July 6th is Frida Kahlo's birthday - happy birthday Frida!
I fell in love with her art when I first saw the movie Frida years ago, which I now own. I'm not alone - Madonna owns one or more of her paintings. And I think the work of her husband, Diego Rivera, was fantastic.
I learned that she was not one hundred percent honest about her family tree, a fact unknown when the movie had been made - she claimed her father had been a Hungarian Jew. In fact, Wilhem Kahl, AKA Guileful Kahlo, came from a long line of German Lutherans. Doubtlessly, this obfuscation was to placate her friends in the communist circles she ran in during the war years, as anything German was associated with Nazism. Not that there would have been anything wrong with her being a Jew. But I find a certain delight in the truth of her heritage, because my Dad's people back in the 19th century had come from the Kraichgau area of Baden-Wurttemberg - which is where Frida's Dad came from, specifically the city of Pforzheim. Who knows - Frida and me might be long lost cousins (probably not)! At least it explains why in her painting Moses, she has Martin Luther grouped with the heroes of civilization.
But anyway, I just wanted to say a posthumous happy birthday to a great artist.
-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer
06 Jul 2010, 11:31 am
