Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera by Carol Sabbeth

Author:Carol Sabbeth
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Published: 2005-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Frida Kahlo, The Frame, c. 1938

6

Kahlo’s Fame

Frida Kahlo finally returned home in 1934. She and Diego Rivera moved into a new house designed by their friend, an artist named Juan O’Gorman. Before leaving for the United States, they had decided to have O’Gorman build them this house in San Angel, a suburb of Mexico City. The house consisted of two buildings: a big pink cube, which was Rivera’s studio, and a smaller blue cube for Kahlo’s studio. Diego’s pink house consisted of a large studio with a high ceiling. There he entertained and sold paintings. It had a big kitchen, where they ate most meals. Kahlo’s smaller house was more private. It contained a living room/dining room and a small kitchen. The bedroom she and Rivera shared featured a huge picture window. This is also where Kahlo had her studio.

Sitting side by side, the buildings look like giant blocks from a child’s toy chest. A bridge from Kahlo’s rooftop terrace to Rivera’s second-floor studio connected the two buildings. Tall organ cactus plants formed a fence around the house.

Their return to Mexico came at a high price for Kahlo. Rivera finally gave in to Kahlo’s wishes to return home, but he wasn’t happy, and he blamed all his problems on her. His life just didn’t have the sparkle it had in Manhattan, where he’d always been in the spotlight. In Mexico, some people, especially newspaper reporters, criticized his work. Kahlo mentions Rivera’s problems in a letter she wrote to a friend in California. In Mexico “the people . . . always respond with obscenities and dirty tricks, and that is what makes [Rivera] most desperate since he has only to arrive and they start attacking him in the newspapers.” He refused to work, and he decided everything he had done was no good. Eventually he became ill.

Rivera was known to be a hypochondriac, someone who imagines he is sick or about to become sick. Not all of his ailments were imaginary. He was hospitalized several times with kidney infections. He had other ailments too, both real and imagined. For all of them, he blamed Kahlo. They had terrible quarrels, and Kahlo would lock Rivera out of her house. Rivera would run back and forth across the bridge, yelling for her to let him in.

A few months after his return to Mexico, Rivera found someone new to shower with affection. This wasn’t the first time in four and a half years of marriage to Kahlo that Rivera had become involved with another woman. But this time was different. Rivera’s new girlfriend was someone Kahlo loved dearly—her younger sister Cristina. Over the years, Cristina had been a frequent visitor, and she and Frida were very close. Sometimes Cristina modeled for Rivera; he included her image in a mural he painted as early as 1929. One of the first drawings Rivera made upon his return to Mexico was a charcoal portrait of Cristina. Soon afterward the two of them began an affair.

When Frida found out several months later, she was devastated.

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