Happy Birthday, Salma Hayek! Selma on playing Frida Kahlo

Salma Hayek on Frida Kahlo: 

"At that age (13-14) I did not like her work ... I found it ugly and grotesque. But something intrigued me, and the more I learned, the more I started to appreciate her work. There was a lot of passion and depth. Some people see only pain, but I also see irony and humor. I think what draws me to her is what Diego (Rivera) saw in her. She was a fighter. Many things could have diminished her spirit, like the accident or Diego's infidelities. But she wasn't crushed by anything."

Hayek was so determined to play the role that she sought out Dolores Olmedo Patino, longtime-lover of Diego Rivera, and (after his death) administrator to the rights of Frida and Rivera's art, which Rivera had "willed ... to the Mexican people," bequeath[ing] the trust to Olmedo. Hayek personally secured access to Kahlo's paintings from her, and began to assemble a supporting cast, approaching Alfred Molina for the role of Rivera in 1998. According to Molina, "She turned up backstage [of the Broadway play 'Art'] rather sheepishly, and asked if I would like to play Diego." Molina went on to gain 35 pounds to play Rivera.

Hayek had to sue producer Harvey Weinstein for breach of contract before the filming of the movie as he threatened to replace her with another actress despite the fact that she had brought the project to him with an agreement that she would produce and star in the film.

Hayek did some of the paintings in the movie. 

"It's no fake hand doing brush strokes [in 'Frida']. Painting is the best part. The worst was learning how to smoke! I couldn't do it. I wouldn't aim right at my mouth, the cigarette, and I don't understand why. I'm pretty coordinated. I hated it -- I was dizzy."

Kahlo's niece was so impressed with the film that she gave Hayek one of Kahlo's necklaces. (Wikipedia/IMDb)

Frida Kahlo

THE DAY OF FRIDA KHALO'S MARRIAGE (August 21, 1929) 

She was petite, barely twenty-two years old when she joined her life with him, a huge, fat man of forty-three years old, divorced, and a communist. The party took place in a house in Coyoacán owned by a great friend of the couple: Tina Modotti. 

To everyone's surprise, the main dish of the banquet: black mole from Oaxaca was prepared by Lupe Marín who was Diego's ex-wife, the same one who had starred in several scandals due to her jealousy. In addition to the black mole, there were a series of Mexican dishes to delight the guests' palates: stuffed chiles, pozole, rice, capirotada and wedding cake, to drink: pulque and tequila, or failing that, fruit water.  

The bride's mother was heartbroken, she had done everything possible to avoid that wedding, she who had put so much effort into her daughter's education, she who was so Catholic and the groom who was so atheist and so communist. Dear God! The demon had entered his house! The bride's father consoled his wife by making her see that it was not so bad. Together they left the party early. 

Late at night, Lupe Marín approached the bride, lifted her skirt and pointed to her legs while shouting, calling the guests' attention: Look! See these sticks? This is what Diego has now instead of my legs! The poor bride freed herself as best she could and ran to hide from the mocking giggles and uncomfortable exclamations of the guests who had seen her right leg thinned by polio. 

This was the marriage celebration of Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón and Diego María de la Concepción Juan Nepomuceno Estanislao de la Rivera and Barrientos Acosta y Rodríguez, 94 years ago.

Frida Kahlo, July 6, 1907 – July 13, 1954.   Nickolas Muray 1938

It is worth noting Frida was nothing if not a free spirit never mind her obese husband (who she married twice!) but she was also known to have had affairs with the legendary Nikolas Murray and Tina Modotti certainly bi-sexual she numbered many among her admirers and lovers

MARIA FELIX - Actor, Muse and Diva, Lover and Beauty Queen

 I found this fascinating article about Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo and the 'diva' Maria 'La Doña' Félix over at the always interesting Messy Nessy (see link below)

The phrase ‘femme fatale’ must have been invented for ‘La Doña’ – diva of the golden age of Mexican cinema, María Félix. Strong-willed, outspoken, controversial and drop-dead gorgeous, her life story is that of a movie script, an escapee from desperate and humble beginnings, teenage beauty queen, silver screen actress with multiple marriages and even more bisexual love affairs, not to mention one particularly high profile ménage à trois that got her wrapped up in the tangled sheets of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera’s famously fiery relationship.

https://www.messynessychic.com/2022/06/01/the-femme-fatale-who-rejected-frida-kahlos-marriage-proposal/

check it out worth a read for art buffs and not . . . . . 

FRIDA KAHLO

Frida Kahlo by Nikolas Murray who took some of the finest portraits of Kahlo

“Take a lover who looks at you like maybe you are a bourbon biscuit.” 

― Frida Kahlo

(Frida had many lovers, including photographer Nikolas Muray, artist Isamu Noguchi, fellow artist photographer and muse Tina Moddoti, singer Josephine Baker and painter Diego Rivera who she married twice)

Many people know Frida Kahlo for being a wonderful painter known for her magic realism, colourful depictions of Mexican art and for being a uniquely beautiful woman. (She also knew how to sport a unibrow) but rarely when we’re taught about Frida are we told that she was diagnosed with Spina Bifida as a child. She also contracted polio as a child, which made her even weaker. But she was still as active as she could be. She even boxed. But things couldn’t seem to go right health wise for her. She was all set to start medical school until she got in a terrible car accident on her 18th birthday leaving her in pain and with terrible medical problems for the rest of her life. She left a huge Impact on this world despite only living 47 years. She was an “unabashed” bisexual, her motto was “make love, take a bath, make love again,”. She married the painter Diego Rivera despite his being twenty years her senior and already having two common law ‘wives’. Both were unfaithful throughout their relationship Rivera even began an affair with Frida’s sister Christina

Throughout her life Frida hid her leg deformities under skirts, she underwent 35 surgeries after the accident at 18. She didn’t originally want to be a painter, she originally wanted to be a doctor, but after the accident she decided that wasn’t the path. She is known as the master of self portraits. “I paint myself because I am so often alone and because I am the subject I know best.“ Frida’s painting is the first works by a 20th century Mexican-artist to be purchased by a big internationally well known museum. She is one of the most well known female painters. She knew herself inside and out, she was so secure with herself.

A note for Murray

TINA MODOTTI

(dedicated to the memory of Carol Brown my colleague from MOMAO and arts administrator par excellence who introduced me to Modotti)

Until her sudden – and some say mysterious – death at 45, the Italian-born artist lived an extraordinary life, morphing from silent-film actress to model, muse, photographer, Mexican revolutionary and (possibly) spy. Yet it wasn’t until the 1990s – when a cache of her photographs was discovered in a farmhouse in Oregon and several platinum prints, Roses and Calla Lilies, were auctioned for hundreds of thousands of dollars in New York – that her own photographic legacy and incredible story would come to light

This from MOMA New York:

Tina Modotti’s photographs blend formal rigor with social awareness. The Italian-born artist immigrated to the United States when she was 16. She acted in plays and silent films, and worked as an artist’s model during her first years in the country. In 1920 she met photographer Edward Weston, who mentored her and was a great influence on her subsequent work. By 1921 they had become lovers, and in 1923 they moved together to Mexico City, which had become a cosmopolitan center in the interwar years. There, cultural and political expatriates like Weston and Modotti, Sergei Eisenstein, and Leon Trotsky moved in bohemian circles with Mexican intellectuals and artists such as Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. Modotti and Weston opened a portrait studio in the city. 

With her camera, Modotti captured Mexico’s sights and people. She took its folk art and landscapes as the starting points for her most abstract images. Telephone Wires, Mexico isolates taut stretches of wire against a pale sky, finding gridded linearity in the skyscape. Staircase and Stadium, Mexico City record repetitions of stairs and shadows, creating complex images that push these architectural features toward abstraction. 

Modotti’s social concerns emerge in photographs such as Worker’s Hands, a quiet celebration of a laborer’s dignity. Mella’s Typewriter reveals her leftist leanings and carries a subtle social heft. Modotti met Julio Antonio Mella, a Cuban revolutionary who was a hero among other Latin American radicals, in 1928, at a demonstration in Mexico City against the execution of the anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. The following year, Mella was assassinated as he walked home with Modotti by his side. Her photograph of his typewriter, his instrument for recording his beliefs, is a symbolic portrait of Mella’s life and work, and an emblem of her own Communist sympathies—which ultimately led to her exile from Mexico in 1930. 

Modotti eventually settled in Moscow, where she joined the Soviet Communist Party. She gave up photography completely in 1931 to dedicate herself to political work. When she died in 1942 from congestive heart failure, she left behind a small but intensely influential body of work that reflects her appreciation for the Mexican working class, filtered through the precise formal vocabulary of her photographic practice. Introduction by Kelly Sidley, Curatorial Assistant, MOMA NY, Department of Photography, 2016

Frida Kahlo and Tina fooling around

Tina Modotti by Edward Weston - double portrait

Frida

Frida Kahlo in an occasional series looking at women artists 

Self-portrait with necklace, by Frida Kahlo, 1933.

Kahlo is gazing straight down the barrel of the lens, her chin slightly up, defiant and strong. She is in her early 20s and already has in place the aesthetic that will define her: long hair parted in the middle, traditional Tehuana jewellery and clothing – the square cut blouse, long skirt and shawl – and, of course, the infamous monobrow.