Frida Kahlo Museum
Encyclopedia
The Frida Kahlo Museum also known as the Blue House (La Casa Azul) for the structure's cobalt-blue
walls, is a historic house museum and art museum dedicated to the life and work of Mexican artist
Frida Kahlo
. It is located in the Colonia del Carmen neighborhood of Coyoacán
in Mexico City
. The building was the birthplace of Kahlo and is also the home where she grew up there, lived with her husband Diego Rivera
for a number of years, and eventually died, in one of the rooms on the upper floor. In 1958, Diego Rivera donated the home and its contents in order to turn it into a museum in Frida's honor.
The museum contains a collection of artwork by Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera and other artists along with the couple’s Mexican folk art
, pre-Hispanic artifacts, photographs, memorabilia, personal items, and more displayed in the rooms of the house which remains much as it was in the 1950s. Today, it is the most popular museum in Coyoacán and one of the most visited in Mexico City.
The house/museum is located in Colonia del Carmen area of the Coyoacán borough of Mexico City. Coyoacán, especially the Colonia del Carmen area, has had a intellectual and vanguard reputation since the 1920s, when it was the home of Salvador Novo
, Octavio Paz
, Mario Moreno and Dolores del Río
. Today, the area is home of number of the borough’s museums. The house itself is located on the corner of Londres and Allende Streets, and it stands out for its cobalt-blue walls, giving it the name La Casa Azul (The Blue House). Like most of the other structures in the area, the house is built around a central courtyard with garden space, a tradition since colonial times. Originally, the house enclosed only three sides of this courtyard, but later the forth side was added to enclose it entirely. The house covers 800m2 and the central courtyard is another 400m2. As it was built in 1904, it originally had French-style decorative features but later it was changed to the plainer facade seen today. The building has two floors with various bedrooms, studio space, a large kitchen and dining room. The entrance hall was decorated by a mosaic in natural stone by Mardoño Magaña of the Escuela de Pintura al Aire Libre in Coyoacán, inspired by the murals done by Juan O’Gorman at the Ciudad Universitaria
.
which was also established by Diego Rivera. According to records and testimony, the house today looks much as it did in 1951, decorated with Mexican folk art, Kahlo’s personal art collection, a large collection of pre-Hispanic artifacts, traditional Mexican cookware, linens, personal mementos such as photographs, postcards and letters, and works by José María Velasco
, Paul Klee
and Diego Rivera. Much of the collection is now in display cases designed for their preservation. The museum also contains a café and a small gift shop.
The museum consists of ten rooms. On the ground floor is a room that contains some of Kahlo’s mostly minor works such as "Frida y la cesárea", 1907–1954, "Retrato de familia", 1934, "Ruina 1947", "Retrato de Guillermo Kahlo", 1952 y "El marxismo dará salud", 1954,(showing Frida throwing away her crutches) with a watercolor
“Diario de Frida” in the center. This room originally was the formal living room, where Frida and Diego entertained notable Mexican and international visitors and friends such as Sergei Eisenstein
, Nelson Rockefeller
, George Gershwin
, caricaturist Miguel Covarrubias
and actresses Dolores del Río
and María Félix
.
The second and third rooms are dedicated to personal effects and mementos and to some of Rivera’s works respectively. The second room is filled with everyday items Frida used, letters, photographs and notes. On the walls are pre-Hispanic necklaces and folk dresses, especially the Tehuana-style
ones that were Frida’s trademark. Paintings in the third room include "Retrato de Carmen Portes Gil", 1921, "Ofrenda del día de muertos", 1943, and "Mujer con cuerpo de guitarra", 1916.
The fourth room contains contemporary paintings by artists such as Paul Klee
, José María Velasco
, Joaquín Clausel, Celia Calderón Orozco, and a sculpture by Mardonio Magaña. The fifth room contains two large Judas figures, “mujeres bonitos” figures from Tlatilco
, State of Mexico and figures from the Teotihuacan
culture. The large papier-mâché
Judas figures
and other paper mache monsters were traditionally filled with firecrackers and exploded on the Saturday before Easter.
The sixth and seventh rooms are the kitchen and dining room. Both are in classic Mexican style, with bright yellow tile and the floor, blue and yellow tile counters and a long yellow table, where sister Ruth stated that Frida spent much of her time. The two rooms are filled with large earthenware pots, plates, utensils, glassware and more which came from Metepec
, Oaxaca
, Tlaquepaque
and Guanajuato
, all known for their handcrafted items. Decorative features include papier-mache Judas skeletons hanging from its ceiling, and walls with tiny pots spelling the names of Frida and Diego next to a pair of doves tying a lovers’ knot.
Off the dining room was Rivera’s bedroom, with his hat, jacket and work clothes still hanging from a wall rack. Next to this is a stairwell that leads from the courtyard area to the upper floor. This area also contains a large number of folk art items includes about 2000 votive paintings from the colonial period to the 20th centuries, other colonial era work and more Judas figures.
The two rooms of the upper floor which are open to the public contain Frida’s final bedroom and studio area. This is located in the wing that Rivera had built. The original furniture is still there. In one corner, her ashes are on display in an urn, which is surrounded by a funeral mask, some personal items and mirrors on the ceiling. On her bed is a painted plaster corset she was forced to wear to support her damaged spine, and under the canopy is a mirror facing down which she used to paint her many self-portraits. The head of the bed contains the painting of a dead child, and the foot contains photo montage of Joseph Stalin
, Vladimir Lenin
, Karl Marx
, Friedrich Engels
and Mao Zedong
. The pillow is embroidered with the words "Do not forget me, my love." Her wheelchair is drawn up to an unfinished portrait of Stalin, on an easel which is said was given to her by Nelson Rockefeller. Stalin became a hero to Kahlo after she and Rivera had a falling out with Trotsky.
The tour of the museum ends at the large courtyard garden which is completely enclosed by the four sides or wings of the structure. The courtyard area is divided by a stepped pyramid, a fountain and a reflection pool. These were built in the 1940s when Rivera first moved into the house and built the fourth wing enclosing the house. This wing’s walls which face the courtyard are decorated with marine shells and mirrors. There are also sculptures by Mexican artist Mardonio Magaña. One side of the courtyard is the following inscription "Frida y Diego / vivieron en / esta casa / 1929-1954" (Frida and Diego lived in this house – 1929-1954).
Frida Kahlo was born in this house in 1907, and it remained her family home throughout her life, spending the last thirteen years of it here as well. Frida was the daughter of Wilhelm (Guillermo) Kalho
, who immigrated from Europe to Mexico and native Mexican María Calderón. Frida spent her childhood in this house. She stated that during the Mexican Revolution
, her mother would open the windows of this house in order to donate supplies to the Zapata army
when it was in the area in 1913. She also spent large amount of time in the house convalescing, first in 1918 when she was struck with polio which would leave one leg shorter than the other. When she was 18, a trolley accident left her badly mangled. She spent about two years confined to her bed in casts and orthopedic devices. It was then she began to paint as a way to pass the time. One of the works from this time has Frida on what appears to be a stretcher, her body bandaged and located to the side of this house.
Frida met Diego Rivera while he was painting murals at the Secretaria de Educacion Publica building
and invited him to the Caza Azul to see her work. Rivera soon began to be a regular visitor to the house. Other notable artists followed making the house one of the area’s meeting places. After marrying Rivera, Frida moved out of her childhood home moving to an apartment on Paseo de la Reforma
, but Rivera paid off the family’s mortgage on the Casa Azul. In the 1930s, Frida lived in other places in Mexico City or abroad, but visited her family in the home frequently and it appears in a painting done in 1936 called “Mis abuelos, mis padres y yo” also called “Arbol genealógico.”
By 1937, the house was abandoned and shuttered although it was still the property of Frida’s father. Because of intervention by Kahlo and Rivera, Russian Leon Trotsky
obtained asylum in Mexico. He and his wife were first housed in the Casa Azul starting in January 1937. The windows facing the street were closed in with adobe bricks for Trotsky’s safety as he was under a death sentence from Stalin. A high wall was built between this house and the adjoining one as well. From 1937 and 1939, Trotsky lived and worked here, writing treatises such as “Su moral y la nuestra" and an article about Leon Sedrov. This would cause security problems in the area. In early 1938, Trotsky was forced to abandon La Casa Azul. He temporarily stayed at the home of Antonio Hidalgo in Lomas de Chapultepec while his wife stayed at the Casa Azul. He returned in April 1939 after the death of his son Liova. During all of this time, the house continued to be a meeting place for intellectuals, especially those associated with Communism
. However, eventually Trotsky and Rivera had a falling out over ideology and criticism of Rivera’s over Trotsky’s writings. Soon thereafter, the Trotskys moved to a nearby house on Viena Street.
Because of matrimonial problems, Frida decided to return to the Casa Azul in the summer of 1939 and the couple divorced at the end of the year. However, the couple did not break all contact, and the remarried at the end of 1940. In 1941, just before Frida’s father’s death, Rivera moved into the house, although he maintained another residence in San Angel. During this time, Rivera constructed the wing which faces Londres Street and encloses the courtyard completely. This section was built of local volcanic rock with ceramic vases set into it. A terraced roof was built, decorated with marine shells and a mirror. Here Frida’s studio and bedroom was moved. To separate the new from the old, a stone wall divides the patio area in two, in front of which is a fountain, a stepped pyramid, a reflection pool and a room for the couple’s archeological collection. The exterior was also changed from the original French style to the one seen today. The redesign work on the house was done by Juan O’Gorman in 1946. As the couple’s home, the house continued to receive distinguished visitors from both Mexico and abroad. These includes names such as Fritz Henle
, Concha Michel, Dolores del Río, María Félex, Lucha Reyes
and Chavela Vargas
.
In 1943, Frida became an instructor for the Escuela de Pintura y Escultura de La Esmeralda, but her physical condition required here to mostly give classes at her home. These students eventually number only four and were called “Los fridos”: Fanny Rabel, Guillermo Monroy, Arturo “el Güero” Estrada and Arturo García Bustos, who mostly worked and trained in the patio area. Starting in 1945, Frida was once again confined to bed in the house. From then to 1947, she painted works such as “Flor de la vida,” in 1945 and “El sol de la vida” in 1947.
Frida died on the upper floor of this house on 13 July 1954 at the age of 47. Her wake took place here before the body was taken to the Palacio de Bellas Artes
then cremated. Four years after her death, the house was converted to a museum dedicated to the life and works of Kahlo in 1958, when Rivera donated the house to the nation of Mexico and set up a foundation for its preservation. The first director of the museum was Carlos Pellicer
with the mandate to keep the house as it was.
The museum was relatively obscure for many years as Frida Kahlo was little known beyond the art world until the 1990s. In the 1980s, a movement called Neomexicanismo which promoted her and her work. Since that time, she has become a cult icon, with images of her appearing on many pop culture items and many of her works now command high prices. In 2006, Kahlo's 1943 painting Roots set a US$ 5.6 million auction record for a Latin America
n work. The popularity of Frida affected the museum. It closed for a time in the early 1990s, then reopened in 1993, with the addition of a gift shop and restaurant/café. Today, the museum is most-visited in Coyoacán and one of the most visited in Mexico City.
Restoration work was performed on the building and some of its contents in 2009 and 2010. The work was sponsored in part by the German government, who donated 60,000 for the effort and the museum itself which contributed one million pesos. The effort concentrates on obtaining furniture for display and preservation, other equipment, roof work, restoration of items in the collection. Restoration includes most of the paintings in the collection including paintings “Viva la vida.” “El marxismo dará salud a los enfermos,” “Frida y la cesárea,” “Naturaleza muerta con bandera,” “Retrato de Marta Procel,” “Retrato de mi familia,” “Retrato de mi padre Wilhelm Kahlo” and “Los hornos de ladrillos” as well as “La quebrada” and Paisaje urbano” by Rivera, “Retrato del niño Don Antonio Villaseñor” and “Retrato de niño muerto” by unknown author, “Composición” by Wolfgang Paalen and “Retrato de Diego Rivera” by Leopold Gottlieb
along with an archive of 6,500 photographs of Kahlo, Rivera with the friends, family and colleagues done by Nickolas Murray, Martin Munckaci, Fritz Henle and Gisele Freund
. The conservation work only covers about 35% of the total collection.
Cobalt blue
Cobalt blue is a cool, slightly desaturated blue color, historically made using cobalt salts of alumina. It is used in certain ceramics and painting; the different cobalt pigment smalt, based on silica, is more often used directly in tinted transparent glasses...
walls, is a historic house museum and art museum dedicated to the life and work of Mexican artist
Mexican art
Mexican art consists of the various visual and plastic arts which developed over the geographical area now known as Mexico. The development of these arts roughly follow the history of Mexico, divided into the Mesoamerican era, the colonial period, with the period after the gaining of Independence...
Frida Kahlo
Frida Kahlo
Frida Kahlo de Rivera was a Mexican painter, born in Coyoacán, and perhaps best known for her self-portraits....
. It is located in the Colonia del Carmen neighborhood of Coyoacán
Coyoacán
Coyoacán refers to one of the sixteen boroughs of the Federal District of Mexico City as well as the former village which is now the borough’s “historic center.” The name comes from Nahuatl and most likely means “place of coyotes,” when the Aztecs named a pre-Hispanic village on the southern shore...
in Mexico City
Mexico City
Mexico City is the Federal District , capital of Mexico and seat of the federal powers of the Mexican Union. It is a federal entity within Mexico which is not part of any one of the 31 Mexican states but belongs to the federation as a whole...
. The building was the birthplace of Kahlo and is also the home where she grew up there, lived with her husband Diego Rivera
Diego Rivera
Diego María de la Concepción Juan Nepomuceno Estanislao de la Rivera y Barrientos Acosta y Rodríguez was a prominent Mexican painter born in Guanajuato, Guanajuato, an active communist, and husband of Frida Kahlo . His large wall works in fresco helped establish the Mexican Mural Movement in...
for a number of years, and eventually died, in one of the rooms on the upper floor. In 1958, Diego Rivera donated the home and its contents in order to turn it into a museum in Frida's honor.
The museum contains a collection of artwork by Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera and other artists along with the couple’s Mexican folk art
Mexican handcrafts and folk art
Mexican handcrafts and folk art is a complex collection of items made with various materials and intended for utilitarian, decorative or other purposes. Some of the items produced by hand in this country include ceramics, wall hangings, vases, furniture, textiles and much more...
, pre-Hispanic artifacts, photographs, memorabilia, personal items, and more displayed in the rooms of the house which remains much as it was in the 1950s. Today, it is the most popular museum in Coyoacán and one of the most visited in Mexico City.
The building
Salvador Novo
Salvador Novo López was a Mexican writer, poet, playwright, translator, television presenter, entrepreneur, and the official chronicler of Mexico City, his birthplace and home. As a noted intellectual, he influenced popular perceptions of politics, media, the arts, and Mexican society in general...
, Octavio Paz
Octavio Paz
Octavio Paz Lozano was a Mexican writer, poet, and diplomat, and the winner of the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature.-Early life and writings:...
, Mario Moreno and Dolores del Río
Dolores del Río
Dolores del Río was a Mexican film actress. She was a star of Hollywood films during the silent era and in the Golden Age of Hollywood...
. Today, the area is home of number of the borough’s museums. The house itself is located on the corner of Londres and Allende Streets, and it stands out for its cobalt-blue walls, giving it the name La Casa Azul (The Blue House). Like most of the other structures in the area, the house is built around a central courtyard with garden space, a tradition since colonial times. Originally, the house enclosed only three sides of this courtyard, but later the forth side was added to enclose it entirely. The house covers 800m2 and the central courtyard is another 400m2. As it was built in 1904, it originally had French-style decorative features but later it was changed to the plainer facade seen today. The building has two floors with various bedrooms, studio space, a large kitchen and dining room. The entrance hall was decorated by a mosaic in natural stone by Mardoño Magaña of the Escuela de Pintura al Aire Libre in Coyoacán, inspired by the murals done by Juan O’Gorman at the Ciudad Universitaria
Ciudad Universitaria
Ciudad Universitaria , Mexico, is UNAM's main campus, located in Coyoacán borough in the southern part of Mexico City. Designed by architects Mario Pani and Enrique del Moral, it encloses the Olympic Stadium, about 40 faculties and institutes, the Cultural Center, an ecological reserve, the Central...
.
The museum
Originally the house was the family home of Frida Kahlo, but since 1958, it has served as museum dedicated to her life and work. With about 25,000 visitors monthly, it is one of Mexico City’s most-visited museums, and the most-visited site in Coyoacán. It is supported solely by ticket sales and donations. The museum demonstrates the lifestyle of wealthy Mexican bohemian artists and intellectuals during the first half of the 20th century. The entrance ticket to the Casa Azul allows for free entrance in to the nearby Anahuacalli MuseumAnahuacalli Museum
The Museo Diego Rivera Anahuacalli or simply Anahuacalli Museum is a museum located in Coyoacán, in the south of Mexico City.The unique museum was conceived and created by muralist Diego Rivera, who, motivated by his own interest in Mexican culture, collected near 60,000 pre-Hispanic pieces during...
which was also established by Diego Rivera. According to records and testimony, the house today looks much as it did in 1951, decorated with Mexican folk art, Kahlo’s personal art collection, a large collection of pre-Hispanic artifacts, traditional Mexican cookware, linens, personal mementos such as photographs, postcards and letters, and works by José María Velasco
José María Velasco
José María Velasco may refer to:*José María Velasco Gómez, 19th century Mexican painter*José María Velasco Ibarra , president of Ecuador*José María Velasco, México, city in Mexican state of Edomex...
, Paul Klee
Paul Klee
Paul Klee was born in Münchenbuchsee, Switzerland, and is considered both a German and a Swiss painter. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. He was, as well, a student of orientalism...
and Diego Rivera. Much of the collection is now in display cases designed for their preservation. The museum also contains a café and a small gift shop.
The museum consists of ten rooms. On the ground floor is a room that contains some of Kahlo’s mostly minor works such as "Frida y la cesárea", 1907–1954, "Retrato de familia", 1934, "Ruina 1947", "Retrato de Guillermo Kahlo", 1952 y "El marxismo dará salud", 1954,(showing Frida throwing away her crutches) with a watercolor
Watercolor painting
Watercolor or watercolour , also aquarelle from French, is a painting method. A watercolor is the medium or the resulting artwork in which the paints are made of pigments suspended in a water-soluble vehicle...
“Diario de Frida” in the center. This room originally was the formal living room, where Frida and Diego entertained notable Mexican and international visitors and friends such as Sergei Eisenstein
Sergei Eisenstein
Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein , né Eizenshtein, was a pioneering Soviet Russian film director and film theorist, often considered to be the "Father of Montage"...
, Nelson Rockefeller
Nelson Rockefeller
Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller was the 41st Vice President of the United States , serving under President Gerald Ford, and the 49th Governor of New York , as well as serving the Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower administrations in a variety of positions...
, George Gershwin
George Gershwin
George Gershwin was an American composer and pianist. Gershwin's compositions spanned both popular and classical genres, and his most popular melodies are widely known...
, caricaturist Miguel Covarrubias
Miguel Covarrubias
José Miguel Covarrubias Duclaud was a Mexican painter and caricaturist, ethnologist and art historian among other interests. In 1924 at the age of 19 he moved to New York City armed with a grant from the Mexican government, tremendous talent, but very little English speaking skill. Luckily,...
and actresses Dolores del Río
Dolores del Río
Dolores del Río was a Mexican film actress. She was a star of Hollywood films during the silent era and in the Golden Age of Hollywood...
and María Félix
María Félix
María Félix was a Mexican film actress and one of the icons of the golden era of the Cinema of Mexico and also one of the myths of the Spanish language Cinema for her life style and personality...
.
The second and third rooms are dedicated to personal effects and mementos and to some of Rivera’s works respectively. The second room is filled with everyday items Frida used, letters, photographs and notes. On the walls are pre-Hispanic necklaces and folk dresses, especially the Tehuana-style
Tehuantepec
Tehuantepec is a city and municipality in the southeast of the Mexican state of Oaxaca. It is part of the Tehuantepec District in the west of the Istmo Region. The area was important in pre Hispanic period as part of a trade route that connected Central America with what is now the center of...
ones that were Frida’s trademark. Paintings in the third room include "Retrato de Carmen Portes Gil", 1921, "Ofrenda del día de muertos", 1943, and "Mujer con cuerpo de guitarra", 1916.
The fourth room contains contemporary paintings by artists such as Paul Klee
Paul Klee
Paul Klee was born in Münchenbuchsee, Switzerland, and is considered both a German and a Swiss painter. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. He was, as well, a student of orientalism...
, José María Velasco
José María Velasco
José María Velasco may refer to:*José María Velasco Gómez, 19th century Mexican painter*José María Velasco Ibarra , president of Ecuador*José María Velasco, México, city in Mexican state of Edomex...
, Joaquín Clausel, Celia Calderón Orozco, and a sculpture by Mardonio Magaña. The fifth room contains two large Judas figures, “mujeres bonitos” figures from Tlatilco
Tlatilco
Tlatilco was a large pre-Columbian village in the Valley of Mexico situated near the modern-day town of the same name in the Mexican Federal District. It was one of the first chiefdom centers to arise in the Valley, flourishing on the western shore of Lake Texcoco during the Middle Pre-Classic...
, State of Mexico and figures from the Teotihuacan
Teotihuacan
Teotihuacan – also written Teotihuacán, with a Spanish orthographic accent on the last syllable – is an enormous archaeological site in the Basin of Mexico, just 30 miles northeast of Mexico City, containing some of the largest pyramidal structures built in the pre-Columbian Americas...
culture. The large papier-mâché
Papier-mâché
Papier-mâché , alternatively, paper-mache, is a composite material consisting of paper pieces or pulp, sometimes reinforced with textiles, bound with an adhesive, such as glue, starch, or wallpaper paste....
Judas figures
Burning of Judas
The burning of Judas is an Easter-time ritual in many Orthodox and Catholic Christian communities, where an effigy of Judas Iscariot is burned. Other related mistreatment of Judas effigies include hanging, flogging, and exploding with fireworks. Anthropologists generalize these type of activities...
and other paper mache monsters were traditionally filled with firecrackers and exploded on the Saturday before Easter.
The sixth and seventh rooms are the kitchen and dining room. Both are in classic Mexican style, with bright yellow tile and the floor, blue and yellow tile counters and a long yellow table, where sister Ruth stated that Frida spent much of her time. The two rooms are filled with large earthenware pots, plates, utensils, glassware and more which came from Metepec
Metepec
Metepec is a city and municipality in the State of Mexico in Mexico and is located directly to the east of the state capital, Toluca, at an altitude of 2,635 metres above sea level. The centre of Mexico City lies some 50 km further to the east. The name Metepec comes from Náhuatl meaning hill of...
, Oaxaca
Oaxaca
Oaxaca , , officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Oaxaca is one of the 31 states which, along with the Federal District, comprise the 32 federative entities of Mexico. It is divided into 571 municipalities; of which 418 are governed by the system of customs and traditions...
, Tlaquepaque
Tlaquepaque
Tlaquepaque , historically San Pedro or Georgetown, is a city and the surrounding municipality in the Mexican state of Jalisco. During the 20th century it was absorbed by the outward spread of the state capital and is now a neighbourhood of the Guadalajara conurbation, lying only a few kilometres...
and Guanajuato
Guanajuato
Guanajuato officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Guanajuato is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided in 46 municipalities and its capital city is Guanajuato....
, all known for their handcrafted items. Decorative features include papier-mache Judas skeletons hanging from its ceiling, and walls with tiny pots spelling the names of Frida and Diego next to a pair of doves tying a lovers’ knot.
The two rooms of the upper floor which are open to the public contain Frida’s final bedroom and studio area. This is located in the wing that Rivera had built. The original furniture is still there. In one corner, her ashes are on display in an urn, which is surrounded by a funeral mask, some personal items and mirrors on the ceiling. On her bed is a painted plaster corset she was forced to wear to support her damaged spine, and under the canopy is a mirror facing down which she used to paint her many self-portraits. The head of the bed contains the painting of a dead child, and the foot contains photo montage of Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
, Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years , as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a...
, Karl Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
, Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels was a German industrialist, social scientist, author, political theorist, philosopher, and father of Marxist theory, alongside Karl Marx. In 1845 he published The Condition of the Working Class in England, based on personal observations and research...
and Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong, also transliterated as Mao Tse-tung , and commonly referred to as Chairman Mao , was a Chinese Communist revolutionary, guerrilla warfare strategist, Marxist political philosopher, and leader of the Chinese Revolution...
. The pillow is embroidered with the words "Do not forget me, my love." Her wheelchair is drawn up to an unfinished portrait of Stalin, on an easel which is said was given to her by Nelson Rockefeller. Stalin became a hero to Kahlo after she and Rivera had a falling out with Trotsky.
The tour of the museum ends at the large courtyard garden which is completely enclosed by the four sides or wings of the structure. The courtyard area is divided by a stepped pyramid, a fountain and a reflection pool. These were built in the 1940s when Rivera first moved into the house and built the fourth wing enclosing the house. This wing’s walls which face the courtyard are decorated with marine shells and mirrors. There are also sculptures by Mexican artist Mardonio Magaña. One side of the courtyard is the following inscription "Frida y Diego / vivieron en / esta casa / 1929-1954" (Frida and Diego lived in this house – 1929-1954).
History
The house was constructed in 1904 in Colonia Del Carmen in Coyoacán, which was established on lands that belonged to the former Hacienda del Carmen, a property of the Carmelites in the colonial period. At that time and during the first half of the 20th century, Coyoacán was officially part of the Federal District of Mexico City, but was still relatively rural and separate from Mexico City’s urban sprawl. Since the late 19th century, a number of Mexico City’s wealthy had built country homes in the area, often imitating the colonial designs of the past. Colonia del Carmen became popular with artists and intellectuals starting around the 1920s, due the promotion of it by Francisco Sosa and the establishment of the Escuela de Pintura al Aire Libre (Open Air School of Painting) at the former San Pedro Martír Hacienda in 1923. Originally, the exterior of the house was decorated in a French-inspired motif, which was popular in Mexico in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.Frida Kahlo was born in this house in 1907, and it remained her family home throughout her life, spending the last thirteen years of it here as well. Frida was the daughter of Wilhelm (Guillermo) Kalho
Guillermo Kahlo
Carl Wilhelm Kahlo was a German photographer and father of artist Frida Kahlo, who painted his portrait....
, who immigrated from Europe to Mexico and native Mexican María Calderón. Frida spent her childhood in this house. She stated that during the Mexican Revolution
Mexican Revolution
The Mexican Revolution was a major armed struggle that started in 1910, with an uprising led by Francisco I. Madero against longtime autocrat Porfirio Díaz. The Revolution was characterized by several socialist, liberal, anarchist, populist, and agrarianist movements. Over time the Revolution...
, her mother would open the windows of this house in order to donate supplies to the Zapata army
Liberation Army of the South
The Liberation Army of the South was an armed group formed and led by Emiliano Zapata that took part in the Mexican Revolution. The force was commonly known as the Zapatistas....
when it was in the area in 1913. She also spent large amount of time in the house convalescing, first in 1918 when she was struck with polio which would leave one leg shorter than the other. When she was 18, a trolley accident left her badly mangled. She spent about two years confined to her bed in casts and orthopedic devices. It was then she began to paint as a way to pass the time. One of the works from this time has Frida on what appears to be a stretcher, her body bandaged and located to the side of this house.
Frida met Diego Rivera while he was painting murals at the Secretaria de Educacion Publica building
Secretariat of Public Education Main Headquarters
The Secretariat of Public Education Main Headquarters building is on the northeast corner of San Ildefonso and Republica de Argentina streets in the historic center of Mexico City, and used to be part of the largest and most sumptuous convents in New Spain...
and invited him to the Caza Azul to see her work. Rivera soon began to be a regular visitor to the house. Other notable artists followed making the house one of the area’s meeting places. After marrying Rivera, Frida moved out of her childhood home moving to an apartment on Paseo de la Reforma
Paseo de la Reforma
Paseo de la Reforma is a wide avenue that runs in a straight line, cutting diagonally across Mexico City. It was designed by Ferdinand von Rosenzweig in the 1860s and modeled after the great boulevards of Europe, such as Vienna's Ringstrasse or the Champs-Élysées in Paris...
, but Rivera paid off the family’s mortgage on the Casa Azul. In the 1930s, Frida lived in other places in Mexico City or abroad, but visited her family in the home frequently and it appears in a painting done in 1936 called “Mis abuelos, mis padres y yo” also called “Arbol genealógico.”
By 1937, the house was abandoned and shuttered although it was still the property of Frida’s father. Because of intervention by Kahlo and Rivera, Russian Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky , born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army....
obtained asylum in Mexico. He and his wife were first housed in the Casa Azul starting in January 1937. The windows facing the street were closed in with adobe bricks for Trotsky’s safety as he was under a death sentence from Stalin. A high wall was built between this house and the adjoining one as well. From 1937 and 1939, Trotsky lived and worked here, writing treatises such as “Su moral y la nuestra" and an article about Leon Sedrov. This would cause security problems in the area. In early 1938, Trotsky was forced to abandon La Casa Azul. He temporarily stayed at the home of Antonio Hidalgo in Lomas de Chapultepec while his wife stayed at the Casa Azul. He returned in April 1939 after the death of his son Liova. During all of this time, the house continued to be a meeting place for intellectuals, especially those associated with Communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
. However, eventually Trotsky and Rivera had a falling out over ideology and criticism of Rivera’s over Trotsky’s writings. Soon thereafter, the Trotskys moved to a nearby house on Viena Street.
Because of matrimonial problems, Frida decided to return to the Casa Azul in the summer of 1939 and the couple divorced at the end of the year. However, the couple did not break all contact, and the remarried at the end of 1940. In 1941, just before Frida’s father’s death, Rivera moved into the house, although he maintained another residence in San Angel. During this time, Rivera constructed the wing which faces Londres Street and encloses the courtyard completely. This section was built of local volcanic rock with ceramic vases set into it. A terraced roof was built, decorated with marine shells and a mirror. Here Frida’s studio and bedroom was moved. To separate the new from the old, a stone wall divides the patio area in two, in front of which is a fountain, a stepped pyramid, a reflection pool and a room for the couple’s archeological collection. The exterior was also changed from the original French style to the one seen today. The redesign work on the house was done by Juan O’Gorman in 1946. As the couple’s home, the house continued to receive distinguished visitors from both Mexico and abroad. These includes names such as Fritz Henle
Fritz Henle
Fritz Henle was a photographer, known as "Mr. Rollei" for his use of the 2.25" square format film used in the Rolleiflex camera.Henle was born in Dortmund, Germany in 1909 and died in Saint Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands in 1993...
, Concha Michel, Dolores del Río, María Félex, Lucha Reyes
Lucha Reyes (Mexican singer)
Maria de luz Flores , better known as Lucha Reyes, was a famous Mexican mariachi singer. She was a native of Guadalajara, Jalisco. She used the last name Reyes as a homage to her stepfather....
and Chavela Vargas
Chavela Vargas
Isabel Vargas Lizano is a Costa Rican-born Mexican singer. She is especially known for her rendition of Mexican rancheras genre - a folkloric musical genre widely popular in Mexico - but she is also recognized for her contribution to other popular Latin American song genres...
.
In 1943, Frida became an instructor for the Escuela de Pintura y Escultura de La Esmeralda, but her physical condition required here to mostly give classes at her home. These students eventually number only four and were called “Los fridos”: Fanny Rabel, Guillermo Monroy, Arturo “el Güero” Estrada and Arturo García Bustos, who mostly worked and trained in the patio area. Starting in 1945, Frida was once again confined to bed in the house. From then to 1947, she painted works such as “Flor de la vida,” in 1945 and “El sol de la vida” in 1947.
Frida died on the upper floor of this house on 13 July 1954 at the age of 47. Her wake took place here before the body was taken to the Palacio de Bellas Artes
Palacio de Bellas Artes
The Palacio de Bellas Artes is the most important cultural center in Mexico City as well as the rest of the country of Mexico...
then cremated. Four years after her death, the house was converted to a museum dedicated to the life and works of Kahlo in 1958, when Rivera donated the house to the nation of Mexico and set up a foundation for its preservation. The first director of the museum was Carlos Pellicer
Carlos Pellicer
Carlos Pellicer Cámara , born in Villahermosa, Tabasco, was part of the first wave of modernist Mexican poets and was heavily active in the promotion of Mexican art and literature...
with the mandate to keep the house as it was.
The museum was relatively obscure for many years as Frida Kahlo was little known beyond the art world until the 1990s. In the 1980s, a movement called Neomexicanismo which promoted her and her work. Since that time, she has become a cult icon, with images of her appearing on many pop culture items and many of her works now command high prices. In 2006, Kahlo's 1943 painting Roots set a US$ 5.6 million auction record for a Latin America
Latin America
Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...
n work. The popularity of Frida affected the museum. It closed for a time in the early 1990s, then reopened in 1993, with the addition of a gift shop and restaurant/café. Today, the museum is most-visited in Coyoacán and one of the most visited in Mexico City.
Restoration work was performed on the building and some of its contents in 2009 and 2010. The work was sponsored in part by the German government, who donated 60,000 for the effort and the museum itself which contributed one million pesos. The effort concentrates on obtaining furniture for display and preservation, other equipment, roof work, restoration of items in the collection. Restoration includes most of the paintings in the collection including paintings “Viva la vida.” “El marxismo dará salud a los enfermos,” “Frida y la cesárea,” “Naturaleza muerta con bandera,” “Retrato de Marta Procel,” “Retrato de mi familia,” “Retrato de mi padre Wilhelm Kahlo” and “Los hornos de ladrillos” as well as “La quebrada” and Paisaje urbano” by Rivera, “Retrato del niño Don Antonio Villaseñor” and “Retrato de niño muerto” by unknown author, “Composición” by Wolfgang Paalen and “Retrato de Diego Rivera” by Leopold Gottlieb
Leopold Gottlieb
Leopold Gottlieb was a Jewish-Polish painter. His brother, painter Maurycy Gottlieb, died before Leopold was born.-Early Life & Education:...
along with an archive of 6,500 photographs of Kahlo, Rivera with the friends, family and colleagues done by Nickolas Murray, Martin Munckaci, Fritz Henle and Gisele Freund
Gisèle Freund
Gisèle Freund was a German-born French photographer, famous for her documentary photography and portraits of writers and artists. Her best-known book is Photographie et société , about the uses and abuses of the photographic medium.-Early life:Freund was born near Berlin to a wealthy Jewish family...
. The conservation work only covers about 35% of the total collection.