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'Frida Trail' maps out brilliant, tragic life
By DAVID ADAMS, Times Latin America Correspondent
The explosive relationship between Mexican painters Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera is not well known outside the region, but that's about to change with Hollywood's take on their lives, starring Mexican actor Salma Hayek and opening Friday. The publicity about the film, Frida, coupled with successful marketing of Kahlo's signature-style self-portraits -- with thick, batlike eyebrows and downy upper lip -- is making its mark on Mexico City's varied tourist trail. Better known for its Spanish colonial architecture, perched at perilous angles due to sinking subsoil, Mexico City also has a Bohemian side. Visitors can glimpse this by following the "Frida Trail." This includes the brightly painted Casa Azul (Blue House), where Kahlo was born and later lived with Rivera in Coyoacan, a quaint cobblestoned neighborhood, as well as a museum on the city's southern outskirts of Xochimilco.
Born in 1907, Kahlo lived a life marked by tragedies, including childhood polio that withered one leg and a horrific bus accident in which she was impaled by an iron bar. That left her with irreparable damage to her spine, and she was also unable to bear children. She never recovered from these injuries, dying bed-ridden 30 years later, in 1954 at 47. Making matters worse, her spiritual guide and the love of her life, Rivera, was an inveterate philanderer. Due to her incapacitation, she lived much of her life in the Blue House. On her bed now sits the uncomfortable plaster-cast corset she wore to keep her back straight. By the end of her life, she was painting self-portraits on her back, lying in bed and looking into a mirror on the ceiling. On her pillow are sewn the words "Don't forget me, my love," addressed to the unfaithful Rivera. Art, which Kahlo taught herself, would prove to be her escape. Some of her works, which are spread throughout the house, tell her life story, often in crude and unflattering portraits, revealing her innermost pain. A communist who also had female lovers, she hid nothing in her works. Her bedroom walls are covered with pictures of Mao, Stalin and Trotsky.
Her scathing attacks on Rivera have made her something of a feminist icon. Some of her drawings are more a statement of anger than a work of art. For example, Ruina (Ruin), drawn in 1947, is an almost geometric drawing of what she imagines is the inside of Rivera's head. Three treacherous-looking eyes sit on top of 20 tree branches, each representing lovers in Rivera's life. "She was very unfortunate in her life. She suffered a lot," said Enrique Elenes, a 45-year-old bank clerk from Sinaloa state who recently visited the museum for the first time. He said that most Mexicans know about Kahlo only through her relationship with Rivera, whose gigantic murals are among the most popular art works in Mexico. Elenes said he recently read a novel in which Kahlo was mentioned, and it made him curious. "We are only just learning about the life Frida had," Elenes said. "Maybe Hollywood will give her the fame she deserves." Before Rivera's death in 1957, he made one of his patrons, Dolores Olmedo, the trustee of his works and personal belongings. She converted part of her sprawling estate home in Xochimilco into a museum that holds 137 works by Rivera and the 25 Kahlo pieces. Olmedo, who died this summer, met Rivera while he was working on a mural. She was 14 years old, and Rivera asked Olmedo's mother for permission to do a portrait of the young girl. He wound up sketching a nude study of her. Some have accused Olmedo of marginalizing Kahlo's talent out of jealousy. In interviews before her death, Olmedo brushed off talk of her rivalry with Kahlo, although she acknowledged they had had differences. "I did not get along with Frida," Olmedo said in one interview. "Well, she liked women, and I liked men, and I was not a communist. But Frida is a good artist, and she suffered a lot." IF YOU GOBy SUSAN KAYE The Coyoacan neighborhood is quite walkable. The Frida Kahlo Museum is near the plaza, at Londres 247 Street; it is closed on Monday. There are free, self-guided maps at the Tourist Center in the Municipal Building on the north side of Hidalgo Plaza. All sites on the map are within walking distance, but if you do hire a cab, avoid the roving VW street cabs and rely only on radio-dispatched taxis. Best restaurant is Los Danzantes on the plaza; the lunch crowd arrives around 3 p.m. Shop for handicrafts at National Museum of Popular Culture, a half-block off the plaza. Coyoacan draws crowds of Mexico City locals on the weekend, when the plazas fill with food vendors, music and events for children. -- Colorado freelance writer Susan Kaye has visited Mexico City about 20 times.
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