Frida and Diego
A tragic love story between two of some of the most impactful artists of the 20th century Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera’s relationship was the definition of unconventional but I couldn’t help becoming completely invested in their chaotic love story that included countless affairs involving her sister, Trotsky, and an unborn child.
By Ayesha Ashraf
“There have been two great accidents in my life. One was the trolley, and the other was Diego. Diego was by far the worst.”
- Frida Kahlo
A marriage tested by jealousy and infidelity on both sides. It was definitely not the typical love story. They fought constantly, cheated on each other continuously, divorced, and remarried the next year. Two of the most impactful artists of their time, they spent over 20 years painting each other. Only puzzle pieces in the form of paintings and journal entries are left to us to make sense of their violently passionate and unique relationship. They met when she was 22 and he was 42 when she joined the Mexican Communist Party.
My problems with Diego Rivera. His ego. His hypocrisy. His disloyalty.
Rivera had a strong disdain for capitalism and vowed to help overthrow it yet he came to the United States in the early 1930s and for two years accepted nothing but commissions from the original capitalists system’s most prominent players: Rockefellers, Fords, and the directors of General Motors. Ideological consistency was definitely not what he was going for.
An up and coming household name in Mexico by the time he was only twenty one Rivera’s private life was anything but conventional. He married four times and had countless mistresses.
Frida on the other hand made unprecedented contributed as a female toward modernism and inspired generations of artists, people with disabilities, and bisexual women. At the time it appeared as if she was inferior in fame to Rivera but postmortem she has become recognized as a timeless icon for both the LGBT movement and feminism.
The love they had for each other is obvious in both their work and the letters they left behind, but they are also nuanced with tension and conflict that never let either of them find true and unconditional happiness. She once wrote in her diary “Diego = my husband / Diego = my friend / Diego = my mother / Diego = my father / Diego = my son / Diego = me / Diego = Universe.”
Many of Frida’s self-portraits reference birth, children, and reproductive organs revealing one of the major sources of pain in her life. Frida was unable to have children but not for lack of trying. She was diagnosed with polio at six and at age eighteen was impaled through her pelvic by an iron handrail in a trolley accident that caused a lifetime of health issues, likely including her inability to bear children. She had more than thirty surgeons in her life and painted through being in full-body casts. She was forced to terminate her first child as her health was at too great a risk and additionally had numerous miscarriages. When she was first told she may never be able to bear children she created a birth certificate for an imaginary son. The son she could never have. She named him Leonardo. She wrote letters to Leonardo. She made paintings for him and wrote letters about the life she wanted them to have together but burned most of them.
Diego claims that “too many” miscarriages are part of what drove him to cheat on her. Diego cheated on her with her sister Cristina Kahlo which led to their divorce. Their connection was so strong that despite the heartache they remarried in 1940. This was by no means the end of their disloyalties to each other. Frida’s art depicts every stage of their relationship. We can see in her painting her love, her passion, and the grip Diego had on her. Not only did she paint a portrait of herself with Diego imprinted on her forehead depicting their consuming romance but she wrote in her journal “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.” In vengeance, Frida had an affair with Marxist leader Lean Trotsky when her and her husband provided him and his wife political asylum in Mexico. She also had affairs with one of Charlie Chaplin’s wives Paulette Goddard, Josephine Baker, Nickolas Muray, and Georgia O’Keeffe. Frida also had an affair with the same woman Diego cheated on her with in spite. Girl Boss move?
Their love story is a great one but a toxic one. An undeniable love in which neither truly found peace. When asked why she stayed with him she said “Look Diego is how he is, and that’s how I love him. I cannot love him for what he is not.”