For her entire adult life, artist Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) suffered unbearable pain from her spine and foot. (See “Frida’s First Bad Accident.”) She endured over thirty surgeries to correct the problem (in both Mexico and the U.S), was subjected to batteries of tests, X-rays, and spinal taps, given blood transfusions, physical therapy, and strong medicine . Yet, despite such extreme measures, Frida’s health continued to deteriorate.
After 1944, Frida’s doctors prescribed months of bed rest, encasing her tortured body in a succession of plaster or steel corsets that helped her to sit or stand. Frida described these corsets and the treatments that accompanied them as “punishment.”
“There were twenty-eight corsets in all–one made of steel, three of leather, and the rest of plaster. One…allowed her neither to sit nor to recline. It made her so angry that she took it off, and used a sash to tie her torso to the back of a chair in order to support her spine.
There was a time when she spent three months in a nearly vertical position with sacks of sand attached to her feet to straighten out her spinal column. Another time, Adelina Zendejas, visiting her in the hospital after an operation, found her hanging from steel rings with her feet just able to touch the ground. Her easel was in front of her. “We were horrified,” Zendejas recalls. “She was painting and telling jokes and funny stories….”
Yet another gruesome tale comes from Frida’s friend the pianist Ella Paresce. A Spanish doctor who knew nothing about orthopedics put a plaster corset on Frida….”[D]uring the night, the corset began to harden, as it was supposed to do. I happened to be spending the night there in the next room, and about half past four or five in the morning, I heard a crying, nearly shrieks. I jumped out of the bed and went in, and there was Frida saying she couldn’t breathe!….The corset had hardened…so much that it pressed her lungs. It made pleats all around her body. So I tried to get a doctor. Nobody would pay any attention at that hour…so…I took a razor blade…and made about a two-inch cut [in the cast over her chest] so that she could breathe….[S]he painted the corset, which is still visible in the museum in Coyoacán.” (1)
In the photo here, Mexican muralist Diego Rivera tenderly kisses his wife Frida Kahlo at the Hospital Ingles ABC in Mexico City, 1950. Frida’s botched spinal fusion of 1946 began the “calvary that would lead to the end,” said her friend Cachucha Miguel N. Lira. Her leg was in constant pain. Four toes on her right foot had turned black; gangrene had set in. An amputation was advised. Frida spent a year in the hospital. In the photo, notice that Frida had painted the Communist symbols, a hammer and sickle on her plaster corset. Visitors also signed Frida’s corsets and decorated them with feathers, mirrors, photographs, pebbles, and ink. When Frida’s doctors removed her paints from her sick room, instead, she used lipstick and iodine to paint her cast. (1)
(1) Herrera, Hayden. Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo.New York: HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 1983.
Kahlo’s images are always stunning, but this one really hits close to home. My stepsister contracted polio in the 1952 epidemic with total paralysis. Once out of the iron lung she was encased in cement to allow her to sit erect in her wheel chair. She passed away after several years during her second spinal fusion surgery.
So many today barely remember the great polio scourges.
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I had several family members contract polio. My dad had a friend in an iron lung. We have a photo of him inside it. It is chilling.
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Have you read The Lacuna yet by Kingsolver? Frida and Diego are characters in the book. I thought the front half of the book excellent but the ending very slow.
Wondered what you thought?
Jennifer
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Jennifer, I have been tempted to pick it up at Barnes & Noble and give it a try but I hesitate to read fiction about real-life people. I’m so afraid I’ll mix up fact with fiction!
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Absolutely fascinating posts. I’ve been going through all of your posts about Frida. Great work. Thanks for writing them.
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I am so glad you like the posts. Keep coming back, please.
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I am trying to design a small “Frida Quilt”. It’s easy to find lots of wonderful photographs of her and of her work. It’s hard to find pictures of the corset that really show the ornamentation. I just love Frida and love looking at all the pictures over and over. The quilt is intended as a tribute. I want one of the blocks to be of the corset.
Love the posts–thanks.
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It is very hard to find pictures of the corset although she wore many different ones. Keep coming back, Carolyn. Your Frida quilt sounds fabulous.
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oh boy, I thought the first half of Lacuna was slow… may as well give up now, i guess!
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i loved this post!!! she is amazing and this is the dramatic stuff i need for my project!!!!!!!
THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
like me @Mandaswaggie on Twitter!!!!!!!!!!!
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[…] viziunea lui cinematografică, picturală, onirică. Captivă într-un corset de ghips a fost şi Frida Kahlo şi nu s-a oprit să picteze. Locuitor al unui spital a fost şi Randle Patrick McMurphy, din […]
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