Frida Kahlo for Artists: 7 Creative Lessons From the Life of a Maverick

By Thea Fiore-Bloom, PhD

 

Frida Kahlo was far more than an iconic painter.

Her life offers artists enduring lessons in resilience, originality, courage, and the transformation of personal experience into powerful creative work.

In this piece, we’ll explore seven ways Frida’s extraordinary life can inspire your own artistic journey.

I’ve chosen seven lesser-known moments from Frida Kahlo’s life and paired each one with a creative lesson for artists today. These stories reveal not only the person behind the famous paintings, but the qualities that helped her develop such a distinctive artistic voice.

So let’s discover what our own creative lives can learn from this remarkable Mexican maverick.

 

 

Little-Known Frida Fact 1

Kahlo Was Pre-Med

Did you know Kahlo began her study of medicine in 1922 at Mexico’s brainy, mostly male, National Preparatory School?

A tragic accident derailed the brilliant Kahlo’s initial dream of becoming a doctor.

But Kahlo’s time studying medicine and the body in her pre-painting years wasn’t wasted.

Frida’s study of medicine and medical illustration enabled her to communicate the failings of her own body on canvas with force.

This was a tremendous asset to Kahlo as an artist.

Two examples of her powerful use of anatomical illustration are:

•  El Aborto (The Abortion)
• Las Dos Fridas (The Two Fridas)

Kahlo Tip #1 for Creatives

None of Your Past is Wasted

Remember, all the schooling and all the passions you have for anything outside of school can inform and inspire your art.

Any job you’ve had (no matter how boring you may think it was or is) is valuable. It can be a potentially glorious gizmo tucked into your artist’s bag of tricks.

Say you’re a wanna-be, big installation artist.

But you’ve spent years working tirelessly as a taxidermist for hunters.

You’re depressed because taxidermy couldn’t possibly be part of creating great art that sells, right?

Mega artists Damien Hirst, Claire Morgan, Kate Clark, Cai Guo-Qiang, or Mark Dion (who all have used taxidermy in installation pieces) would tell you otherwise.

None of your past is wasted.

Put your past to work for you.

It just might be the magic lasso that pulls you right into your accidentally ingenious future.

 

 

Little-Known Frida Fact 2

Kahlo Was A Fighter – Literally

Many of us have heard of Kahlo’s tragic 1925 trolley crash.

But did you know that by the time the accident occurred, Kahlo had already survived three other tragic events?  

Kahlo had already survived Polio.

And Kahlo had also possibly survived Spina Bifida.

And then there was that trolley accident before her nineteenth birthday (Herrera, 37).

Her father, Guillermo, wisely had her take up boxing in her youth, post-polio.

 

It helped her strengthen her body and spirit. 

Frida even learned to wrestle to recover her confidence then as well.

Kahlo painted her way through several long convalescences in her life.

After the trolley accident, her mother, Matilde, thoughtfully hung a mirror in the canopy of her sickbed.

Thus began Kahlo’s lifelong practice of employing that mirror to create self-portraits while bedridden.

Kahlo didn’t apologize for her physical infirmities.

Instead, she dared to document them in detail.

“I’ve done my paintings well, not quickly but patiently, said Kahlo, “and they have a message of pain in them.”

 

 

Kahlo Tip #2 for Creatives

Let Art Help You Endure The Tragic Events In Your Life

None of us is immune to the failings of the body.

If you are in the midst of a health crisis or chronic illness, remember what George Braque said:

“Art is a wound turned into light.”

– Georges Braque

When we are hurting, the act of creating can turn our attention away from pain and toward the big picture.

Kahlo herself said, “At the end of the day, we can endure much more than we think we can.”

But exactly how can you let your art help you endure whatever you are going through?

 

 

Little-Known Frida Fact #3

Kahlo Was Once Covered in Blood and Glitter

Kahlo’s old boyfriend described exactly how he found Frida after he managed to pull himself out from under the bus in the streetcar collision.

Frida was lying prone, nearly naked, her body spattered in blood and covered in gold glitter.

 

One of Frida’s fellow passengers (possibly a house painter) was carrying a bag of gold powder or glitter that exploded at the moment of impact.

It floated down over her wounded body.

Kahlo biographer Martha Zamora (author of The Brush of Anguish) reports that bystanders in the street cried out:

“¡Ayuda para la pequeña bailarina!”

(Help for the little ballerina!).

True events in the life of the archetypal, goddess-like Frida Kahlo are so tragic, surreal, or beautiful that one could mistake them for passages from a magical realism novel by Isabel Allende or Gabriel García Márquez.

Kahlo Tip #3 For Creatives

Become a Magical Realist

What was the magical realism moment in your own childhood or adult life?

Give yourself time to ponder this.

You don’t have to have the answer now.

Eventually, an odd cinematic circumstance from your own past will surface from memory.

Make a piece of art about the event.

Or make art about the objects, symbols, or dreams connected to that important positive or negative happening in your life.

That’s what Frida would do.

 

 

Little-Known Frida Fact #4

Diego Wasn’t the Only One Playing The Field

“I have suffered two serious accidents in my life, one in which a streetcar ran over me…the other accident is Diego.”

“Diego was by far the worst,” wrote Frida.

Diego Rivera (Kahlo’s famous muralist husband) sure seemed to be a narcissist and an omnivore who devoured women. 

He had open affairs with an astonishing assortment of women.

Diego’s lovers were screen stars, art models, and friends of the couple.

But the one Kahlo claimed hurt the most was the affair Rivera had with Kahlo’s closest sister and confidante, Cristina.

It’s not surprising, then, that Frida is sometimes painted as the long-suffering, innocent bride of the wicked Diego.

Yet in actuality, Kahlo was no Penelope waiting for decades in virgin martyrdom for the return of her Odysseus.

Eventually, she gave almost as good as she got in the infidelity department.

The intelligent, elegant, sensual, funny, enchanting, beautiful, and bawdy Kahlo relished affairs with a veritable who’s who of great male and female artists and thinkers of the 20^th century.

 

Kahlo’s Long List of Lovers Included…

Kahlo’s lovers included entertainer/activist Josephine Baker,  designer Isamu Noguchi, and Marxist revolutionary and theorist Leon Trotsky.

 

Not to mention that she enjoyed an intimate 10-year affair with Nickolas Muray, a famous photographer and champion fencer.

Muray took brilliant images of Kahlo throughout their decade together.

The cornucopia of Diego and Frida’s friends and lovers probably alternately hurt and helped the creative lives of the luminous couple.

Kahlo Tip #4 For Creatives

Ask Yourself: Is it Passion or Resistance?

Is the trouble we may want to get into at the moment fueling our creative fire, or is it a fancy form of resistance?

If you are curious about how to get better at distinguishing between the two, read Steven Pressfield’s classic book The War of Art.

 

Little-Known Frida Fact #5

Unlike Us, Frida Kahlo Had The Cajones To Admit She Was Strange

Kahlo didn’t deny being (what boring folks might consider) strange.

 

“I used to think I was the strangest person in the world,” wrote Kahlo. “But then I thought there are so many people in the world, there must be someone just like me who feels bizarre and flawed in the same ways I do. I would imagine her, and imagine that she must be out there thinking of me, too. Well, I hope that if you are out there and read this, know that, yes, it’s true I’m here, and I’m just as strange as you.”

– Frida Kahlo

 

Like us, Frida was, at times, frightened, vulnerable, and insecure.

But unlike us, she practiced what I call radical self-acceptance.

In time, she boldly exaggerated her mustache and unibrow in her paintings; she thought they were lovely.

Rather than mask her indigenous roots, Kahlo celebrated them with her embroidered clothing and Indian jewelry.

Instead of hiding her problems with her back, legs, or her foot, Kahlo depicted them all in detail in her artwork.

Kahlo didn’t apologize for being female, being an artist, and being brilliant.

Nor did she apologize for being a bisexual, a Mexican, and a political revolutionary.

Frida’s owning of the myriad ways she didn’t fit in led to her becoming a household word.

Why?

Because, as pioneering psychologist Carl Rogers said, “What is most personal is most universal.”

(The Charmed Studio has an entire post on the benefits of letting go of approval for artists.)

 

Kahlo Tip #5 For Creatives

Your Ideal Audience Will Appreciate Your Emotional Bravery

One of our jobs as artists is to explore the realm of the personal and express it for those who can’t or won’t, and to do it no matter how society mocks or shames us for it.

Frida is living proof that what you may consider ridiculously personal, foolish, or shameful about your physical being, your past, or what you feel called to make art about may be the very thing your future ideal audience will passionately relate to and be thankful for.

If you’re like me and still find it too terrifying to display big-time vulnerability in your public work, take heart.

You can always test drive expressing pain or perceived shortcomings in an art journal.

The Diary of Frida Kahlo: An Intimate Self-Portrait by Alas Rojas lets you peek inside the covers of one of Kahlo’s visual diaries.

 

Little-Known Frida Fact 6

 Kahlo Made Her Greatest Work

Kahlo Made Her Greatest Work After the Divorce from Diego

While researching my dissertation, I noticed that Kahlo created her largest and most critically acclaimed works around the time of her divorce in 1940.

The historic Las Dos Fridas (The Two Fridas) was accomplished shortly after the couple filed for divorce in 1939.

The monumental La Mesa Herida (The Wounded Table) soon followed in 1940.

While divorced, Kahlo also created the now-famous Autorretrato con Collar de Espinas (Self-Portrait with Hummingbird and Thorn Necklace).

As well as Autorretrato con Pelo Corto (Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair).

She remarried Diego Rivera within a year, and her work never went large-scale again.

 

Kahlo Tip #6 For Creatives

Betrayal Has Its Boons

If you are an artist passing through your own face-down-gravel-drag (like a divorce), keep in mind that Kahlo’s most fantastic and introspective artworks came on the heels of romantic devastation and betrayal.

If you’re a big Frida fan passing through heartbreak, definitely consider a physical pilgrimage to Mexico City.

My 3-day pilgrimage to Kahlo country during my “gravel drag” altered the trajectory of my life; it might inspire and comfort you as well.

First stop: A scamper through Museo of Arte Moderno, where you can see the jaw-dropping Las Dos Fridas in person.

Second stop: Museo Frida Kahlo, aka Casa Azul, Kahlo’s extraordinary home in Coyoacán, thirty minutes outside of Mexico City.

It’s a life-changing museum for so many women artists I have interviewed.

We will finish with this last sad and surprising fact about Frida’s life.

 

Little-Known Frida Fact #7

Frida Kahlo’s Death Demolished Diego

Rivera may have acted at times like Kahlo wasn’t of primary importance to him.

But what happened after Kahlo died tells a different story.

According to Hayden Herrera, art historian and author of Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo:

“When Frida died, Rivera was like: “[…] a soul cut in two. His great frog face sagged into folds of age and sorrow. He dug the nails into the palms of his clenched fists over and over again until they bled.”

According to friends and family, Diego seemed to age 20 years in the weeks following  Kahlo’s burial.

Rivera wrote in his autobiography: “July 13^th, 1954, was the most tragic day of my life.

“I had lost my beloved Frida forever…too late now, I realized that the most wonderful part of my life had been my love for Frida.”

Rivera lived barely three more years and then passed into history himself in 1957.

 

Kahlo Tip #7 For Creatives

Leave Fame to the Fates

You never know how important you are to another or how impactful your art will be to future readers, viewers, or listeners.

Kahlo was an under-sung artist in her lifetime. 

Actually, she didn’t become internationally known until decades after her death.

It was then that the feminist art movement of the 1970s rediscovered and celebrated her.

Frida’s fame has soared ever since.

So my message for fellow artists here is this:

Shamelessly get your creative freak on.

If folks don’t get you now, never fear; you may be the new Frida to millions of young people­­­­‑ in the 2080s.

But if you can, leave the aspiration of fame to the fates.

Instead, be bold, be flawed, be eccentric, and be beautiful in your own way, and like Frida, you will receive a bigger boon than public approval.

You will not die having lived an un-lived life.

 

“The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it.”

                                                                                                            -W.M. Lewis

 

Need help making your art writing shine?

Hop over to my writing coaching for artists page and see if I have any openings for new clients.

If I do, I would love to help you bridge the gap between where you are now and where you want to be in your art writing.

Work With Thea

If you liked this post, you might like to read my post on O’Keeffe, Rachel Carson, van Gogh, Hopper & Matisse, Beatrix Potter, or Beatrice Wood.

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Further Resources To Explore:

Faces of Frida: A giant new app that takes a closer look at the many faces of Frida Kahlo through her life, art, and legacy.