Frida Kahlo: From Frida to Señora Diego Rivera

The text below is the excerpt of the book Frida Kahlo (ISBN: 9781783107438), written by Gerry Souter, published by Parkstone International.

On August 21, 1929, Frida Kahlo, age 22, married Diego Rivera, age 42, in a civil ceremony, joined by a few close friends at the Coyoacán City Hall. Looking on as official witnesses were a homeopathic doctor and a wig maker. The judge was a pal of Rivera’s from his student days at the School of Fine Arts. Diego, his hair slicked back, stood up in a plain gray suit, his Stetson hat, wide belt and the Colt revolver in his waistband. Frida had borrowed a long skirt and blouse from her maid and wore a red reboso stole over her shoulders. She barely came up to his shoulder, giving the couple the appearance of a small dark china doll next to an immense porcelain pug dog. After the ceremony they posed for a photographer from La Prensa. The accompanying story read:

Last Wednesday in the nearby village of Coyaocan, the controversial painter Diego Rivera was married to Miss Frida (sic) Kahlo, one of his students. The bride was dressed, as can be seen, in simple street garb, and the painter Rivera as an American without a vest. The marriage was not at all pompous, but carried out in an extremely cordial atmosphere with all modesty, without ostentation and minus ceremonious pretentiousness. The newlyweds were extensively congratulated after the marriage by some intimate friends.

And then the party shifted to La Casa Azul. Matilde Kahlo still fumed, muttering that Rivera now looked like a “fat farmer” – an improvement over the “fat toad”. Lupe Marín had also been invited and after a liberal sampling of tequila thrust her hands under Frida’s dress and hauled it up.

“Do you see those two canes?” Marín screeched. “That’s what Diego’s going to have to put up with and he used to have my legs!” She hoisted her own skirt, showing off her shapely gams for comparison. Frida made a grab for her. Friends restrained the two women and Frida bolted from the room in a fury.

Diego, of course, was delighted to see two women he had bedded and wedded fighting over him and to celebrate the occasion headed for the bar. His gay mood continued into the wee hours whereupon he drew his trusty Colt revolver and, aiming through a boozy fog, began blazing away. Guests sought cover until the pistol’s hammer clicked empty on spent cartridges.

Frida was fuming and did not spend the night with him. In fact she didn’t move into his house at 104 Paseo de la Reforma for several days.

Though not known at the time, this wedding and its aftermath would be a microcosm of the rest of their lives together.

Señora Rivera began setting up housekeeping in his house as Diego was appointed director of the San Carlos Academy, his youthful alma mater. Within a couple of weeks Diego’s reforms of the school’s curriculum met with a sour reception and he was summarily requested to leave the campus. At that time, he accepted a commission to create a series of murals in the National Palace which were to form a visual history of Mexico. The job was huge and he returned to it many times over the following years. It required five years just to complete the stairwell. The palace courtyard mural wasn’t begun until 1942.

Continuing in her role as the good wife, Frida reconciled with Lupe Marín who showed her how to prepare Diego’s favourite mole, rich puddings and other dishes that kept up his energy during ten to twelve hour work days. As Lupe had done, Frida brought Rivera his lunch at the scaffolding each day. With her duties as Rivera’s doting wife claiming more of her time, she virtually stopped painting. In 1929, however, she did manage to creatively put her psychological house in order. One canvas seems to mark a step in distancing herself from the cause of her physical turmoil. She painted The Bus.

There is nothing dramatic here, no re-enactment, or sentimental rehashing, or even any cursing of the fates. It is an interior view of a bus with six passengers sitting on the side bench in front of the windows: a shopping mother, a plumber in overalls, a barefoot Indita with a baby, a young boy, a fair-haired gringo in a western suit and porkpie hat, and a young Mexican girl in a western dress. They face us without seeing us, each with their own thoughts. It’s as if Frida can ride the bus again without fear; these anonymous sitters are portraits from life and Frida is getting on with her own life as well.

The other Painting, on masonite, is entitled Self-Portrait “Time Flies”. In this self-portrait, she gazes at us wearing a vulnerable white top trimmed in lace with a heavy Indian jade necklace around her neck. Exceptional antique earrings dangle from each lobe. Her expression is direct, but with a hint of a smile as though waiting for a photographer to click the shutter before dissolving into laughter. A cloud of words have been written interpreting the symbolism of the climbing airplane seen through the black-draped balcony window behind her head, or the significance of the alarm clock on the wooden stand behind her left shoulder. Knowing the place she was in during 1929, the upward turn in her fortunes, a new man in her life, a feeling of confidence in her improving technique and seasoned with her natural ebullience, Frida Kahlo could just as well be enjoying a visual joke, a lightening up: time flies.

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