March 12, 2012 • 20 mins
Frida Kahlo contracted polio at the age of 6. Undeterred, she went on to have an active childhood and adolescence. After a tragic accident left her bedridden for more than three months, she began to pursue painting and politics.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you missed in
history class? From house stuff works dot com. Hello, and
welcome to the podcast. I'm to bling a chuck rewarding
and I'm fair. And in two thousand nine, a couple
(00:22):
of antique dealers from Mexico, Carlos and Laticia Neiola, stirred
up a big controversy in the art world. They'd for
some time had in their possession a huge, previously unknown
trove of material that belonged to renowned twentieth century artists,
free to Carlo Now, who's probably, of course, considered one
of the most famous painters ever, certainly one of the
(00:44):
most iconic painters absolutely, And this trove that they have
includes paintings, letters, diaries complete with sexually explicit doodles, recipes,
and other keepsakes. So this trope sounds pretty interesting, but
the way they came by it is admittedly a little
bit sketchy. The couple say that they bought it from
a lawyer who got it from a wood carver who
(01:06):
worked for Diego Rivera, CALO's husband, and they have a
letter to the wood carver from Calo, offering the stash
to him as payment for some work that he'd done,
And this is kind of one of their one of
the proofs that they have of it. Initially, nobody really
paid much attention to the fact that they had this,
But just when Princeton Architectural Press was about to publish
a book featuring the fines called Finding Free to Callo
(01:29):
Free to, experts from all over stepped forward to protest. Yeah.
According to a article in Newsweek by Jenny Yabrof, twelve
Calo experts signed this official letter denouncing the new collection,
and the trust that controls Klo's copyright even filed a
criminal complaint asking the Mexican government to investigate the fines
(01:51):
and to ultimately try to block the book's publication. So
we're gonna be talking a little bit more about how
this situation has turned out in the second part of
this two part podcast, but for now, we want to
consider why are so many people convinced that the material
is fake in the first place, especially since scientific testing
has dated it to Kala's lifetime and a handwriting expert
(02:13):
says that the writing in the letters does match kolos
so Yabrov's article goes a little bit into the process
of art authentication, which is really interesting, and she discusses
how experts will often base their opinions regarding the works
authenticity on whether it feels like something the artists would do, or,
in the case of letters, whether it just sounds like
(02:34):
something here. She would say, so, that sounds pretty inexact,
but at least in Colo's case, there might be something
to these sort of touchy feely verdicts because her works
are so much about her. I mean, of about a
hundred and forty three authenticated paintings, fifty five of those
or self portraits. So, of course all of this attention
(02:56):
is also partly because Frieda's work is just so high
they acclaimed, and she's even developed kind of a cult
following over the past couple of decades. Freedom maniacs, as
Stephanie Mensmer calls Calo fans, and an article for The
Washington Monthly seemed to be at least as interested in
Kolo's life story as they are in her art. You
know all the details and interesting facts about her. In fact,
(03:20):
Mensimers suggests that this is why die hard feminists don't
really celebrate Kolo that much, which I find to be
really interesting. And it's because some of her feel some
of them feel that her fame isn't really related to
her work. So in this episode, we want to take
a look at that life story that so many people
are drawn to. It's one that involves politics and even
(03:41):
a touch of glamour and a tumultuous love story. After
we did the Brownings episode, a lot of people were
requesting more love. Yes, so here it is. And um
probably the part that touches people the most just Freeda's
pain and suffering. It's a major part of her personality.
So pain was something that Frieda Callo learned about pretty
(04:02):
early on, even though she started out in a fairly
happy situation. She was born Magdalena Carmen Frieda calo E
Calderon on July six, nineteen o seven, and she was
the third of four daughters, so she came from a
mixed ancestry, to which must have made her stand out
a little bit growing up. Yeah, her father was Guier
Moo Callo, a German jew who had immigrated to Mexico
(04:24):
in eighteen ninety one, and her mother was Matilda Calderon,
a Mexican Catholic whose heritage was a mix of both
Indian and Spanish, and according to an article by Phillis
Tukman in The Smithsonian, Frieda's father really just adored her.
She was his favorite of all his daughters, and he
found her to be very smart and very much like him,
(04:44):
and she doated on him in return. And her relationship
with her mother, though was a little bit more contentious.
Frieda seemed to admire her mom. She thought that she
was smart, but sometimes she thought that her mom could
be a little too fanatically religious and also cruel free
to herself though, was a fairly obedient child, but she
(05:04):
did have quite the quick temper, so the Calo called
her own. Family lived in a house known as Casa
Azul or Blue House, which her father had built in
Koya Khan, an area outside of Mexico City. And it's
significant to know this because it's a place that Frieda
would come back to throughout her life. So she had
her first real experience with adversity at only aged six,
(05:27):
when she contracted polio. We've of course done an episode
on that, so you can, you know, get a better
picture of what that would have been like for her
and her family by listening to that old episode. Frieda
of course survived, but after her bout with polio, her
right leg was thinner than her left and her right
foot was also stunted. But she really didn't let that
(05:48):
beat her, didn't let it stop her in any way. No,
she didn't. She maybe to prove that her disabilities couldn't
keep her down. She became a total tomboy. She played
sports such as soccer, She did boxing, wrestling, swimming, and
she would run around with the boys from her school
instead of learning to clean and cook at home like
the other girls might have been doing. She was also
(06:10):
exposed to art pretty early on. Her father was a photographer,
and he taught her some of the tricks of his trade,
including how to retouch photos, and Frieda also took drawing
lessons from one of her father's pals when she was
growing up. So when she was fifteen years old, she
started at the elite National Preparatory School in Mexico City,
and at that time she was really one of only
(06:32):
a few females studying there. And he might, of course
expect free to college to have been studying art or
something like that. But she was taking science courses like
anatomy and biology because her ultimate goal was to become
a doctor. And of course the things she learned in
these classes, you know, anatomy and biology, might have really
informed her artwork later on and made her pieces more
(06:54):
realistic when it came to human anatomy, that sort of thing.
She was at school when she met d a. Go Rivera,
a man who, as we mentioned, plays a major role
later on in her life story. Now Rivera, just to
give you a little bit of quick background on him.
He was a Mexican born also Mexican born like Frieda,
and about twenty years her senior. He started drawing and
(07:15):
studying art at an early age, and by nineteen oh
seven he'd moved to Europe to study the great masters
like Gogan and Matisset, but he was still searching for
something new, a different style of painting that would allow
him to reach a wide audience and really express his
take on what was going on in the world. So
he returned to Mexico and by nineteen twenty one he
(07:36):
was painting a series of public murals as part of
a government program, and these murals reflected his thoughts about
Mexico and its history and its people. And that's what
he was doing when he met Frieda for the first time.
He was painting, painting a mural in her school's auditorium,
and apparently Colo would play pranks on him while he
was working, things like stealing his lunch, and she would
(07:58):
put soap on the steps next to where he was working.
And you just think of them as this dignified adult cover.
It's hard to imagine these childish pranks of hers. But
she was supposedly known for having this great sense of
humor and for being quite the trickster. So according to
Tukman's article in Rivera's autobiography, he recalls seeing Frieda for
the first time when he was painting one night. He said, quote,
(08:22):
all of a sudden, the door flew open, and a
girl who seemed to be no more than ten or
twelve was propelled inside. She had unusual dignity and self assurance,
and there was a strange fire in her eyes. So
apparently this older, worldly muralist actually noticed Frieda, even though
she was only sixteen at the time. But as far
(08:42):
as we can tell, nothing really happened between them. They
didn't get to know each other at this point, so
Frieda really seemed to be caught up in her studies
and her friends. And she had a boyfriend tu named
Alejandro Gomez Arias. And in nine one of the major
events of her life happens, and she's actually with her boyfriend.
(09:02):
When it happened, she was eighteen years old and they
were riding home from school one day when a trolley
car crashed into their bus, and in the accident, a
metal handraill broke off and stabbed Frieda's body, basically going
into her abdomen and exiting through her vagina. When it
was all said and done, her spinal column was broken
(09:23):
in three places, her collar bone, some ribs, and her
pelvis were all broken, and then her right leg, the
one that had already been affected by polio, was broken
in eleven places. Her right foot was dislocated and crashed,
and a lot of people died in this crash. I mean,
you can imagine if her injuries were that bad, and
initially doctors thought that Frieda wouldn't survive either. She had
(09:47):
an operation, she was in the hospital for about a
month and then finally she got to go home, but
her recovery process after that was still a long long
time and quite painful to it was not at all
comfortable at lessoned for months, and she had to spend
the whole time encased in these plaster courses, basically like
(10:07):
a body cast. Obviously, she couldn't go back to school
while she was in that state, so that is when
she started painting. The way she described it, she started
painting quote without giving it any particular thought. It was
just sort of something for her to do to pass
the time. And she basically taught herself. I mean she did,
as we mentioned wed, she'd had those drawing lessons and everything,
(10:29):
but this was kind of her foray into painting, and
she did it from her sick bed. Her mom had
a special easel rigged up for her and had a
mirror attached to the underside of her beds canopy. And
so that's how her self portraits started. And of course
Frieda hadn't been to Europe to practice art and to
study the masters as Rivera had, but she must have
(10:51):
had some knowledge of them because she would incorporate little
bits of their styles into her own paintings. Again, according
to Tukman's article, she gave her boyfriend a painting of
herself that showed her with a swan like neck and
tapered fingers, and she called it your bought of Chili.
It's really easy to imagine her in bed, staring at
(11:11):
this mirror all day, every day for months and trying
to heal. And it's also easy to imagine that that
would lead to a lot of introspection. And it seemed
that during this time, Frieda really started to see herself differently,
or at least noticed some fundamental changes about herself. She
wrote in a letter quote, I was a child who
went about in a world of colors. My friends, my
(11:32):
companions became women. Slowly I became old in instance. And
maybe it was partially a result of seeing this change
in herself. But as she recovered, Frieda, who had always
had sort of a leftist streak, began to get more
interested in Mexican politics. She struck up a friendship with
Tina Bedotti, an Italian photographer who was a member of
(11:53):
the Communist Party, and she ended up joining the Communist
Party herself. According to PBS, freed To actually started telling
people that her birthday was July six, nineteen ten, rather
than ninet seven, So that's why you might see some
discrepancies in her birthday if you're researching her on your own.
And she probably chose that year because it coincided with
(12:13):
the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution, so you can see
how much she how ardent she was about her political beliefs,
and how much she kind of internalized those. So of
course Frieda's entrance into the political world also reformed some
old connections. So an acquaintance from Frieda's past also happened
to be Communist, and that was of course the muralist Rivera,
(12:37):
and that was sort of what his working with murals
was all about in the first place. It was a
rejection of elite diesel art and fancy galleries and museums
and the paintings that rich people would have in their
homes that weren't as accessible for everyday people. You know,
you have a mural in a public building, anybody can
see it. And um Rivera also became a leading proponent
(12:58):
of a post revolution nary movement called the Mexican and Dad,
which rejected Western European influences seen among the aristocracy for
all things considered authentically Mexican. So kind of like air
quotes there and then running in the same political circles.
Perhaps it was only inevitable that Rivera and Frieda would
of course cross paths again, especially if she had made
(13:21):
such an impression on him the first go round. And
this meeting or re meeting probably happened at a party
given by Frida's friend Medoti, who we mentioned in Night.
This time, though, when Rivera and Freedom met, the two
did start up a romantic relationship. By all accounts, they
were truly the odd couple, at least as far as
(13:41):
their appearances were concerned. He was six ft tall and
three hundred pounds and really kind of awkward looking, and
she was ninety eight pounds and five ft three, so
very small and also considered quite pretty. And we've already
mentioned the twenty one year age difference between them, so
that was a big thing too. Even more if you
go off of Frieda's fake birthday, Yeah, that's true that
(14:03):
her fake age would have put them further apart. But
when Rivera started courting Frieda, she was still living at
her parents house, Casa Zul, and so he'd stopped by
under the ruse of critiquing her paintings. After all, he
was by this time, the most celebrated artist in Mexico
and she was still unknown, so it would make sense
that she would want his opinion and tips maybe on
(14:26):
her art. Their friends and family were skeptical of their relationship,
but it wouldn't take long before Frieda would roll pretty
much head on into what she described as the second
accident of her life, which was her marriage to Rivera.
So that is it for this part of the podcast
on Frieda Callo. But next time we're gonna give you
(14:46):
a little bit more on this accident number two that
we just mentioned, Diego and Frieda's travels into America, their
tumultuous love, and of course Frieda's art. We're going to
talk a little bit more about those portraits we've been
mentioning those eyebrows. I'm sure you all want to go
and talking about the eyebrows, yes, And we'll also talk
more about the controversy of the recent free to call
(15:08):
of fines. So with that, I think we will go
ahead and move on to listener mail. Well, we haven't
done too much listener mail in a while, so I
think we're going to read a few emails this time
to make up for it. The first one is from
listener Jill, and she says, hello, ladies. I just made
a trip to Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky. On
(15:31):
the historic tour, visitors get to see booths Amphitheater, which
is a large platform close to the top of the
cave that looks out over a huge open part of
the tunnel. The ranger recounted how the actor Edwin Booth
once performed Hamlet from the platform to large crowds below.
He also told the story of how one Booth killed
the Lincoln and another save to Lincoln. Coincidentally, I listened
(15:52):
to the Booth Conspiracy episode on the way home from
the trip, which is so cool. I love the idea
of getting to see Booth at Mammoth Cave for forming
his signature role of Hamlet. Imagine when he picks up
the skull or something from a cave. For been there
but I haven't either, but it sounds like a cool
place to see a play. Actually, so, we got a
lot of mail about the Booth Conspiracy episode. Actually I
(16:14):
kind of figured we did. We would get a lot
of mail because there are so many Lincoln fans out there.
But I wanted to share one interesting point that a
listener Patrick wrote in to share with us. He said
Booth wanted to kill General Grant, as you may know,
but as everyone knows, he did not attend the play
or Booth did not come up with a plan for
(16:35):
the event. Uh. The interesting reason why why then rants
did not attend is that Julia Dent wanted to see
her children and leave Washington as soon as possible that afternoon,
and that's what Grant told Lincoln. But more interestingly, many
believed Julia did not care for Mary Todd Lincoln and
did not want to attend the play with her. I
kind of had wondered about that. They went through a
(16:57):
few theater guest invitations before where they finally settled on
their port engaged couple. Um, and it seems like, you know,
people would be happened to go to a play with Lincoln.
I would jump the chance to go to a play
with the President and his wife. Yeah, I mean it
sounds like a sounds like it would be an opportunity
of a lifetime, although clearly things didn't go as planned.
(17:19):
Now we're going to switch gears just a little bit
and getting our way back machine because we have a
listener mail here a very recent one from last week,
but it is about an episode that we did a
year ago on Paul Morphy, Chess Champion. And it's from
Sarah in New Orleans, and she says, I'm a longtime listener,
first time writer, inner, and a local TV producer here
(17:40):
in New Orleans. When y'all did your Paul Morphy podcast
back in June, I was completely surprised and delighted to
hear that arguably the greatest chess player in the whole
world hailed from right here in New Orleans. Anyway, y'all
inspired me to do a short package for our five
PM news about Paul Morphy. I figured that a lot
of New Orleaning is, like myself, had no idea who
(18:01):
he was, and I wanted to spread the word. In
doing the research, I discovered lots of cool things about
Paul Morphy and things that maybe y'all didn't get to mention.
The way I see it, he was kind of the
forest scump of the nineteenth century New Orleans, being that
he managed to cross paths with more than a few
major historical people in icons. For example, he was born
(18:22):
in the house that PGT. Beauregard, a major general of
the Civil War Confederacy later lived in. At nine, he
defeated Winfield Scott at chess three times in a row,
and later he lived in and died in the house
that is now Brennan's restaurant, arguably the most famous and
iconic restaurant in New Orleans. And she sent us a link.
Maybe we'll post it on Facebook or something so you
(18:43):
guys can check out her package that she put together.
It's two minutes long. And um, thanks for writing and Sarah,
it's really cool to know that are telling this story
inspired other people to tell this story. Yeah, I liked
her segment to it featured a chess teacher in New
Orleans and a couple of boys who were who are
learning the art of chess, just like pal Morphy would
(19:03):
have um many many years ago. And she said she
might learn to play chess from that chess teacher that
she interviewed, same aspiration after we did the Palm Morphy
episode that it didn't quite play out. Yeah, playing chests
for me is like knitting. It's one of those things
that I learned to do. I've learned to do multiple
(19:25):
times over the course of my lifetime that continue to
drop it. Yes, exactly. It's a phase that I get
into for a couple of weeks and then I fall
out of it, So maybe I'll take it up again someday.
So thank you all for writing in sharing so much
stuff about the Lincoln assassination. And yeah, you can always
email us about really old episodes too. We like to
hear things like you've produced a news segment based on
(19:48):
a podcast. That's pretty cool. So we are at History
Podcast at Discovery dot com. We're also on Twitter at
missed in History, and we are on Facebook. And if
you get inspired in the meantime before part you off,
the free to CALLO episode comes along. To learn a
little bit more about famous artists. We have a whole
slew of articles about famous artists on our website, I
(20:08):
mean Picasso, Jackson, Pollock, Sally even freed To and you
can look them up by visiting our homepage at www
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(20:32):
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Are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you missed in
history class? From house stuff works dot com. Hello, and
welcome to the podcast. I'm to bling a chuck rewarding
and I'm fair. And in two thousand nine, a couple
(00:22):
of antique dealers from Mexico, Carlos and Laticia Neiola, stirred
up a big controversy in the art world. They'd for
some time had in their possession a huge, previously unknown
trove of material that belonged to renowned twentieth century artists,
free to Carlo Now, who's probably, of course, considered one
of the most famous painters ever, certainly one of the
(00:44):
most iconic painters absolutely, And this trove that they have
includes paintings, letters, diaries complete with sexually explicit doodles, recipes,
and other keepsakes. So this trope sounds pretty interesting, but
the way they came by it is admittedly a little
bit sketchy. The couple say that they bought it from
a lawyer who got it from a wood carver who
(01:06):
worked for Diego Rivera, CALO's husband, and they have a
letter to the wood carver from Calo, offering the stash
to him as payment for some work that he'd done,
And this is kind of one of their one of
the proofs that they have of it. Initially, nobody really
paid much attention to the fact that they had this,
But just when Princeton Architectural Press was about to publish
a book featuring the fines called Finding Free to Callo
(01:29):
Free to, experts from all over stepped forward to protest. Yeah.
According to a article in Newsweek by Jenny Yabrof, twelve
Calo experts signed this official letter denouncing the new collection,
and the trust that controls Klo's copyright even filed a
criminal complaint asking the Mexican government to investigate the fines
(01:51):
and to ultimately try to block the book's publication. So
we're gonna be talking a little bit more about how
this situation has turned out in the second part of
this two part podcast, but for now, we want to
consider why are so many people convinced that the material
is fake in the first place, especially since scientific testing
has dated it to Kala's lifetime and a handwriting expert
(02:13):
says that the writing in the letters does match kolos
so Yabrov's article goes a little bit into the process
of art authentication, which is really interesting, and she discusses
how experts will often base their opinions regarding the works
authenticity on whether it feels like something the artists would do, or,
in the case of letters, whether it just sounds like
(02:34):
something here. She would say, so, that sounds pretty inexact,
but at least in Colo's case, there might be something
to these sort of touchy feely verdicts because her works
are so much about her. I mean, of about a
hundred and forty three authenticated paintings, fifty five of those
or self portraits. So, of course all of this attention
(02:56):
is also partly because Frieda's work is just so high
they acclaimed, and she's even developed kind of a cult
following over the past couple of decades. Freedom maniacs, as
Stephanie Mensmer calls Calo fans, and an article for The
Washington Monthly seemed to be at least as interested in
Kolo's life story as they are in her art. You
know all the details and interesting facts about her. In fact,
(03:20):
Mensimers suggests that this is why die hard feminists don't
really celebrate Kolo that much, which I find to be
really interesting. And it's because some of her feel some
of them feel that her fame isn't really related to
her work. So in this episode, we want to take
a look at that life story that so many people
are drawn to. It's one that involves politics and even
(03:41):
a touch of glamour and a tumultuous love story. After
we did the Brownings episode, a lot of people were
requesting more love. Yes, so here it is. And um
probably the part that touches people the most just Freeda's
pain and suffering. It's a major part of her personality.
So pain was something that Frieda Callo learned about pretty
(04:02):
early on, even though she started out in a fairly
happy situation. She was born Magdalena Carmen Frieda calo E
Calderon on July six, nineteen o seven, and she was
the third of four daughters, so she came from a
mixed ancestry, to which must have made her stand out
a little bit growing up. Yeah, her father was Guier
Moo Callo, a German jew who had immigrated to Mexico
(04:24):
in eighteen ninety one, and her mother was Matilda Calderon,
a Mexican Catholic whose heritage was a mix of both
Indian and Spanish, and according to an article by Phillis
Tukman in The Smithsonian, Frieda's father really just adored her.
She was his favorite of all his daughters, and he
found her to be very smart and very much like him,
(04:44):
and she doated on him in return. And her relationship
with her mother, though was a little bit more contentious.
Frieda seemed to admire her mom. She thought that she
was smart, but sometimes she thought that her mom could
be a little too fanatically religious and also cruel free
to herself though, was a fairly obedient child, but she
(05:04):
did have quite the quick temper, so the Calo called
her own. Family lived in a house known as Casa
Azul or Blue House, which her father had built in
Koya Khan, an area outside of Mexico City. And it's
significant to know this because it's a place that Frieda
would come back to throughout her life. So she had
her first real experience with adversity at only aged six,
(05:27):
when she contracted polio. We've of course done an episode
on that, so you can, you know, get a better
picture of what that would have been like for her
and her family by listening to that old episode. Frieda
of course survived, but after her bout with polio, her
right leg was thinner than her left and her right
foot was also stunted. But she really didn't let that
(05:48):
beat her, didn't let it stop her in any way. No,
she didn't. She maybe to prove that her disabilities couldn't
keep her down. She became a total tomboy. She played
sports such as soccer, She did boxing, wrestling, swimming, and
she would run around with the boys from her school
instead of learning to clean and cook at home like
the other girls might have been doing. She was also
(06:10):
exposed to art pretty early on. Her father was a photographer,
and he taught her some of the tricks of his trade,
including how to retouch photos, and Frieda also took drawing
lessons from one of her father's pals when she was
growing up. So when she was fifteen years old, she
started at the elite National Preparatory School in Mexico City,
and at that time she was really one of only
(06:32):
a few females studying there. And he might, of course
expect free to college to have been studying art or
something like that. But she was taking science courses like
anatomy and biology because her ultimate goal was to become
a doctor. And of course the things she learned in
these classes, you know, anatomy and biology, might have really
informed her artwork later on and made her pieces more
(06:54):
realistic when it came to human anatomy, that sort of thing.
She was at school when she met d a. Go Rivera,
a man who, as we mentioned, plays a major role
later on in her life story. Now Rivera, just to
give you a little bit of quick background on him.
He was a Mexican born also Mexican born like Frieda,
and about twenty years her senior. He started drawing and
(07:15):
studying art at an early age, and by nineteen oh
seven he'd moved to Europe to study the great masters
like Gogan and Matisset, but he was still searching for
something new, a different style of painting that would allow
him to reach a wide audience and really express his
take on what was going on in the world. So
he returned to Mexico and by nineteen twenty one he
(07:36):
was painting a series of public murals as part of
a government program, and these murals reflected his thoughts about
Mexico and its history and its people. And that's what
he was doing when he met Frieda for the first time.
He was painting, painting a mural in her school's auditorium,
and apparently Colo would play pranks on him while he
was working, things like stealing his lunch, and she would
(07:58):
put soap on the steps next to where he was working.
And you just think of them as this dignified adult cover.
It's hard to imagine these childish pranks of hers. But
she was supposedly known for having this great sense of
humor and for being quite the trickster. So according to
Tukman's article in Rivera's autobiography, he recalls seeing Frieda for
the first time when he was painting one night. He said, quote,
(08:22):
all of a sudden, the door flew open, and a
girl who seemed to be no more than ten or
twelve was propelled inside. She had unusual dignity and self assurance,
and there was a strange fire in her eyes. So
apparently this older, worldly muralist actually noticed Frieda, even though
she was only sixteen at the time. But as far
(08:42):
as we can tell, nothing really happened between them. They
didn't get to know each other at this point, so
Frieda really seemed to be caught up in her studies
and her friends. And she had a boyfriend tu named
Alejandro Gomez Arias. And in nine one of the major
events of her life happens, and she's actually with her boyfriend.
(09:02):
When it happened, she was eighteen years old and they
were riding home from school one day when a trolley
car crashed into their bus, and in the accident, a
metal handraill broke off and stabbed Frieda's body, basically going
into her abdomen and exiting through her vagina. When it
was all said and done, her spinal column was broken
(09:23):
in three places, her collar bone, some ribs, and her
pelvis were all broken, and then her right leg, the
one that had already been affected by polio, was broken
in eleven places. Her right foot was dislocated and crashed,
and a lot of people died in this crash. I mean,
you can imagine if her injuries were that bad, and
initially doctors thought that Frieda wouldn't survive either. She had
(09:47):
an operation, she was in the hospital for about a
month and then finally she got to go home, but
her recovery process after that was still a long long
time and quite painful to it was not at all
comfortable at lessoned for months, and she had to spend
the whole time encased in these plaster courses, basically like
(10:07):
a body cast. Obviously, she couldn't go back to school
while she was in that state, so that is when
she started painting. The way she described it, she started
painting quote without giving it any particular thought. It was
just sort of something for her to do to pass
the time. And she basically taught herself. I mean she did,
as we mentioned wed, she'd had those drawing lessons and everything,
(10:29):
but this was kind of her foray into painting, and
she did it from her sick bed. Her mom had
a special easel rigged up for her and had a
mirror attached to the underside of her beds canopy. And
so that's how her self portraits started. And of course
Frieda hadn't been to Europe to practice art and to
study the masters as Rivera had, but she must have
(10:51):
had some knowledge of them because she would incorporate little
bits of their styles into her own paintings. Again, according
to Tukman's article, she gave her boyfriend a painting of
herself that showed her with a swan like neck and
tapered fingers, and she called it your bought of Chili.
It's really easy to imagine her in bed, staring at
(11:11):
this mirror all day, every day for months and trying
to heal. And it's also easy to imagine that that
would lead to a lot of introspection. And it seemed
that during this time, Frieda really started to see herself differently,
or at least noticed some fundamental changes about herself. She
wrote in a letter quote, I was a child who
went about in a world of colors. My friends, my
(11:32):
companions became women. Slowly I became old in instance. And
maybe it was partially a result of seeing this change
in herself. But as she recovered, Frieda, who had always
had sort of a leftist streak, began to get more
interested in Mexican politics. She struck up a friendship with
Tina Bedotti, an Italian photographer who was a member of
(11:53):
the Communist Party, and she ended up joining the Communist
Party herself. According to PBS, freed To actually started telling
people that her birthday was July six, nineteen ten, rather
than ninet seven, So that's why you might see some
discrepancies in her birthday if you're researching her on your own.
And she probably chose that year because it coincided with
(12:13):
the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution, so you can see
how much she how ardent she was about her political beliefs,
and how much she kind of internalized those. So of
course Frieda's entrance into the political world also reformed some
old connections. So an acquaintance from Frieda's past also happened
to be Communist, and that was of course the muralist Rivera,
(12:37):
and that was sort of what his working with murals
was all about in the first place. It was a
rejection of elite diesel art and fancy galleries and museums
and the paintings that rich people would have in their
homes that weren't as accessible for everyday people. You know,
you have a mural in a public building, anybody can
see it. And um Rivera also became a leading proponent
(12:58):
of a post revolution nary movement called the Mexican and Dad,
which rejected Western European influences seen among the aristocracy for
all things considered authentically Mexican. So kind of like air
quotes there and then running in the same political circles.
Perhaps it was only inevitable that Rivera and Frieda would
of course cross paths again, especially if she had made
(13:21):
such an impression on him the first go round. And
this meeting or re meeting probably happened at a party
given by Frida's friend Medoti, who we mentioned in Night.
This time, though, when Rivera and Freedom met, the two
did start up a romantic relationship. By all accounts, they
were truly the odd couple, at least as far as
(13:41):
their appearances were concerned. He was six ft tall and
three hundred pounds and really kind of awkward looking, and
she was ninety eight pounds and five ft three, so
very small and also considered quite pretty. And we've already
mentioned the twenty one year age difference between them, so
that was a big thing too. Even more if you
go off of Frieda's fake birthday, Yeah, that's true that
(14:03):
her fake age would have put them further apart. But
when Rivera started courting Frieda, she was still living at
her parents house, Casa Zul, and so he'd stopped by
under the ruse of critiquing her paintings. After all, he
was by this time, the most celebrated artist in Mexico
and she was still unknown, so it would make sense
that she would want his opinion and tips maybe on
(14:26):
her art. Their friends and family were skeptical of their relationship,
but it wouldn't take long before Frieda would roll pretty
much head on into what she described as the second
accident of her life, which was her marriage to Rivera.
So that is it for this part of the podcast
on Frieda Callo. But next time we're gonna give you
(14:46):
a little bit more on this accident number two that
we just mentioned, Diego and Frieda's travels into America, their
tumultuous love, and of course Frieda's art. We're going to
talk a little bit more about those portraits we've been
mentioning those eyebrows. I'm sure you all want to go
and talking about the eyebrows, yes, And we'll also talk
more about the controversy of the recent free to call
(15:08):
of fines. So with that, I think we will go
ahead and move on to listener mail. Well, we haven't
done too much listener mail in a while, so I
think we're going to read a few emails this time
to make up for it. The first one is from
listener Jill, and she says, hello, ladies. I just made
a trip to Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky. On
(15:31):
the historic tour, visitors get to see booths Amphitheater, which
is a large platform close to the top of the
cave that looks out over a huge open part of
the tunnel. The ranger recounted how the actor Edwin Booth
once performed Hamlet from the platform to large crowds below.
He also told the story of how one Booth killed
the Lincoln and another save to Lincoln. Coincidentally, I listened
(15:52):
to the Booth Conspiracy episode on the way home from
the trip, which is so cool. I love the idea
of getting to see Booth at Mammoth Cave for forming
his signature role of Hamlet. Imagine when he picks up
the skull or something from a cave. For been there
but I haven't either, but it sounds like a cool
place to see a play. Actually, so, we got a
lot of mail about the Booth Conspiracy episode. Actually I
(16:14):
kind of figured we did. We would get a lot
of mail because there are so many Lincoln fans out there.
But I wanted to share one interesting point that a
listener Patrick wrote in to share with us. He said
Booth wanted to kill General Grant, as you may know,
but as everyone knows, he did not attend the play
or Booth did not come up with a plan for
(16:35):
the event. Uh. The interesting reason why why then rants
did not attend is that Julia Dent wanted to see
her children and leave Washington as soon as possible that afternoon,
and that's what Grant told Lincoln. But more interestingly, many
believed Julia did not care for Mary Todd Lincoln and
did not want to attend the play with her. I
kind of had wondered about that. They went through a
(16:57):
few theater guest invitations before where they finally settled on
their port engaged couple. Um, and it seems like, you know,
people would be happened to go to a play with Lincoln.
I would jump the chance to go to a play
with the President and his wife. Yeah, I mean it
sounds like a sounds like it would be an opportunity
of a lifetime, although clearly things didn't go as planned.
(17:19):
Now we're going to switch gears just a little bit
and getting our way back machine because we have a
listener mail here a very recent one from last week,
but it is about an episode that we did a
year ago on Paul Morphy, Chess Champion. And it's from
Sarah in New Orleans, and she says, I'm a longtime listener,
first time writer, inner, and a local TV producer here
(17:40):
in New Orleans. When y'all did your Paul Morphy podcast
back in June, I was completely surprised and delighted to
hear that arguably the greatest chess player in the whole
world hailed from right here in New Orleans. Anyway, y'all
inspired me to do a short package for our five
PM news about Paul Morphy. I figured that a lot
of New Orleaning is, like myself, had no idea who
(18:01):
he was, and I wanted to spread the word. In
doing the research, I discovered lots of cool things about
Paul Morphy and things that maybe y'all didn't get to mention.
The way I see it, he was kind of the
forest scump of the nineteenth century New Orleans, being that
he managed to cross paths with more than a few
major historical people in icons. For example, he was born
(18:22):
in the house that PGT. Beauregard, a major general of
the Civil War Confederacy later lived in. At nine, he
defeated Winfield Scott at chess three times in a row,
and later he lived in and died in the house
that is now Brennan's restaurant, arguably the most famous and
iconic restaurant in New Orleans. And she sent us a link.
Maybe we'll post it on Facebook or something so you
(18:43):
guys can check out her package that she put together.
It's two minutes long. And um, thanks for writing and Sarah,
it's really cool to know that are telling this story
inspired other people to tell this story. Yeah, I liked
her segment to it featured a chess teacher in New
Orleans and a couple of boys who were who are
learning the art of chess, just like pal Morphy would
(19:03):
have um many many years ago. And she said she
might learn to play chess from that chess teacher that
she interviewed, same aspiration after we did the Palm Morphy
episode that it didn't quite play out. Yeah, playing chests
for me is like knitting. It's one of those things
that I learned to do. I've learned to do multiple
(19:25):
times over the course of my lifetime that continue to
drop it. Yes, exactly. It's a phase that I get
into for a couple of weeks and then I fall
out of it, So maybe I'll take it up again someday.
So thank you all for writing in sharing so much
stuff about the Lincoln assassination. And yeah, you can always
email us about really old episodes too. We like to
hear things like you've produced a news segment based on
(19:48):
a podcast. That's pretty cool. So we are at History
Podcast at Discovery dot com. We're also on Twitter at
missed in History, and we are on Facebook. And if
you get inspired in the meantime before part you off,
the free to CALLO episode comes along. To learn a
little bit more about famous artists. We have a whole
slew of articles about famous artists on our website, I
(20:08):
mean Picasso, Jackson, Pollock, Sally even freed To and you
can look them up by visiting our homepage at www
dot House to works dot com. Be sure to check
out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join
House to Work staff as we explore the most promising
and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The House top Works iPhone
(20:32):
app has a ride. Download it today on iTunes. Brought
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