Cobramuseum, Amstelveen

June 21, 2021

Frida Kahlo & Diego Rivera: A Love Revolution

Books, documentaries, movies and of course t-shirts, socks and all kinds of commercial merchandise made Frida world wide well-known. It’s almost a shame considering her life full of misery, passion, love, creativeness, death. But on the other hand and in these words: understandable.

Looking in her eyes in most of her self portraits I could easily fall in love with her. Like Diego Rivera, who loved, lived, separated en loved her again. The same goes for Frida, who wrote in her diary: “I love you more than my own skin and even though you don’t love me the same way, you love me anyways, don’t you? And if you don’t, I’ll always have the hope that you do, and I’m satisfied with that. Love me a little. I adore you”

The way their love story was unfolded is very well summarized in this exposition by combining both works of Frida and Diego, telling a whole lot more than I knew.

Frida met Diego at a communist party in 1927. Frida was 20 en Diego 40 years old. After a few years Diego divorced (from his 3rd wife!) and married Frida.
Because of a devastating bus accident in 1925, where a long metal rod tore through her midsection, Frida suffered serious internal injuries. This pain was repeatedly a subject of Frida’s paintings.
After several love affairs, miscarriages from Frida (too many according to Diego), Frida’s bisexuality  and other arguments,  the couple divorced when Diego had an affair with Frida’s sister.

Still, they remarried in 1940. The love between them was too strong, as Frida wrote in her diary. “After you meet the same person again, you don’t get the same person.”
But soon the cheating began all over again. The pain… and Diego… we can see this through her art.

Frida died in 1954, my year of birth, at the age of 47.