“There have been two great incidents in my life. The first was the tram, the second was the meeting with Diego. Diego was the worst,”the famous Mexican artist Frida Kahlo once said in her diary. She wrote about her comrade-in-arms, her husband, the main love of her life and the man who broke her heart more than once. The romantic and sad story of two bright, talented personalities - Frida and Diego - still delights and horrifies fans of their work with the interweaving of drama, dedication, betrayal, forgiveness and the desire to be together in spite of everything.
Fatal accident
Frida Kahlo did not live a very long life, which ended at the age of 47. And from an early age, her life path was accompanied by suffering, struggle, overcoming. At the age of 6, she suffered from polio, which left severe consequences in the form of a lameness and a disfigured right leg, which is why the artist always wore only long skirts. But at the age of 18, fate prepared for the girl a much more serious blow. The bus in which Frida was traveling collided with a tram.
Horrific injuries, including several fractures of the spine, pelvic bones, right leg and other limbs, confined her to a hospital bed for a year. However, Kahlo had to face the consequences of this accident all his life. She underwent many operations, and the resulting damage to the reproductive organs forever deprived her of the opportunity to become a mother.
While recovering from the accident, Frida, in order to somehow distract herself, asked her relatives for brushes and paints. Her first artistic work was her own portrait, and subsequently this genre has always remained dominant in the work of the eccentric Mexican. Kahlo was indeed an extremely unusual woman: bright, liberated, impetuous. She smoked, drank alcohol, used foul language and was not shy about her bisexuality. Of course, not every man could correspond to such an outstanding personality.
Elephant and dove
The artist Diego Rivera Frida first met in 1922 at the National Preparatory School, where she entered to study medicine. At the same time, within the walls of the educational institution, her future husband worked on the fresco "Creation of the World", which became the first significant project in his work. Diego could hardly be called handsome: tall, overweight, clumsy. From the outside, he looked like an elephant or a man-eater. In addition, next to the young girl, the artist seemed like an old man, because their age difference was 20 years.
However, intelligence, talent and charm ensured Rivera extraordinary success with women. By the time he met Frida, he managed to get married three times. Then at school, a young girl only watched the work of an experienced master, and he told her entertaining stories from his own life. In 1928, the paths of Diego and Frida crossed again. After leaving the hospital after the accident, Kahlo tracked down the artist herself and showed him several of her works, asking him to evaluate them with a professional eye. Rivera liked her paintings. He even agreed to visit Frida to see her other creations. Soon a romantic relationship began between them, and in 1929 the lovers got married in a civil ceremony in Mexico City. Following her husband, Kahlo joined the Communist Party and actively promoted her political beliefs to the masses.
In the early 1930s, Rivera was commissioned to create a mural for the Rockefeller Center in New York. His young wife followed him. During her stay in the United States, Frida suffered two unsuccessful pregnancies. After the second miscarriage, she threw out her pain with the help of the famous painting "Henry Ford's Hospital."
Strange marriage
Frida and Diego had an open marriage, in which the spouses allowed themselves to regularly have affairs on the side. For example, in America, the artist became interested in the photographer Nicholas Murray. During a trip to Paris for an exhibition of Mexican art, she struck up a relationship with French singer and actress Josephine Baker. Well, the most famous love interest of Frida can be called the Soviet revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky. After fleeing the USSR in 1937, he found temporary refuge in the house of Kahlo and Rivera and could not resist the charms of the temperamental Mexican woman.
Of course, Rivera was also not loyal to his young wife. However, he crossed all boundaries when he started an affair with Frida's sister Christina. The artist could not forgive such a betrayal and filed for divorce in 1939. True, a year later the couple reconciled and remarried in December 1940.
All internal fears, doubts, confusion, thoughts Kahlo reflected in her diary, which can be read like an interesting literary work. And more often than other words, the name "Diego" is mentioned in it. In 1950, the artist's health deteriorated sharply, she underwent seven operations. The husband abandoned his work and did not leave his wife for an hour, trying with all his might to cheer her up. To top it all off, due to the onset of gangrene, Frida had to amputate her right leg below the knee. However, she lived in such a grave condition for four more years.
The artist died in July 1954 due to pneumonia. Shortly before her death, she had a conversation with her husband's personal assistant, Emma Hurtado. Frida knew that Diego always needed a woman by his side. Therefore, she took from Emma a promise to marry Rivera after her death. Surprisingly, these two actually got married a year after the artist passed away. True, their marriage was very short-lived, since in November 1957 Rivera died of cancer.
