The medical journey of Frida Kahlo in an unprecedented exhibition

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The medical journey of Frida Kahlo in an unprecedented exhibition

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    Handicapped for life after contracting poliomyelitis at the age of six, Frida Kahlo has made her suffering a creative force. Her pain, both physical and moral, shines through in the 143 paintings she left behind. Through the “Kahlo without borders” exhibition, the American museum MSU Broad transcribes the relationship that the Mexican artist had with medicine.

    This retrospective was curated by the director of the MSU Broad, Mónica Ramírez-Montagut, Javier Roque Vázquez Juárez as well as Cristina Kahlo, the painter’s great-niece. She looks in detail at the life of Frida Kahlo, from the behavior of her husband Diego Rivera to the health problems she suffered throughout her life.

    A fractured life

    In 1925, young Frida, then 18 years old, was seriously injured in a bus accident. She suffered multiple fractures which immobilized her for many months, then forced her to wear an orthopedic corset. She will be operated on about thirty times until her death in 1954, condemning her to know medicine as a patient, and not a scientist as she dreamed of during her childhood.

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    A unique exhibition

    The exhibition “Kahlo without borders” presents for the first time to the general public archival documents on the state of health of Frida Kahlo. Among them, clinical files but also letters that the painter wrote, for more than a decade, to Leo Eloesser, a thoracic surgeon who later became her trusted medical adviser. Other missives on display are addressed to her former lover Nickolas Muray as well as her sisters and friends.

    For Mónica Ramírez-Montagut, these documents make it possible to portray Frida Kahlo in a new light. “I think it’s important to challenge the myth of ableism and the tendency to portray Frida as an almost perfect film character”she explained to The Art Newspaper. “She had a huge support system, and it’s important for all of us to recognize that community. In many of these items, you can see that Frida’s doctors were concerned that she was in pain and had no pain. ‘silver”.

    The artist has also paid tribute to some of them during his career. She represents herself, in a wheelchair, alongside one of her doctors in “Self-Portrait with the Portrait of Doctor Farill”. “[Dans cette exposition,] we return to the immense respect and esteem that Frida Kahlo had for her caregivers, a team of doctors and nurses who are recognized today, which gives them the visibility they deserve”Mónica Ramírez-Montagut said in a statement.

    The exhibition “Kahlo Without Borders” (“Kahlo Without Borders”) is to be discovered until August 7 at the museum MSU Broadlocated on the campus of Michigan State University, USA.

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