Okay, this is something I know at least katie and Gothchick84 will appreciate...
Today, July 6, 2007, marks the one-hundreth anniversary of the birth of Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderon, more commonly known as Frida Kahlo, the great artist.
HAPPY 100th BIRTHDAY FRIDA!!!!!!
Later in her life, she celebrated her birthday as July 7, 1910, partially because 1910 was the year the Mexican Revolution started. (I don't know why she changed the day)
Frida was an amazing painter, and her work first attracted me to her, as did her suffering.
When she was six, she got polio, and it left her with a withered right leg. When she was 17, she was on a bus in Mexico City with her boyfriend, when the bus was hit by a trolley. Her right foot was dislocated and crushed, her spinal column was broken in three places in the lumbar region, her collarbone was broken, as were two ribs, her right leg had eleven fractures, her left shoulder was put out of joint, her pelvis was broken in three places, and a steel handrail skewered her body at the abdomen.
After a long, painful recovery, she learned to walk again. During her convalescence she began to paint.
A few years later, she married the famous Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. Their marriage was very unique: he was twenty years older than her, and have numerous, well-known affairs in his four marriages.
And while they were married, Frida had affairs too, with both men and women, including Leon Trotsky, who was housed in her home for a time in exile from Russia, hiding from Stalin's assassins.
In 1939 they divorced, at Rivera's insistence, but they remarried only a year later.
Throughout her life, she had numerous operations on her right foot and spine.
The damage to her pelvis caused her to have several miscarriages and abortions. She was never able to have a child.
Several years before she died, Frida's right leg was amputated at the knee.
At the end of her life, she was in such terrible pain from her back and leg that she was on lots of morphine, and partly because of this she could no longer do the detailed paintings she had done before.
In 1954, she died after a bout of pneumonia. Her death was ruled as caused by pulmonary embolism, but suicide is suspected.
There was a lot more to her life, and her amazing art. Google it.
There are also several other ways you can learn about her:
The movie Frida starring Salma Hayek as Frida Kahlo and Alfred Molina, Doc Ock in Spiderman 2, as Diego Rivera.
The autobiography "Frida" by Hayden Herrara, and the book "The Diary of Frida Kahlo: An Intimate Self-Portrait, with introduction by Carlos Fuentes."
Learn about her, look at her artwork (some of which I'm going to try to get on my profile) because even if you don't like art, she had a very interesting and sad life.
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