Looking for cultural icons and love.

• Author: Mujica, Barbara
• Position: Book Review

Frida Intima, by Isolda Kahlo. Bogota: Dipon, 2004

Fifty years have passed since the death of the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo (1907-54). Although Frida has become a legend, inspiring films, novels, poetry, and countless studies, many areas of her life remain shrouded in mystery--among them her death, possibly a suicide. Isolda Kahlo, daughter of Frida's sister, Cristina, grew up close to Frida and is in a better position than most to elucidate what the artist was really like. However, those looking for an objective, factual biography of Frida Kahlo will be disappointed. Isolda Kahlo was seventy-five years old when she wrote Frida Intima, and can be forgiven if she looks back at her childhood through rose-colored glasses. Enough has certainly been published in recent years about Frida's moods, drugs, and sexual experimentation. Isolda Kahlo's book is clearly an attempt to mend lice image of her beloved aunt, presenting her and those in her entourage in the most favorable light possible.

Isolda Kahlo patently rejects the image of Frida as victim and martyr. Frida was definitely not, says the author, La Dolorosa de Coyoacan, the Sorrowful Lady of Coyoacan, the place where she was born and spent much of her life. The author attests to her aunt's gaiety, love of life, and appreciation of color and song. Isolda's parents were divorced when she was only about two. She and her brother Antonio grew up in the household of Frida's and Cristina's parents, to which both sisters returned periodically, and the relationship between aunt and niece was a close one.

From the time Isolda and Antonio were small children, they were surrounded by the famous and powerful--artists, writers, politicians, and diplomats. The Kahlo house, called the caza azul because of the bright blue color it was painted, was a whirlwind of activity, with celebrities coming and going constantly, Because they were so young, Isolda and Antonio saw these cultural icons ms ordinary people, with gifts and flaws just like everyone else. About Leon Trotsky, who stayed at the casa azul while he was in exile in Mexico, site writes: "[he] was a lovely man, highly disciplined, simple and affectionate. He was a darling with children. I used to cover him with kisses, and he never got annoyed." Not exactly your typical image of a Communist revolutionary! It is precisely this type of observation that makes Kahlo's book so appealing.

With regard to the relationship between Frida and her famous husband, the muralist Diego Rivera, Isolda Kahlo takes a benign view. Although numerous biographers, including the highly respected Hayden Herrera, describe Rivera's abuses (temper tantrums, infidelities, drinking), Isolda says that Diego never deliberately mistreated Frida. If he was sometimes controlling, she says, it was only to protect her. And while most biographers paint a picture of Rivera as a highly self-centered man who eared only about his work and satisfying his prodigious appetites, Isolda Kahlo concentrates on his and Frida's generosity--their willingness to help friends in need, to donate to the poor, and to give time and money to the Communist Party. She does not deny Rivera's countless love affairs, but she certainly downplays them: "Diego Rivera was never brazen; his affairs were secret, it was the press that publicized them." One can only wonder how the press found out about them if he wasn't just a little indiscreet. Kahlo's version contrasts dramatically with that of Herrera, who maintains that Diego often flaunted Iris indiscretions to satisfy his enormous ego or even to hurt Frida.

One of the most disappointing aspects of the book is thai it sheds little light on Cristina Kahlo, Diego's model and lover. Although all of Frida's biographers mention Frida's sister, they give few details. Unfortunately, Isolda does little to dispel the cloud of mystery surrounding her mother. She repeats the stow that others have told before: Frida persuaded her sister to pose nude for some murals Diego was painting for the Ministry of Health, probably, asserts Isolda, to lure him away from other women, About the affair and its devastating psychological consequences for both women, Isolda has little to say. Instead, she stresses the intimate friendship that the sisters shared. Only eleven months apart, they were like twins, serving as each others' confidante and companion before and after the affair.

Much of the book is pure...