Frida Kahlo by Malka Drucker
Frida Kahlo, a renowned Mexican artist, is the subject of a biography by Malka Drucker that explores her complex life and multifaceted identity. Born to a German-Hungarian Jewish father and a Spanish-Indian mother, Kahlo faced numerous challenges, including polio in her childhood and a life-altering bus accident at eighteen that led to chronic pain and health issues, ultimately resulting in the amputation of her leg. Drucker portrays Kahlo not only as a talented artist but also as a politically engaged individual, who became a dedicated Communist and fiercely advocated for her country’s Indian minority and native art. Known for her striking self-portraits and vivid exploration of personal pain, she often expressed her tumultuous experiences, including her tumultuous relationships, through her art. Kahlo's rebellious spirit and vibrant personality, contrasted with her physical struggles, make her a compelling figure in the narrative of heroic women. The biography is positioned within a broader context of multiculturalism and feminism that emerged in the 1990s, highlighting Kahlo's significance as a role model for creativity and resilience. Despite the challenges of competition from other works on Kahlo, Drucker's biography offers valuable insights into her life and legacy, including helpful bibliographical resources and a timeline of her major life events.
Subject Terms
Frida Kahlo by Malka Drucker
First published: 1991; illustrated
Subjects: Artists and revolutionary leaders
Type of work: Biography
Time of work: 1907-1954
Recommended Ages: 15-18
Locale: Coyoacán and Mexico City, Mexico; Detroit; New York; San Francisco; and Paris
Principal Personages:
Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón , a celebrated Mexican painter of mixed parentageGuillermo Kahlo , (originally Wilhelm Kahl), the German-Hungarian Jewish father of Frida, who was influential in her lifeMatilde Calderón Kahlo , the Spanish-Indian second wife of Guillermo Kahlo and mother of four daughters, including Frida, who called her “The Chief”Diego Rivera , Frida’s husband, an illustrious muralist who painted frescoes in Mexico and the United StatesAlejandro Gomez Arias , Frida’s schoolmate and first boyfriend, who became vice president of Mexico’s Popular Party and held high public officeJosé Vasconcelos , a well-known Mexican educator, writer, onetime minister of education, and presidential candidate who was supportive of FridaAndré Breton , a French writer and founder of the surrealist movement who invited Frida to exhibit in ParisIsamu Noguchi , a famous Japanese American sculptor who was Frida’s onetime loverLeon Trotsky , (originally Lev Davidovich Bronstein ), an exiled Russian revolutionary leader who helped found the Soviet Union, resided in the home of the Riveras, and became Frida’s lover, assassinated by a presumed Stalinist agent in 1940
Form and Content
This biography examines the life of an artist who was the daughter of a German-Hungarian Jewish father and a Spanish-Indian mother, was brought up as a Catholic, withstood a childhood bout with polio, was twice married to the same philandering genius, had affairs with an exiled Communist revolutionary leader and a famous Japanese American sculptor, became a dedicated Communist, and suffered for the rest of her life of forty-seven years from a serious bus and streetcar accident that she experienced at eighteen.
Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón, better known as Frida Kahlo, was a five-foot, one-hundred-pound, diminutive woman with joined eyebrows and a suspicion of hair above her upper lip who constantly enchanted and confused people with her dualities and contradictions: her intellect and sensuality, her daintiness and toughness, her pain and joy.
Malka Drucker’s Frida Kahlo was written for the Barnard Biography Series, the purpose of which is to profile heroic women, providing girls with role models for creativity and other desirable qualities. Kahlo was selected as such an individual, despite her status as a self-styled martyr and lifelong invalid whose leg was finally amputated a year before her death from pneumonia. She was a high-spirited flirt and a rebellious “bad girl” who would often misstate her birth date to make it coincide with the beginning of the Mexican Revolution of 1910.
Critical Context
The 1990’s brought multiculturalism, a renewed feminism, and a post-Cold War reevaluation of communism to the United States. Malka Drucker capitalizes on this trend to tell the story of a physically handicapped Mexican woman of diverse ethnicity and religious background and communist affiliation, who stood up for her country’s Indian minority and native art and its revolutionary regime while despising those who sat in cafés discussing culture and art. Drucker’s biography is a groundbreaking work, but she has spirited competition, not only in the form of such books as Hayden Herrera’s Frida Kahlo: The Paintings (1991) or the abridged and translated version of Martha Zamora’s Frida Kahlo: The Brush of Anguish (1990) but also from Kahlo herself. Any verbal recounting of the artist’s tortures pale beside Kahlo’s dramatic pictorial representation of her own bloody miscarriage, the operation on her spine, the amputation of her leg, or the morose longing for her absent and unfaithful husband.
The relatively few color plates and black-and-white photographs in Drucker’s book—such as of the gigantic Rivera holding his wife’s hand in her 1931 painting Frida and Diego Rivera—are well selected, but, given Kahlo’s social and political activism, at least one relevant illustration would have been appropriate for inclusion: for example, Marxism Will Give Health to the Sick (1954). Indeed, a few days before her death in July, 1954, Kahlo got out of bed to appear at a public rally protesting the U.S. involvement in the toppling of the leftist government of Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán in Guatemala.
The bibliography and, especially, the chronology of the major events in Kahlo’s life are very helpful. Art historian Laurie Anderson’s introduction places things in context and raises many questions about Kahlo’s enigmatic persona.