Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. Time to Blaine a chalk rewarding and and we are continuing on with our look into the life of twentieth century Mexican artist Frieda Collo, who's best known for the sometimes enigmatic and often haunting self portraits that she painted. Once, when asked why she painted so many self portraits, Frieda famously replied, because I'm so often alone, because I am the subject I know best. So we got a taste of that aloneness in the first part of this podcast when we discussed her battle with polio as a child and then the bus accident in her teenage years that left her bedrooden for several months, and we kind of talked about how that tragic accident changed the entire course of her life, causing her to give up her original dream of going to medical school and instead focus on painting, an occupation that she took up actually while she was confined to her bed recovering from her injuries. We also talked a little bit about her political interest, how she got more interested in Mexican politics in the first place, getting involved with the Communist Party with the encouragement of her friend Tina Madotti, who was an Italian photographer and a supposed Soviet spy. And of course it was probably that political involvement, or at least the circles that had her running in rather than her art alone, that put her back in the path of celebrated muralist Diego Rivera, who she had come across before when she was in school, but they met again through these political circles, and that was kind of where we left at. Diego was courting Frieda at her parents home known as Cossa Zul. Now the way we catched in the last episode, Diego was visiting Cosa Azul sort of under the pretense of critiquing Frieda's paintings a respected artists exactly the more well known artists helping the novice. But while it's true that Diego probably wanted an excuse to stop by her parents house, he also was just truly interested in Frieda's art. He later wrote, quote, it was obvious to me that this girl was an authentic artist, So he wasn't leading her on in that respect exactly. He wasn't just blowing smoke. That's the one thing that seems to ring true throughout their relationship. In fact, whatever happens between these two lovers, and we'll see that a lot happens between them, they remain really big supporters and admirers of each other's work, mutual fans, and as we also mentioned, friends on both sides had reservations about their pairing up together being romantically involved. Some of Frieda's friends saw Diego, who was twenty one years older than her, it's kind of a dirty old man. He'd been married twice before already, he was a notorious womanizer. They were afraid she was getting involved with the wrong kind of guy. And Frieda, though, wasn't exactly this demure young lady who being snatched out of her parents house that she left drinking and dancing, socializing, flirting. She had kind of a wicked sense of humor, and according to the PBS biography, ever, she really left gossip and dirty jokes. So you know, maybe it's not as strange of appairing as it seems initially, According to that Smithsonian article by Phillis Tukman that we mentioned in part one of this podcast, when Diego and Frieda decided to get married, her dad warned Diego that Frieda was, quote a devil, to which Diego responded, I know it. So this obviously didn't deter him, though, as the two were married on August one. Frida was twenty one at the time and Diego was forty two. Frieda was later known to have said, quote, I suffered too grave accidents in my life, one in which a street car knocked me down, and the other was Diego. And we'll kind of analyze that quote a little bit later on strange thing to say about your husband is. We wanted to mention it though, because we kind of alluded to it, I think at the last at the end of the last episode, so we needed to bring it up again. But her parents described it in kind of a funny way to their marriage. They described it as quote a marriage between an elephant and a dove because of Frieda and Diego's comical size difference. Yeah, but despite these superficial differences, Frieda and Diego did really share a lot of the same ideals. We already talked a little bit about Diego being part of the Makani Dad movement, in which he rejected Western European influences in his art in favor of all things considered authentically Mexican, and Frieda became a pretty devoted adherent of this movement too. She started wearing traditional Mexican costumes. That's probably what she's most famous for doing in that respect, including these long floor link skirts and dresses and tops and flamboyant color. She was somebody very focused on her look and her style and her clothes, and she also rejected conventional standards of beauty, which is why she didn't plug her eyebrows or her mustache. In fact, according to Stephanie Mensmer's article in The Washington Monthly which we mentioned last episode, she actually groomed them with these special tools and sometimes penciled them darker. So it was a point of pride, it was, and this facial hair famously shows up in her self portraits and it is kind of one of her trademarks in her art. Following their marriage, Diego and Frieda spent about a year in Cuernavaca, where Diego painted murals that the American Ambassador to Mexico had commissioned, and from the beginning Frieda took on. She took a lot of pride in taking care of Diego and in playing sort of the part of the devoted wife, but she wasn't playing apart. She really seemed to be into this. She would cook for him and even bathe him in. Diego was finally able to get a visa to go to the United States, which was something that he had wanted to do for a while, but by that point he had been expelled from the Communist Party, so that might have kind of helped his cause and getting that visa. But since Diego was expelled, Freda resigned from the party as well and beca that she was able to join him in traveling to the States, and they arrived there November. So they started out in San Francisco, where Diego created murals for the San Francisco Stock Exchange in the California School of Fine Arts, and meanwhile Kala, who was still pretty much of an unknown artist at this point painted portraits of friends, continued to paint portraits that reflected her life more like homelike pursuits, I guess, than what Diego was doing. We should note though, that much like her style of dress, these paintings were authentically Mexican. They were informed by nineteenth century portraiture, but they also combined aspects of Mexican pop culture and pre Columbian art in a way that really hadn't been done before at that point. They were tiny to kind of like Frieda, so very different in scale from the type of stuff that her husband was working out. I mean, I think that's so fitting, isn't it that their preferred mode of art fits their own stature. It kind of But these paintings of hers were often painted on sheet metal too, instead of canvas, which is another point that I found interesting. And this was a style that was similar to Mexican street artists, who did small vote of paintings that were religious in nature. Well, I think it's cool too that. I mean, I didn't realize that many of her paintings were done in sheet metal either. Her images are very iconic, but I don't know how many I've actually seen in person where you could tell, oh, that's sheet metal, not campus, That's true. It's an entirely different thing to see art in person. But after San Francisco, Frieda and Diego moved on for a quick visit to New York City, where Diego had a show at the Museum of Modern Art, and after that they went on to Detroit, where Diego was commissioned to paint industrial theme murals in the garden court of the Detroit Institute of Art. And it's their time in Detroit that's considered a really significant time in Frieda's life and in her art especially. Really her art matured over the entire time they were in America. But it's those works that she painted after she had a miscare and Detroit that, although a bit disturbing, and their gruesomeness, those works, they're considered some of her most original and one piece, for example, she actually painted her miscarriage. It's a nude portrait of herself where she's lying on a blood stained bed and crying. She also did a painting called My Birth around this time, which depicts a partially covered woman's body with Colo's head coming out of the vagina, one of her more famous paintings, and a lot of people women especially connect with these paintings today because they seemed to embody female suffering. And it's assumed that that overwhelming influence on Frieda was her longing to have children. She had several miscarriages and at least one abortion during her marriage to Diego, but most attribute her inability to have kids to those injuries she sustained in the bus accident. But in her article, Mentor does point out that Frieda actually may have been more ambivalent about having kids than a lot of people assumely because in her letters she never really expressed as a strong desire to have her own kids, and her actions sometimes supported this theory. So one example, once when she was pregnant, she deliberately disobeyed doctor's orders and took driving lessons instead of staying in bed like she was supposed to. And she also might have thought kids would distract Diego from his work and possibly from her too. I mean, you're gonna see more as we go on. They have a very tumultuous relationship they do. After that sort of heroin time in Detroit, Diego and Frieda returned to New York, where Diego worked on a mural for Rockefeller Center. Diego was really enjoying his time in the States. I mean, he was getting all this great work to do, he had this major show, but Frieda became very homesick. Mentimer also points out something that might be a bit surprising to us fans of Frieda's art. Frieda really didn't like Americans or the United States at all. In fact, I think Mensimer used the term disdain when she was talking about Frieda's feelings for the United States. Basically, she like going to see Marx Brothers and Laurel and Hardy movies, and that was about it. I'm imagining a very sullen Frieda sitting in the theater by herself brooding. Freda once said quote, I find that Americans completely lack sensibility and good taste. They are boring, and they all have faces like unbaked rolls purn That's a real cutdown. But one of Frieda's most recognizable paintings is self portrait on the border line between Mexico and the United States, where she's standing between a pre Columbian ruin and native flowers on one side. It's all very beautiful, and then Ford Motor Company smoke stacks and skyscrapers on the other. And I mean, if you look at that painting, you can eavily see how this would have been inspired by her homesickness on the one hand, and kind of her disdain for Americans in the United States after they spent about three years in the US. Though free to finally got her wish. They returned to Mexico near the end of ninety three, but neither of them were exactly elated about this. They weren't happy when they homecoming exactly. That mural that Diego had painted on Rockfeller Center, for one thing, had created quite a bit of controversy because he had included flattering portrait of Lenin in it, and the owners of the portrait weren't happy with that at all, and they wanted Diego to paint Lennon out of it, but he refused, so they had the entire mural destroyed. A just a side note to that, Diego recreated the mural later for the Palace of Fine Arts in Mexico City, so he did sort of get it back later. But Frieda was also unhappy when they came home, partially because she felt like Diego blamed her for making him come back and for you know, a lot of the feelings that he had had upon their return. There were also some other issues going on with their relationship too, though, yeah, kind of ongoing issues, most of which revolved mainly around infidelity and as we mentioned before, where Diego was quite the womanizer and that didn't change a bit after he married Frieda, and that maybe one reason why she'd often visit him on the scaffolding while he was painting his murals, bringing him lunch, taken care of him, whatnot, because she was keeping an eye on him and his lovely models he was using, just sort of establishing her wifely presence there. And every time he'd take up with another woman, though, she would really kind of spiral into a depression. And it brings us back to Frieda's quote about how Diego was like another accident in her life, you know, comparable to her horrible bus accident, because while the street car incident had left her crippled physically, it's almost as if Diego had crippled her in some way too, some like an emotional way. And sometimes that's uh taken quite literally. Yeah, I mean it wasn't literally in the sense that it wasn't all emotional. When he was with someone else, she usually become physically ill, to experiencing pain and sometimes even had mean to be hospitalized. Diego and Frieda moved into a new house in Mexico City, which featured two buildings connected by a narrow bridge. It was kind of a his and her sort of set up. His building was pink and hers was blue, and you know, they had plans for each to have studios and both. But she didn't really get to enjoy this home so much or paint much here because she was hospitalized a lot. And when Diego had an affair with her little sister, Christina, she actually moved out of the house into an apartment. After a few months, they did make up and she moved back in. But I can imagine that her focus on her work was probably pretty broken up to be kind of a permanently damaging incident. But Frieda wasn't completely the victim here either. She had a lot of affairs of her own, with both men and women, and one notable affair of hers was with Russian Marxist revolutionary Leon Trotsky, who was living in Eggbile for opposing the Stalinist regime, and Diego actually worked on Trotsky's behalf to have him admitted into Mexico, and Trotsky and his family started living at Frieda's childhood home, Kassa azul and Um. Not too long after that, Freedom and Trotsky became lover. She even painted him a portrait of herself as a gift, but their affear didn't really laugh that long, and after Trotsky was eventually assassinated, Frieda even called him a coward, claimed he'd stolen from her while living at Kassa Zul, something that probably wasn't true. Um. And then in that article we keep mentioning by Mensumer, she says Frieda turned on Trotsky like this because she had become a devout Stalinist in the meantime and remained so pretty much the rest of her life. One of her last paintings was called Stalin and I so I guess at this point she preferred Stalin over Trotsky and made that quite clear. After her affair with Trotsky, things began to change with Frieda as far as her art was concerned, though. The French writer Andre Breton, who's considered the father of surrealism, came to Mexico and really became enamored with Freeda's work. He called her work surrealist, which, as art, basically meant that it produced fantastic imagery or effects by using these unnatural or unexpected juxtaposition. Dolly, I mean, he's kind of the classic example exactly. But Frieda never really thought of herself this way. She wrote that she never knew that she was a surrealist quote until Andre Breton came to Mexico and told me that I was one. She also wrote, really, I do not know whether my paintings are surrealist or not, but I do know that they are the frankest expression of myself. Since my subjects have always been my sensations, my states of mind, and the profound reactions that life has been producing in me, I have frequently objectified all this and figures of myself, which were the most sincere and real thing that I could do in order to express what I felt inside and outside of myself. Interesting to note too, Diego didn't agree with the surrealist assessment either. He believed that Frieda's work was very much realist, regardless what they thought. Though. Britain arranged for Frieda to show her work in New York in ninety eight. This was a huge deal. It was her first one person show held at the Julian Levy Gallery, which was one of the first American venues to promote surrealist arts. So I mean it was certainly being marketed as surrealist, even if she was unsure. People like Georgia O'Keefe were in attendance for the opening, and the show was widely considered to be a huge success, I mean enough of a success for Frieda to grace the cover of Vogue shortly thereafter, and after her success in New York free to travel to France, where eventually she got a show as well, and the Louve ended up buying one of her self portraits, and it was the first work by twentieth century Mexican artists to enter the Louver's collections. Pablo Picasso, and admire of her work, gave Frieda a pair of ear rings around this time too, which I feel is very exciting to get jewelry from public Picasso. I would have liked one of his china's. That would be my my requested gift from Pablo Coffee if I got a fee in that. I don't know. You're the one who always says, what are you going to do with china? Anyway, that's true, I would use my pcaffee china as you should. Coming home from this was kind of a letdown though for Frieda. She found Diego in the midst of yet another affair. By the end of nine nine they finally decided to get a divorce, and after the split, freed to kind of threw herself into her art since people had started to take notice of her work. Finally, she hoped that it would be her ticket to financial independence. No longer dependent on her family, no longer dependent on Diego, she thought, maybe this will be my way to be able to do whatever I want to exactly. So Frieda did a lot of self portraits around this time, where she was surrounded by her beloved pets, including monkeys, cats, and parents. One distinctive portrait she also did around the time of her divorce was the Two Frieda's and as the name suggests, it's actually a double self portrait. There are two of her in this painting. One is wearing a European outfit that's torn open to reveal a broken heart, and the other is wearing Mexican costume, and they're joined together by an artery that's running from one heart to the other. So we can see kind of a little influence from her medical her pre medical studies here too, I think, but she later said that this was inspired by the memory of an imaginary childhood friend. However, we know that Diego was also born a twin, so there might have been some influence from that as well things that play there. Perhaps, so Diego and Frieda really didn't stay apart for very long. A doctor friend of theirs in San Francisco basically told Frieda that she should make up with Diego, and according to Tukman's article, he wrote to her saying, quote, Diego loves you very much, and you love him. It is also the case, and you know it better than I that besides you, he has two great loves, one painting, two women. In general, he has never been, nor ever will be monogamous, so that sounds kind of not encouraging. But ultimately Frieda decided to accept Diego for who he was, warts and all, and they remarried in December of ninety but they continued to have a very volatile relationship. Both of them kept having affairs, but Freeda also continued to focus on her work. She even took on a group of students known as Los Frieda's, and she continued to do the things that made her happy, like cooking and socializing with friends. As the years went by, though, Frida's health continued to deteriorate pretty much through the last decade of her life, she had had several operations on her back and her leg during this time. All told, really we should mention since her accident, since her teen years, she had had more than thirty operations total nine three. Her right leg had to be amputated below the knee. And while in during these health problems, she became addicted to alcohol and pain killers, and that just kind of compounded the problem and it showed in her work. By ninety three, Menstumer writes that Frieda could barely pick up a paintbrush. Her hands were so shaky, and that's why a lot of her late work is considered subpar um when you compare it to her other earlier pieces. Frida did, however, have kind of a last her Raw One More One Person show in nineteen fifty three. It was her first solo exhibition in Mexico, the only one held in her native country during her lifetime, something I consider kind of remarkable. She was bedridden, though, but she insisted on attending this opening night, you know, her big event. So they had to get her there in an ambulance, and then she was carried to a canopy bed which had been decorated with photos and things, and that's the perch from which she got to enjoy her night. I mean, you can imagine her almost holding court there during her her big gala event. But a local critic wrote of the exhibition quote, it is impossible to separate the life and work of this extraordinary person. Her paintings are her biography. She died the next year, in nineteen fifty four, at the age of forty seven, and while the cause of death was officially pulmonary embolism, many do suggest or suspect that she committed suicide. Just four days before her death, she had been out fighting now, I mean, she kind of had a spark to the end. It themed she had attended a protest in a wheelchair with Diego. They were protesting the overthrow of the Guatemalan president by the CIA. After her death, Frieda's work went unnoticed for several decades until the freedom mania that we mentioned in the first part of this podcast kicked off in the early nineties. Now, her painting self for millions of dollars, putting her at least as far as dollar figures are concerned, in the same league as the likes of Picasso and Warhol, Madonna for instance, as a huge collector of freed To Callo's work, she owns that painting that we mentioned earlier called My Birth, and she said that she quote identifies with Frieda's pain and her sadness. We were speculated a little bit before recording about like I wonder where Madonna keeps it? Even like where is it on display? I know, I want to do a little more research on that, and I wonder what else she owns. I'm sure she didn't own just one. You can't have just one. Will be googling Madonna's art collection later. With that kind of cachet, you can see why the art world would be in an uproar about a previously unknown trove of Frieda's artwork coming to light, like the one that we mentioned in the intro to Part one. So we know that the art experts generally think this troe that we mentioned as a fake, but some others think otherwise. Diego Rivera's granddaughter, for instance, attested to the works authenticity before her death in two thousand seven, and a couple of former Los Frida's students are also convinced. Regardless the trust that controls Collas copyright. As we mentioned, did file a criminal complaint, and they asked the Mexican government to investigate these fines. So after that last June, a Mexican court ruled that opponents have failed to prove their claim that the collection is focused. But they didn't roll on the collections often ticity. They only said that the trust had failed to prove that it was counterfeit. Still, though, the antique dealers who possessed the trope are considering this pretty much a victory. They've filed for ownership papers for the material, and at the time the story broke, they were considering options for an exhibition. So it's gonna be interesting to see how this plays out. I love when we close a podcast on an open story. It shows you kind of history is ongoing exactly, and it's something that might come up later in a podcast. I mean, maybe in our Historical Finds round up for two thousand twelve to bring up this trove again if something happens with it, you know, and it just opens up possibilities for listeners to down the road. I think. I know, we know you guys watched the news very closely for us, so we'll all be looking out for this one. Well. I think putting an open ended mystery out there is a good way just to finish off and transition into kind of an artsy related listener mail as well. This isn't an email for once. It's a letter that was sent to me actually with a package by listener Robert, and it was just a really cool thing to receive. If you listen to the podcast a lot, you may remember we did one on John d back in the fall late fall, and um we mentioned Harry Potter, and I mentioned that my niece was reading Harry Potter, and um had suggested to me to read it as well. More than suggested. She kind of shoved a book in my hand and was like, read this. So Robert wrote to us and sent us wand pretty cool looking, right. Have you tried any spells or has your niece tried any? I know it was ultimately destined for her. Yes, I don't know. I'm going to have to explore that and find out if any of her, if her brother or sister has been turned into a toad or something. But I wanted to read what Robert wrote because it's really cool. He said, jar to Blina and closed as a gift for you to read gift to your Harry Potter reading niece. When my daughter's nieces and nephews were busy with the Harry Potter series, I made several of these wands for them to play with. Of course, I made more than I needed so they could each have a variety from which to choose, So afterward I ended up with some extras. So I guess that's what I ended up with. And when you mentioned that you were reading the books along with your niece, I thought of sending you one to help steal your status as a cool ant. And this particular wand is made of mahogany and padwalk. I don't know if I said that correctly or not. With an agged at the base of the handle, the end of the handle unscrews to reveal a small compartment for a phoenix, feathers, or other supplemental magical items. I hope she enjoys it, so thank you so much, Robert. I know that my niece and probably my other niece and my nephew will enjoy this for years to come. And it was just so cool to see. I cannot believe that he made this with his own hands. It's pretty amazing and I guess we'll have to just be searching. Keep on the lookout for Phoenix Brothers too, or I don't know, dragon heart string something something along something to stuff in there. Um. If you have you don't have to send us a gift, but if you have any letters to send us, any comments about podcasts, or notes about interesting crafts that you do like listener Robert, or if you just want to send us a suggestion for a future podcast, please write to us where at History podcast at Discovery dot com. You can also find us on Facebook and we're on Twitter. In this history and if you want to learn a little bit more about art history related topics. 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Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. Time to Blaine a chalk rewarding and and we are continuing on with our look into the life of twentieth century Mexican artist Frieda Collo, who's best known for the sometimes enigmatic and often haunting self portraits that she painted. Once, when asked why she painted so many self portraits, Frieda famously replied, because I'm so often alone, because I am the subject I know best. So we got a taste of that aloneness in the first part of this podcast when we discussed her battle with polio as a child and then the bus accident in her teenage years that left her bedrooden for several months, and we kind of talked about how that tragic accident changed the entire course of her life, causing her to give up her original dream of going to medical school and instead focus on painting, an occupation that she took up actually while she was confined to her bed recovering from her injuries. We also talked a little bit about her political interest, how she got more interested in Mexican politics in the first place, getting involved with the Communist Party with the encouragement of her friend Tina Madotti, who was an Italian photographer and a supposed Soviet spy. And of course it was probably that political involvement, or at least the circles that had her running in rather than her art alone, that put her back in the path of celebrated muralist Diego Rivera, who she had come across before when she was in school, but they met again through these political circles, and that was kind of where we left at. Diego was courting Frieda at her parents home known as Cossa Zul. Now the way we catched in the last episode, Diego was visiting Cosa Azul sort of under the pretense of critiquing Frieda's paintings a respected artists exactly the more well known artists helping the novice. But while it's true that Diego probably wanted an excuse to stop by her parents house, he also was just truly interested in Frieda's art. He later wrote, quote, it was obvious to me that this girl was an authentic artist, So he wasn't leading her on in that respect exactly. He wasn't just blowing smoke. That's the one thing that seems to ring true throughout their relationship. In fact, whatever happens between these two lovers, and we'll see that a lot happens between them, they remain really big supporters and admirers of each other's work, mutual fans, and as we also mentioned, friends on both sides had reservations about their pairing up together being romantically involved. Some of Frieda's friends saw Diego, who was twenty one years older than her, it's kind of a dirty old man. He'd been married twice before already, he was a notorious womanizer. They were afraid she was getting involved with the wrong kind of guy. And Frieda, though, wasn't exactly this demure young lady who being snatched out of her parents house that she left drinking and dancing, socializing, flirting. She had kind of a wicked sense of humor, and according to the PBS biography, ever, she really left gossip and dirty jokes. So you know, maybe it's not as strange of appairing as it seems initially, According to that Smithsonian article by Phillis Tukman that we mentioned in part one of this podcast, when Diego and Frieda decided to get married, her dad warned Diego that Frieda was, quote a devil, to which Diego responded, I know it. So this obviously didn't deter him, though, as the two were married on August one. Frida was twenty one at the time and Diego was forty two. Frieda was later known to have said, quote, I suffered too grave accidents in my life, one in which a street car knocked me down, and the other was Diego. And we'll kind of analyze that quote a little bit later on strange thing to say about your husband is. We wanted to mention it though, because we kind of alluded to it, I think at the last at the end of the last episode, so we needed to bring it up again. But her parents described it in kind of a funny way to their marriage. They described it as quote a marriage between an elephant and a dove because of Frieda and Diego's comical size difference. Yeah, but despite these superficial differences, Frieda and Diego did really share a lot of the same ideals. We already talked a little bit about Diego being part of the Makani Dad movement, in which he rejected Western European influences in his art in favor of all things considered authentically Mexican, and Frieda became a pretty devoted adherent of this movement too. She started wearing traditional Mexican costumes. That's probably what she's most famous for doing in that respect, including these long floor link skirts and dresses and tops and flamboyant color. She was somebody very focused on her look and her style and her clothes, and she also rejected conventional standards of beauty, which is why she didn't plug her eyebrows or her mustache. In fact, according to Stephanie Mensmer's article in The Washington Monthly which we mentioned last episode, she actually groomed them with these special tools and sometimes penciled them darker. So it was a point of pride, it was, and this facial hair famously shows up in her self portraits and it is kind of one of her trademarks in her art. Following their marriage, Diego and Frieda spent about a year in Cuernavaca, where Diego painted murals that the American Ambassador to Mexico had commissioned, and from the beginning Frieda took on. She took a lot of pride in taking care of Diego and in playing sort of the part of the devoted wife, but she wasn't playing apart. She really seemed to be into this. She would cook for him and even bathe him in. Diego was finally able to get a visa to go to the United States, which was something that he had wanted to do for a while, but by that point he had been expelled from the Communist Party, so that might have kind of helped his cause and getting that visa. But since Diego was expelled, Freda resigned from the party as well and beca that she was able to join him in traveling to the States, and they arrived there November. So they started out in San Francisco, where Diego created murals for the San Francisco Stock Exchange in the California School of Fine Arts, and meanwhile Kala, who was still pretty much of an unknown artist at this point painted portraits of friends, continued to paint portraits that reflected her life more like homelike pursuits, I guess, than what Diego was doing. We should note though, that much like her style of dress, these paintings were authentically Mexican. They were informed by nineteenth century portraiture, but they also combined aspects of Mexican pop culture and pre Columbian art in a way that really hadn't been done before at that point. They were tiny to kind of like Frieda, so very different in scale from the type of stuff that her husband was working out. I mean, I think that's so fitting, isn't it that their preferred mode of art fits their own stature. It kind of But these paintings of hers were often painted on sheet metal too, instead of canvas, which is another point that I found interesting. And this was a style that was similar to Mexican street artists, who did small vote of paintings that were religious in nature. Well, I think it's cool too that. I mean, I didn't realize that many of her paintings were done in sheet metal either. Her images are very iconic, but I don't know how many I've actually seen in person where you could tell, oh, that's sheet metal, not campus, That's true. It's an entirely different thing to see art in person. But after San Francisco, Frieda and Diego moved on for a quick visit to New York City, where Diego had a show at the Museum of Modern Art, and after that they went on to Detroit, where Diego was commissioned to paint industrial theme murals in the garden court of the Detroit Institute of Art. And it's their time in Detroit that's considered a really significant time in Frieda's life and in her art especially. Really her art matured over the entire time they were in America. But it's those works that she painted after she had a miscare and Detroit that, although a bit disturbing, and their gruesomeness, those works, they're considered some of her most original and one piece, for example, she actually painted her miscarriage. It's a nude portrait of herself where she's lying on a blood stained bed and crying. She also did a painting called My Birth around this time, which depicts a partially covered woman's body with Colo's head coming out of the vagina, one of her more famous paintings, and a lot of people women especially connect with these paintings today because they seemed to embody female suffering. And it's assumed that that overwhelming influence on Frieda was her longing to have children. She had several miscarriages and at least one abortion during her marriage to Diego, but most attribute her inability to have kids to those injuries she sustained in the bus accident. But in her article, Mentor does point out that Frieda actually may have been more ambivalent about having kids than a lot of people assumely because in her letters she never really expressed as a strong desire to have her own kids, and her actions sometimes supported this theory. So one example, once when she was pregnant, she deliberately disobeyed doctor's orders and took driving lessons instead of staying in bed like she was supposed to. And she also might have thought kids would distract Diego from his work and possibly from her too. I mean, you're gonna see more as we go on. They have a very tumultuous relationship they do. After that sort of heroin time in Detroit, Diego and Frieda returned to New York, where Diego worked on a mural for Rockefeller Center. Diego was really enjoying his time in the States. I mean, he was getting all this great work to do, he had this major show, but Frieda became very homesick. Mentimer also points out something that might be a bit surprising to us fans of Frieda's art. Frieda really didn't like Americans or the United States at all. In fact, I think Mensimer used the term disdain when she was talking about Frieda's feelings for the United States. Basically, she like going to see Marx Brothers and Laurel and Hardy movies, and that was about it. I'm imagining a very sullen Frieda sitting in the theater by herself brooding. Freda once said quote, I find that Americans completely lack sensibility and good taste. They are boring, and they all have faces like unbaked rolls purn That's a real cutdown. But one of Frieda's most recognizable paintings is self portrait on the border line between Mexico and the United States, where she's standing between a pre Columbian ruin and native flowers on one side. It's all very beautiful, and then Ford Motor Company smoke stacks and skyscrapers on the other. And I mean, if you look at that painting, you can eavily see how this would have been inspired by her homesickness on the one hand, and kind of her disdain for Americans in the United States after they spent about three years in the US. Though free to finally got her wish. They returned to Mexico near the end of ninety three, but neither of them were exactly elated about this. They weren't happy when they homecoming exactly. That mural that Diego had painted on Rockfeller Center, for one thing, had created quite a bit of controversy because he had included flattering portrait of Lenin in it, and the owners of the portrait weren't happy with that at all, and they wanted Diego to paint Lennon out of it, but he refused, so they had the entire mural destroyed. A just a side note to that, Diego recreated the mural later for the Palace of Fine Arts in Mexico City, so he did sort of get it back later. But Frieda was also unhappy when they came home, partially because she felt like Diego blamed her for making him come back and for you know, a lot of the feelings that he had had upon their return. There were also some other issues going on with their relationship too, though, yeah, kind of ongoing issues, most of which revolved mainly around infidelity and as we mentioned before, where Diego was quite the womanizer and that didn't change a bit after he married Frieda, and that maybe one reason why she'd often visit him on the scaffolding while he was painting his murals, bringing him lunch, taken care of him, whatnot, because she was keeping an eye on him and his lovely models he was using, just sort of establishing her wifely presence there. And every time he'd take up with another woman, though, she would really kind of spiral into a depression. And it brings us back to Frieda's quote about how Diego was like another accident in her life, you know, comparable to her horrible bus accident, because while the street car incident had left her crippled physically, it's almost as if Diego had crippled her in some way too, some like an emotional way. And sometimes that's uh taken quite literally. Yeah, I mean it wasn't literally in the sense that it wasn't all emotional. When he was with someone else, she usually become physically ill, to experiencing pain and sometimes even had mean to be hospitalized. Diego and Frieda moved into a new house in Mexico City, which featured two buildings connected by a narrow bridge. It was kind of a his and her sort of set up. His building was pink and hers was blue, and you know, they had plans for each to have studios and both. But she didn't really get to enjoy this home so much or paint much here because she was hospitalized a lot. And when Diego had an affair with her little sister, Christina, she actually moved out of the house into an apartment. After a few months, they did make up and she moved back in. But I can imagine that her focus on her work was probably pretty broken up to be kind of a permanently damaging incident. But Frieda wasn't completely the victim here either. She had a lot of affairs of her own, with both men and women, and one notable affair of hers was with Russian Marxist revolutionary Leon Trotsky, who was living in Eggbile for opposing the Stalinist regime, and Diego actually worked on Trotsky's behalf to have him admitted into Mexico, and Trotsky and his family started living at Frieda's childhood home, Kassa azul and Um. Not too long after that, Freedom and Trotsky became lover. She even painted him a portrait of herself as a gift, but their affear didn't really laugh that long, and after Trotsky was eventually assassinated, Frieda even called him a coward, claimed he'd stolen from her while living at Kassa Zul, something that probably wasn't true. Um. And then in that article we keep mentioning by Mensumer, she says Frieda turned on Trotsky like this because she had become a devout Stalinist in the meantime and remained so pretty much the rest of her life. One of her last paintings was called Stalin and I so I guess at this point she preferred Stalin over Trotsky and made that quite clear. After her affair with Trotsky, things began to change with Frieda as far as her art was concerned, though. The French writer Andre Breton, who's considered the father of surrealism, came to Mexico and really became enamored with Freeda's work. He called her work surrealist, which, as art, basically meant that it produced fantastic imagery or effects by using these unnatural or unexpected juxtaposition. Dolly, I mean, he's kind of the classic example exactly. But Frieda never really thought of herself this way. She wrote that she never knew that she was a surrealist quote until Andre Breton came to Mexico and told me that I was one. She also wrote, really, I do not know whether my paintings are surrealist or not, but I do know that they are the frankest expression of myself. Since my subjects have always been my sensations, my states of mind, and the profound reactions that life has been producing in me, I have frequently objectified all this and figures of myself, which were the most sincere and real thing that I could do in order to express what I felt inside and outside of myself. Interesting to note too, Diego didn't agree with the surrealist assessment either. He believed that Frieda's work was very much realist, regardless what they thought. Though. Britain arranged for Frieda to show her work in New York in ninety eight. This was a huge deal. It was her first one person show held at the Julian Levy Gallery, which was one of the first American venues to promote surrealist arts. So I mean it was certainly being marketed as surrealist, even if she was unsure. People like Georgia O'Keefe were in attendance for the opening, and the show was widely considered to be a huge success, I mean enough of a success for Frieda to grace the cover of Vogue shortly thereafter, and after her success in New York free to travel to France, where eventually she got a show as well, and the Louve ended up buying one of her self portraits, and it was the first work by twentieth century Mexican artists to enter the Louver's collections. Pablo Picasso, and admire of her work, gave Frieda a pair of ear rings around this time too, which I feel is very exciting to get jewelry from public Picasso. I would have liked one of his china's. That would be my my requested gift from Pablo Coffee if I got a fee in that. I don't know. You're the one who always says, what are you going to do with china? Anyway, that's true, I would use my pcaffee china as you should. Coming home from this was kind of a letdown though for Frieda. She found Diego in the midst of yet another affair. By the end of nine nine they finally decided to get a divorce, and after the split, freed to kind of threw herself into her art since people had started to take notice of her work. Finally, she hoped that it would be her ticket to financial independence. No longer dependent on her family, no longer dependent on Diego, she thought, maybe this will be my way to be able to do whatever I want to exactly. So Frieda did a lot of self portraits around this time, where she was surrounded by her beloved pets, including monkeys, cats, and parents. One distinctive portrait she also did around the time of her divorce was the Two Frieda's and as the name suggests, it's actually a double self portrait. There are two of her in this painting. One is wearing a European outfit that's torn open to reveal a broken heart, and the other is wearing Mexican costume, and they're joined together by an artery that's running from one heart to the other. So we can see kind of a little influence from her medical her pre medical studies here too, I think, but she later said that this was inspired by the memory of an imaginary childhood friend. However, we know that Diego was also born a twin, so there might have been some influence from that as well things that play there. Perhaps, so Diego and Frieda really didn't stay apart for very long. A doctor friend of theirs in San Francisco basically told Frieda that she should make up with Diego, and according to Tukman's article, he wrote to her saying, quote, Diego loves you very much, and you love him. It is also the case, and you know it better than I that besides you, he has two great loves, one painting, two women. In general, he has never been, nor ever will be monogamous, so that sounds kind of not encouraging. But ultimately Frieda decided to accept Diego for who he was, warts and all, and they remarried in December of ninety but they continued to have a very volatile relationship. Both of them kept having affairs, but Freeda also continued to focus on her work. She even took on a group of students known as Los Frieda's, and she continued to do the things that made her happy, like cooking and socializing with friends. As the years went by, though, Frida's health continued to deteriorate pretty much through the last decade of her life, she had had several operations on her back and her leg during this time. All told, really we should mention since her accident, since her teen years, she had had more than thirty operations total nine three. Her right leg had to be amputated below the knee. And while in during these health problems, she became addicted to alcohol and pain killers, and that just kind of compounded the problem and it showed in her work. By ninety three, Menstumer writes that Frieda could barely pick up a paintbrush. Her hands were so shaky, and that's why a lot of her late work is considered subpar um when you compare it to her other earlier pieces. Frida did, however, have kind of a last her Raw One More One Person show in nineteen fifty three. It was her first solo exhibition in Mexico, the only one held in her native country during her lifetime, something I consider kind of remarkable. She was bedridden, though, but she insisted on attending this opening night, you know, her big event. So they had to get her there in an ambulance, and then she was carried to a canopy bed which had been decorated with photos and things, and that's the perch from which she got to enjoy her night. I mean, you can imagine her almost holding court there during her her big gala event. But a local critic wrote of the exhibition quote, it is impossible to separate the life and work of this extraordinary person. Her paintings are her biography. She died the next year, in nineteen fifty four, at the age of forty seven, and while the cause of death was officially pulmonary embolism, many do suggest or suspect that she committed suicide. Just four days before her death, she had been out fighting now, I mean, she kind of had a spark to the end. It themed she had attended a protest in a wheelchair with Diego. They were protesting the overthrow of the Guatemalan president by the CIA. After her death, Frieda's work went unnoticed for several decades until the freedom mania that we mentioned in the first part of this podcast kicked off in the early nineties. Now, her painting self for millions of dollars, putting her at least as far as dollar figures are concerned, in the same league as the likes of Picasso and Warhol, Madonna for instance, as a huge collector of freed To Callo's work, she owns that painting that we mentioned earlier called My Birth, and she said that she quote identifies with Frieda's pain and her sadness. We were speculated a little bit before recording about like I wonder where Madonna keeps it? Even like where is it on display? I know, I want to do a little more research on that, and I wonder what else she owns. I'm sure she didn't own just one. You can't have just one. Will be googling Madonna's art collection later. With that kind of cachet, you can see why the art world would be in an uproar about a previously unknown trove of Frieda's artwork coming to light, like the one that we mentioned in the intro to Part one. So we know that the art experts generally think this troe that we mentioned as a fake, but some others think otherwise. Diego Rivera's granddaughter, for instance, attested to the works authenticity before her death in two thousand seven, and a couple of former Los Frida's students are also convinced. Regardless the trust that controls Collas copyright. As we mentioned, did file a criminal complaint, and they asked the Mexican government to investigate these fines. So after that last June, a Mexican court ruled that opponents have failed to prove their claim that the collection is focused. But they didn't roll on the collections often ticity. They only said that the trust had failed to prove that it was counterfeit. Still, though, the antique dealers who possessed the trope are considering this pretty much a victory. They've filed for ownership papers for the material, and at the time the story broke, they were considering options for an exhibition. So it's gonna be interesting to see how this plays out. I love when we close a podcast on an open story. It shows you kind of history is ongoing exactly, and it's something that might come up later in a podcast. I mean, maybe in our Historical Finds round up for two thousand twelve to bring up this trove again if something happens with it, you know, and it just opens up possibilities for listeners to down the road. I think. I know, we know you guys watched the news very closely for us, so we'll all be looking out for this one. Well. I think putting an open ended mystery out there is a good way just to finish off and transition into kind of an artsy related listener mail as well. This isn't an email for once. It's a letter that was sent to me actually with a package by listener Robert, and it was just a really cool thing to receive. If you listen to the podcast a lot, you may remember we did one on John d back in the fall late fall, and um we mentioned Harry Potter, and I mentioned that my niece was reading Harry Potter, and um had suggested to me to read it as well. More than suggested. She kind of shoved a book in my hand and was like, read this. So Robert wrote to us and sent us wand pretty cool looking, right. Have you tried any spells or has your niece tried any? I know it was ultimately destined for her. Yes, I don't know. I'm going to have to explore that and find out if any of her, if her brother or sister has been turned into a toad or something. But I wanted to read what Robert wrote because it's really cool. He said, jar to Blina and closed as a gift for you to read gift to your Harry Potter reading niece. When my daughter's nieces and nephews were busy with the Harry Potter series, I made several of these wands for them to play with. Of course, I made more than I needed so they could each have a variety from which to choose, So afterward I ended up with some extras. So I guess that's what I ended up with. And when you mentioned that you were reading the books along with your niece, I thought of sending you one to help steal your status as a cool ant. And this particular wand is made of mahogany and padwalk. I don't know if I said that correctly or not. With an agged at the base of the handle, the end of the handle unscrews to reveal a small compartment for a phoenix, feathers, or other supplemental magical items. I hope she enjoys it, so thank you so much, Robert. I know that my niece and probably my other niece and my nephew will enjoy this for years to come. And it was just so cool to see. I cannot believe that he made this with his own hands. It's pretty amazing and I guess we'll have to just be searching. Keep on the lookout for Phoenix Brothers too, or I don't know, dragon heart string something something along something to stuff in there. Um. If you have you don't have to send us a gift, but if you have any letters to send us, any comments about podcasts, or notes about interesting crafts that you do like listener Robert, or if you just want to send us a suggestion for a future podcast, please write to us where at History podcast at Discovery dot com. You can also find us on Facebook and we're on Twitter. In this history and if you want to learn a little bit more about art history related topics. We mentioned this last time that we have a lot of articles on famous artists, but we also have articles on famous art movements, including for realism. You can look that one up by searching for how Surrealism works on our homepage at www dot how Stuff Works dot com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join House to Work staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The House of Works iPhone up hows a ride. Download it today on iTunes. It got in