Click here to read “Frida Kahlo’s First Bad Accident” before reading this post.
Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, their wedding photo, 1929
Frida Kahlo once said to a friend, “I have suffered two serious accidents in my life, one in which a streetcar ran over me….The other accident is Diego.”
She was referring to her husband, Diego Rivera (1886-1957), the world famous painter and active Communist. He painted large-scale murals in Mexico, New York City, Detroit, and San Francisco. Diego was 21 years older than Frida and their marriage in 1929 offered Frida, a budding artist, to move not only in elite Mexican artistic and intellectual circles, but those in Europe and America as well. But the price Frida paid for marrying a renowned “lady chaser” was high. Their marriage was tempestuous. They divorced once and remarried a year later; they were separated several times.
Many people were surprised by what they considered a strange match. Frida once told a journalist:
When I was seventeen, Diego began to fall in love with me. My father didn’t like him because he was a Communist and because they said he looked like a fat, fat, fat Breughel. They said it was like an elephant marrying a dove. Nevertheless, I arranged everything in the Coyoacán town hall for us to be married on the twenty-first of August, 1929.”
"The Flower Carrier" by Diego Rivera, 1935
Frida was 22, Diego, 43. It was Diego’s first legal marriage, although, by then, there had been many women and two long-term relationships. For ten years during the 1910s, he lived in Paris with the Russian artist Angelina Beloff. Together they had a son who died young. Then, in 1922, he married the Mexican Lupe Marín, with whom he had two daughters. Though a serious commitment, Diego and Lupe had not legalized their relationship with a civil ceremony so Diego was free to marry Frida without divorcing Lupe.
Frida’s recollection of her wedding to Diego gives an idea of how difficult a man Diego was to be married to:
I borrowed petticoats, a blouse, and a rebozo from the maid, fixed the special apparatus on my foot so it wouldn’t be noticeable, and we were married. Nobody went to the wedding, only my father, who said to Diego, ‘Now, look, my daughter is a sick person and all her life she’s going to be sick. She’s intelligent but not pretty. Think it over awhile if you like, and if you still wish to marry her, marry her, I give you my permission.'”
"Frida and Diego Rivera" by Frida Kahlo, 1931
Diego added that her father mentioned that she was un demonio – a devil. Frida continues, describing her wedding reception:
Then they gave us a big party in Roberto Montenegro’s house. Diego got horrendously drunk on tequila, waved his pistol about, broke some man’s little finger, and destroyed some things. Afterward, we got mad at each other; I left crying and went home. A few days went by and Diego came to get me and took me to his house at 104 Reforma.'”
Despite their stormy relationship, Diego and Frida loved and needed each other.
NEXT: Frida Kahlo: A Few, Small Nips
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