Frida Kahlo

Country: Spain

Manufactory: Lladro

Date of establishment: 2008

Sculptor: Virginia Gonzalez

Size (cm): 39*26

Limited Series

Porcelain Story

When the masters of the famous Spanish manufactory Lladro released an amazing work - the porcelain head of the famous Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, I thought for so long whether to buy or not to buy it in our collection that a small edition (only 250 copies) of the work was sold out. Bad luck, I thought. And, as it turned out, I was wrong. For soon friends found and donated this rare work to our museum.

The Blue House, where Frida Kahlo was born and raised, was shown to me in Mexico City by connoisseurs of her amazing talent. In a small house with a cozy courtyard on the corner of Londres and Allende streets, the future artist not only spent her childhood. There, for the first time, she faced unbearable physical problems with which she had to live all her short life. Having fallen ill with polio, the perky, restless girl lay in bed for 9 months, remaining forever lame, for which ruthless children sometimes teased her "Frida the wooden leg." She did not take offense at these teasing. On the contrary, they gave her additional strength in order to fight for her future. Despite her limp, she wrestled and rowed, rode a bicycle, prepared and entered an elite school - the medical department.

But a new trouble was not long in coming. On Mexico's Independence Day, September 17, 1925, Frida's bus gets into a terrible accident. A triple fracture of the spine, a fracture of the collarbone and ribs, a dislocation of the left shoulder... Doctors collected the girl almost in parts. Everyone thought that it would be impossible to return her to normal life. But they didn't know Frida! She didn't just come back to life. She came back to life as a successful artist whose stunning portraits were admired by famous painters and art critics. Having installed a mirror over his daughter's bed and ordered a special easel for her, Frida's father created conditions for his daughter that allowed her to work lying down. True, she could only draw herself, her own face. What she did with amazing persistence: Frida with a dog, Frida with a monkey, Frida with cropped hair, Frida with her husband Diego...

Diego Rivera, an artist who worked in the style of Mexican mural painting, became her greatest love. He was 20 years older than her, 20 centimeters taller and 100 kilograms heavier. But he was also her biggest pain - because of his well-known "campaigns to the left." True, Frida herself had an affair, poorly hidden from her friends, with the Soviet revolutionary Lev Trotsky.

At an exhibition of Mexican art in Paris in 1939, Frida Kahlo's paintings became a real sensation. One of the paintings was even acquired by the Louvre. Yves Tanguy and Juan Miro admired her work. They moved Kandinsky to tears. And Picasso gave Frida earrings made in the form of small hands - as a symbol of their emerging friendship... Everything in Frida's life was unusual. The house in which they lived with Diego was no exception. There were many outlandish plants and animals in it: dogs, parrots, monkeys and deer ... On the days of the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Frida Kahlo, two "secret" rooms were found in her house, and in them - hundreds of unknown drawings and sketches, 168 dresses and 11 corsets. She never ceased to amaze. Even after death, she continues to do this...