrobot.

Betty: And you can find me on Twitter or Instagram @articulationsV, and I am also on YouTube as ARTiculations. And speaking of YouTube, we also upload these videos to YouTube where we will be inserting pictures of what we talk about throughout the videos. So be sure to check that out.

Quinn: Thanks for listening, art enthusiasts!