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​Día de los Muertos, the Mexican holiday that honors your deceased ancestors and loved ones, is coming up on November 1st and 2nd. This holiday, which, “emerged from an Aztec ritual known as Miccaihuitl,” says Professor Michelle Téllez at the University of Arizona, always reminds me of Frida. The Aztecs used calaveras (skulls) to honor the dead and they remain a key symbol, as well as entire skeletons. Frida kept a papier mâché skeleton on the top of her canopied bed. She understood the intimate connection between life and death and often visualized it in her art. When she was in Detroit in 1932, she suffered a life-threatening miscarriage that left her bleeding for three days in the Henry Ford Hospital with an unexplained fever and spinal pain. Frida cried out: I wish I were dead! I don’t know why I have to go on like this.” (Frida in America, 203.)
 
Once she returned home, she began work on a groundbreaking painting entitled Henry Ford Hospital. In it, we see a naked Frida lying in a blood-soaked bed. Her child-sized body is placed precariously at the edge of a mattress. Her face possesses the blank stare of trauma, emphasized by a huge teardrop that falls down her left cheek. The steel-framed bed and hard looking mattress placed within a barren industrial landscape intensify Frida’s physical pain and emotional isolation. There’s no one there to comfort her; however, she’s surrounded by six symbolic objects connected to red strings. Three objects are placed on the ground beneath her and three float in the air above. The child she lost is seen in the center hovering above her bed.
 
Frida’s small, naked brown body and tearstained face are a far cry from the voluptuous reclining white female nude of Western art. Well versed in the history of art, Frida knew she was stepping into the unknown. She wanted to make visible the physical and emotional pain women undergo when they lose a child in utero and the otherworldly experience of it, something that the secondary title, Flying Bed, spotlights.
 
In the 1930s, a bleeding nude woman in a hospital bed was incomprehensible as a subject for high art, something that is clear in 1938 when Henry Ford Hospital was shown at Frida’s first one-person exhibition at the Julian Levy Gallery. A reviewer for the New York Times failed to see the painting’s radical nature, dismissing it as “more obstetrical than aesthetic” (Frida in America, 210).
 
Although Frida Kahlo did not receive the type of recognition she deserved in her lifetime, today, she is appreciated for her fearless art. She wasn’t afraid to depict the death of her child, reminding us that within life, death is always present or, as Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes put it: “We descend from death” (Frida in America, xiii).
​© Celia Stahr 2022

Frida Kahlo is known for her distinct style of clothing and jewelry, evident in Nickolas Muray's photo seen above. Nick, as Frida called him, took some of the most stunning color photos of the painter at her home, known as the Casa Azul (Blue House). In my book Frida in America, I wrote of these images: "If you could drink photographs, these would stimulate the palate with a complexity of flavors in every sip" (p. 322). I think Nick was able to capture Frida's beauty, sensuality, and complex mind due to the love they felt for one another. Every type of love was important for Frida, stating that "love is the only reason for living" (p. xiv).  It makes sense then that the Love Is Project has worked with artisans in Mexico to create a bracelet comprised of wooden beads as a tribute to Frida (seen above). 

Chrissie Lam founded the Love Is Project in 2012 after spending time in Kenya with Maasai women who make vibrant beaded bracelets. She was struck by the love between the women, inspiring her to make a beaded bracelet with the word "love" in the middle of it. This launched the idea to promote love through bracelets created by female artisans around the world. Chrissie and her mother Gladys run the Project, with Chrissie handling production, marketing, and customer service. Every purchase of a bracelet contributes to the financial independence of the female artisans. Today, the Project supports over 2,000 women in ten countries, providing opportunities, as their blog states, "via an ethical supply chain of love." Why love? "There is only one thing that helps us to thrive-LOVE. It's the single common thread that connects us all" (Love Is Project blog). This sounds like something Frida would say. 

To learn more about the Love Is Project and the bracelets made in Mexico in honor of Frida,  please click on the following links: 
https://loveisproject.com/blogs/love-source/celebrating-frida-kahlo 
https://loveisproject.com/collections/mexico-collection

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When Jaspreet Mahal first laid eyes on Frida Kahlo’s paintings, she was struck by the power of the work. When she read about the artist’s challenging life, one beset by physical pain and emotional turmoil, she was moved. But Frida’s fighting spirit also stood out. Discovering that Frida was a champion for the oppressed resonated with Jaspreet who is involved in the anti-caste movement, one founded by Indian economist, scholar, lawyer, and social reformer Dr. B. R. Ambedkar (1891-1956), also known as the father of modern India. As the first Law Minister for an independent India, in 1947, Dr. Ambedkar wrote the country’s new constitution, guaranteeing civil rights, and as Jaspreet explains, “He was the champion of human rights and all those who are oppressed in India… The anti-caste movement is about annihilating caste and regaining humanity irrespective of any marginalization, be it caste, gender, sexuality, etc.”
 
Portrait of Empowerment spotlights a bold Indian woman. During the 2020 summer months of the Covid-19 quarantine, Jaspreet borrowed Frida’s iconic look and tweaked it for her acrylic painting. In a tight close-up, a woman depicted from the shoulders up is adorned with an earring and flowers in her hair. While these are markers often seen in Frida’s self-portraits, it’s the strong gaze, facial hair above the lips, and conjoined eyebrows that scream Frida.
 
Jaspreet admires how Frida empowered herself by creating self-portraits that look you directly in the eyes. She wanted to empower Indian women with this same direct gaze, stating, “Ideal Indian women are supposed to bow their heads. You listen more. Your eyes are down. You’re not supposed to look directly into the person’s face. Often women are romanticized in Bollywood movies with their eyes down as the shy, beautiful bride. I wanted a woman with her chin up, someone who has pride in how she’s looking directly into you and challenging you in different ways. Also, Frida’s connected eyebrows are powerful. I grew up [in India] with body issue images; these connected eyebrows would not be considered beautiful. I wanted to create these big, bushy eyebrows that are connected. This is empowerment right there.”
 
While Jaspreet references Frida’s self-portraits, the Indian woman isn’t the spitting image of Frida. There’s a resemblance, but she doesn’t look like a copy. She is her own woman and the peacock perched on her right shoulder is a reference to India’s national bird. There’s no doubt about this woman’s connection to India, as the peacock spreads its feathers out, framing the woman’s face. Jaspreet makes the beauty of these feathers more pronounced by attaching real peacock feathers to her composition. There’s a tactile quality as well as the visual beauty of the feathers. The tactile is further emphasized with a real earring dangling from the woman’s left earlobe.
 
Everything is balanced—the peacock perches on her right shoulder, the earring dangles on the left earlobe and the feathers fill out the background. The mix of primary colors red, blue and yellow is grounding. The warm reds are also cooled by the blues and yellows of the peacock. Yet, there’s an intensity in the woman’s facial expression. She appears to be pondering something.
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 Jaspreet, who has lived in the Boston area for five years, has been immersed in both the worlds of the North American Ambedkarite movement and the creative community of artists she’s discovered through Brandeis University where she works with students with disabilities as an accessibility specialist. Finding fellow artists and exhibition possibilities has been an important source of inspiration for her, but her job has also been an important source of inspiration. “I meet with a lot of students and some are comfortable with their identities and some are not, so I also think about Frida when she was bound to a wheelchair and had so many bodily afflictions, and then she still overcame all those things to create such beautiful life narratives in some ways for the world to see that she’s more than just her body and I think that is really beautiful as well.”
 
Ultimately, art has the potential to raise important questions and re-imagine an idea, a person, a movement, or an institution. Jaspreet was inspired to re-imagine an Indian woman due to Frida’s art and her support for the oppressed, stating, “Frida was trying to uplift the voices that have been marginalized, so I think that’s very close to my heart. That she was a person who was privileged in different ways, but she also tried to uplift others and you talk about this in your book [Frida in America], about how when she came to San Francisco she noticed folks from the Black community and from the Asian community were being discriminated, and the way she empathized with the folks from those communities and the way she tried to uplift those voices I think is really beautiful.”

​*All quotes are taken from an interview I conducted with Jaspreet.

Last week, I had the great honor to speak about “Frida Kahlo in California,” alongside artists Amalia Mesa-Bains and Rio Yañez (sponsored by the Consulate General of Mexico in San Francisco). Mesa-Bains and Yañez spoke about the impact of Frida upon Chicana/Chicano artists, particularly the artists involved with the Galería de la Raza in San Francisco. In late February, just before our worlds were turned upside down due to COVID-19, I also had the great pleasure of speaking with Rio about his Frida-inspired art and its relationship to the Galería and the Mission District. The following is based upon this taped conversation.
 
Rio Yañez grew up in San Francisco’s Mission District surrounded by art. His mother Yolanda M. López, who made her mark with the Virgin of Guadalupe triptych (1978), and his father René Yañez, who worked in various media, as well as co-founded the Galería de la Raza on 24th and Bryant, where he curated exhibitions, ensured that Rio was exposed to a plethora of artists and styles of art. Rio acknowledged that he was “surrounded by these people who were kinda larger than life. My mom’s work with the Virgin of Guadalupe, my dad’s fascination with Frida as curator and artist.” Given his upbringing, it’s not surprising that Rio became an artist. He’s always been particularly fascinated with iconography and in 2006, after graduating from CalArts in southern California, he returned home and embarked upon a series of graphic images that reframed Frida Kahlo as a member of the Mission District’s rich Latino and Latina history. Rio, who had studied digital photography, took to Photoshop to have some fun. He made digital images of a character he named Ghetto Frida. He decided to post these images on Flickr and, as he told me: “the images began to receive a lot of attention and I received encouragement to keep going, so I did.”
 
Rio’s comic book style emerged with Ghetto Frida going to different places in the Mission District that were of significance to Rio as a teenager in the 1990s. By 2006, this place had changed due to gentrification with many businesses now gone, such as US Video and the New Mission theater (seen above). For Rio, these images are a “type of time capsule.” He added: “In retrospect, I see how I was dealing with this nostalgia because there was so much that had slipped through my fingers. It was almost documenting what had gone on in the neighborhood.” In one image, Rio documents a person nicknamed “Red Man” who was no longer a part of the Mission District landscape when Rio had returned after being away for art school. Rio explained: “The Red Man dyed his skin red and he was always well-dressed, wore a suit, and he was for a certain generation of kids, the boogey man. Ya know, I would see him in front of Muddy Waters on Valencia, I’d see him on 23rd Street. There was a comic bookstore and I’d see him walking around 23rd and Valencia. And, I know he had a lot of mental health issues. He had these outbursts and we were terrified of him as kids. But, he was a fixture in the neighborhood. He was someone everyone knew. Yet, no one knew the story of his life. No one knew what happened to him when he eventually disappeared.”

In 2006, when Rio was working on Ghetto Frida, he wanted to know what had happened to this man, so he looked for an obituary and found one. Rio discovered that the “Red Man” was slowly poisoning himself by applying Chinese food coloring to his skin. He would bathe in the red liquid and it created “a saturated red glow. It was otherworldly,” said Rio. In his image of Ghetto Frida, she walks past the Red Man and a huge white question mark hovers between them (seen below). For Rio, “the question mark is Frida trying to read the situation. Trying to figure out who he is.”
 
Rio wanted to add another layer to the story of Ghetto Frida walking through the Mission District, so he created mock interviews with Ghetto Frida. In one, she laments that she doesn’t receive royalties on the use of her art and image. I told Rio that I loved the irony of this statement given the fact that Rio too was appropriating Frida’s image. Rio responded: “Yeah, I mean, it’s as much an indictment of my own art practice as everyone else’s. I think that was part of the tongue-in-cheek aspect of it. That I could talk about her image and her work and be as guilty as anyone else as it were. Yeah, that was part of the fun for me. So, being able to play with it back then was fun. Today, her fame is of a much different magnitude.”
 
But there’s more to Ghetto Frida’s words than a tongue-in-cheek indictment of Rio’s own art practice. As he elaborated: “Growing up with my mom as an artist, listening to my mom’s experiences, made me aware. Kind of knowing all the struggles that women artists face in terms of having access to art spaces and managing the business of their own work and being taken seriously as artists. It left a big impression on me. So, my work is about Frida advocating for herself and acknowledging that. As a woman and an artist of color, there are all these factors about her [Frida’s] image being used.”
 
Ultimately, the popularity of Rio’s images and story led to his comic book style images being placed upon a wall just outside the Galería de la Raza on Bryant Street (seen below). The Galería, which started their digital mural art project in 2000, printed out everything in panels. Rio explained: “I made the panels huge, giant. …So, all the illustrations I did were done in Photoshop and the Galería printed them out in panels and assembled them like a puzzle and that’s how the billboard was created.”
 
Now, these larger than life images of Ghetto Frida, which had begun as a way to have fun, took on greater importance as they hung outside the Galería de la Raza, an important hub for Rio’s family and the Latino/a community. As Rio put it: “The billboard itself was my love letter to the neighborhood. It’s definitely a very nostalgic piece about my childhood in the Mission and I superimposed Frida on all these experiences I had growing up. It talks about buying T-shirts on Mission Street. All those stores aren’t really around anymore. It’s really talking about what the neighborhood was like. It was almost exclusively populated by Latinos then. And there were common cultural experiences growing up in the neighborhood that don’t really exist now. Making the mural was profoundly exciting–to have my Frida mural on that corner. I grew up in that space [inside and outside the Galería]; it was my home away from home during my childhood. That was a huge experience for me. It fulfilled so many dreams of mine to combine my lore of the neighborhood with Frida, an artist my dad loved as part of a space he co-founded [Galería de la Raza].”
 
Sadly, in 2018, the gentrification of the Mission District that Rio had addressed with Ghetto Frida impacted the beloved Galería. It was forced to leave its home on 24th and Bryant due to a 100% increase in rent. It is still awaiting a new space on 16th Street. To read more about the significance of the Galería and its forced relocation, you can read Ryan Kost’s article: SF Chronicle Datebook article on Galeria's move.
 
Note: As part of the de Young museum’s exhibition Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving, Rio is interviewing artists who have been influenced by Frida. The interviews he’s already conducted can be heard on the museum’s website. The next interview with Marilet Martinez and Celia Sagastume will take place on October 28th from 5-6 pm. Here’s the link: Local Voices Live.
 
To see more of Rio’s art, you can visit his website: www.rioyanez.com.
*All art reproduced here is done so with the permission of the artist.

​When Frida was born on July 6 in 1907, women in Mexico did not have the right to vote. One year before she died in 1954, women were granted that right. But Frida didn’t allow her inability to vote to prevent her from forging her own path in art and life. She was way ahead of her time in so many ways: she rejected gender stereotypes, she stood up for workers’ rights, indigenous peoples’ rights, she was openly bisexual, she depicted taboo subject matter, such as her physical scars/wounds, her miscarriage, her androgynous face, and a woman giving birth, to name a few.
 
If Frida were alive today, she would be thrilled to hear of the landmark June 15, 2020 Supreme Court decision that says federal law protects LGBTQ workers from discrimination. She would take to the streets to protest the murder of black men and women, as well as all people of color by police officers, she would be working to help the migrants at the U.S./Mexico border who need asylum for their physical safety and emotional wellbeing, and she would have rejoiced when the Supreme Court blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to end DACA: Deferred Action For Childhood Arrivals.
 
It took me over 10 years to write my book Frida in America, but I never got tired of working on this endlessly fascinating woman and artist. Viva Frida!

In honor of Women's History Month, here's a link to my essay about the impact of gender bias on the art market: Frida Kahlo and the Devalued Woman Artist.

Happy International Women's Day! It's wonderful to see that Time magazine has recognized Frida's importance as a trailblazer. She's in good company with the likes of Virginia Woolf, Billie Holiday, Amelia Earhart, Aretha Franklin, Lucille Ball, Angela Davis, etc. With the publication of my book Frida in America, I hope Frida's unique artistic vision, strong spirit, and ability to keep going even when times are tough inspire both Frida fans and those who know very little or nothing at all about her life and art. 

During the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920), women, known as soldaderas, played a crucial role in the decade long battle. They would get to an encampment before the other soldiers and find wood to start a fire; they also prepared meals, cleaned clothes, acted as nurses, spies, messengers, and fighters.
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While most soldaderas did not participate in battle, there were some who did, even becoming coronelas or colonels. It was difficult for women to take on what was considered a male role, so some cross-dressed in order to be taken seriously. Petra Herrera became Pedro Herrera and passed as male (seen below). She joined Pancho Villa’s troops and made a name for herself as a strong, brave soldier who was adept at blowing up bridges. Once she gained the respect of her fellow soldiers, she grew her hair long and allowed her gender to become known. However, Villa saw female soldiers as liabilities. Herrera eventually left his troops and started her own troop of female soldiers, joining up with Venustiano Carranza and his army. She became a legend.
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​Likewise, Amelia Robles Ávila, known as Amelio, became a distinguished soldier (seen below). From 1913-1918, Amelio fought as a coronela with the Zapatistas. Even after the war ended, Amelia remained Amelio and continued to dress as a man. Amelio, who lived to be 95 (dying in 1984), was recognized as a veteran of the Mexican Revolution and the Legion of Honor of the Mexican Army.
 
The fame of soldaderas grew as the popular corrido (revolutionary ballad) “La Adelita,” about a soldadera who fought for Francisco Madero’s troops and fell in love with him, came to symbolize the revolutionary spirit. After the revolution, the name Adelita became synonymous with a woman who fought for her rights.
 
Frida Kahlo identified with Adelita and the soldaderas. While she was at a Mexican restaurant in San Francisco in 1931, she belted out the song “La Adelita,” proclaiming to her mother: “I was a hit.” In the Imogen Cunningham photograph of Frida (seen above), her rebozo (shawl) is crossed in front to symbolize the soldaderas who wore bullet-filled bandoliers in a similar style (seen above). Sometimes, when not in uniform, soldaderas wore their rebozos crossed in front to distinguish themselves as soldiers.
 
The Mexican writer and journalist Elena Poniatowska summed up the importance of the soldaderas: “Without the soldaderas, there is no Mexican Revolution—they kept it alive and fertile, like the earth” (Las Soldaderas: Women of the Mexican Revolution, 2006)

For more information on Petra Herrera, see Regina De La Parra's "The Unrecognized Soldiers of the Mexican Revolution: Petra Herrera and the Adelitas," March 24, 2018, StMU History Media Project:https:stmuhistorymedia.org/the-unrecognized-soldier-of-the-mexican-revolution-petra-herrera-and-the-adelitas.

In 1931, 24 years before Rosa Parks made history in Montgomery, Alabama, Frida Kahlo painted a portrait of Eva Frederick while living in San Francisco. The portrait emphasizes Eva's strong gaze, giving her a powerful presence. It's a lovely portrait that conveys Frida's interest in depicting an African American woman as strong and beautiful. This is in contrast to the stereotypical images of African Americans that permeated art and popular culture in the United States at that time. In my book Frida in America, I analyze this painting in detail and provide a context for it. My book doesn't come out until March 3rd, but you can go to Amazon and read Chapter One, which discusses this portrait.

Although Frida never met Rosa Parks, they were both concerned that the Scottsboro Boys, 9 teenagers falsely accused of raping 2 white women in 1931, would not receive a fair trial. Frida and her husband Diego Rivera gave money to help with legal fees. In 1932, Rosa and her husband Raymond Parks were members of the NAACP, which was collecting money for a legal team to defend the nine youths. Rosa went on to become the secretary for the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP and to become an investigator assigned to sexual assault cases. In 1945, she investigated the gang rape of Recy Taylor, a 24 year-old woman who bravely identified the 6 white men. Parks called for justice, igniting protests and laying the groundwork for the Montgomery Bus Boycott 10 years later.

On December 1, 1955 when Rosa Parks refused to move from the first row of the black section of a city bus to make room for a white man, this was not her first courageous act. Rosa had been a social activist since the 1930s. In 1955, she had completed a Race Relations course at Highlander Folk School in Tennessee, learning nonviolent civil disobedience as a tactic. So when she made the decision to be the only African American to refuse to move, she'd been preparing for this moment. At 42, she'd experienced a lifetime of racial discrimination in the Jim Crow era and she was ready to take a stance for fairness and justice. She helped spark the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which lasted for 381 days. Parks, along with Martin Luther King, Jr. (and many others), challenged racial injustice through nonviolent methods. 

Rosa was willing to be arrested and found guilty of violating a city law, but she didn't stop here. Her lawyer appealed the case. While her case was making its way through the state court of appeals, a 3-judge panel of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama ruled 2 to 1 that bus segregation was unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. On November 13, 1956, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld this decision.       

In California, February 4th is considered Rosa Parks Day. On this day, which is her birthday, Californians honor her courage to stand up for equal opportunities and civil rights. Although Frida never met Rosa, she would have admired her. Happy Birthday, Rosa! 

​​​René Yañez, like Frida Kahlo, created magical worlds with his art. In a detail from one of Yañez’s collages, this is made manifest with a sepia-toned open hand breaking through a round moon-like shape allowing a kaleidoscopic burst of imagery to rise up and out of the hand (seen in the above image).
 
While Frida used her hands to create paintings, Yañez often used his to create collages. His numerous sketchbooks are filled with intricate and masterfully rendered collaged imagery, some in color, some in black and white. Friends, family, political issues, muses, and places all merge, overlap, and rest side by side in these complex worlds Yañez created with love. They are on view right now at the Thacher Gallery located in the Gleeson Library on the University of San Francisco’s campus through November 4. Studio Misión, curated by Rio Yañez, René’s son and collaborator, focuses on René’s most recent work, including sketchbooks, created before his death in 2018 at the age of 75.

​Born in Tijuana in 1942, René Yañez was exposed to art through his photographer grandfather and his father who burned images of the Virgin of Guadalupe into wood. Yañez’s high school years were spent in San Diego, further exposing him to the complex melding of cultures near the border, ultimately leading Yañez to this conclusion: “I came to realize that everything that happens in this country is hybrid. It’s not totally pure” (Kevin L. Jones, “René Yañez, Revered Chicano Artist and Gallery Founder, Dies,” May 29, 2018, kqed.org/arts).
 
Another realization, influenced by his time at Fort Bragg, a military base in North Carolina where he’d been sent after being drafted during the Vietnam War, was that there was “so much hate” in the United States. As he watched policemen beating Civil Rights protesters, he was transformed: “It affected my being. It politicized me, so when I got back, I had a different view on art” (Ryan Kost, “René Yañez, leader in the Bay Area Chicano art movement, dies at 75,” May 31, 2018. SFGATE).
 
By 1967, Yañez had moved to the Bay Area where he put his new view of art and politics into action. With friends, he co-created the Mexican American Liberation Art Front, one of the first Chicano art collectives. It was part of a growing Chicano art movement, which took on a broad range of political and social themes affecting Mexican American communities, including a reevaluation of Mexican American identity.
 
When Yañez moved to the Mission district in San Francisco, he and Ralph Maradiaga opened the Galería de la Raza. The Galería sponsored an exhibition in 1978 that was designed to pay homage to a then little known Mexican artist named Frida Kahlo. Yañez had approached the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art to see if they might sponsor an exhibition of Kahlo’s work, but they turned it down. Undeterred, René and other artists, such as Amalia Mesa Bains, put together an exhibition comprised of works created by local artists to pay tribute to Frida called, Homenaje a Frida Kahlo: El Día de los Muertos. These artworks, such as Frida Kahlo-Life/Death and Self-Portrait with Frida, graced the walls while an elaborate altar with Frida’s photograph (taken by Imogen Cunningham when the artist had been living in San Francisco) occupied a significant place. Appropriately, the exhibit occurred during Day of the Dead celebrations, allowing visitors to bring gifts and remembrances for Frida while feasting on bone bread and drinking punch. It was an important moment for the artists, some of whom, like Emmy Lou Packard, had known Frida when she was alive.
 
At that time, Frida was not the icon she is today, but Chicana and Chicano artists understood her significance. Amalia Mesa Bains said: “Frida embodied the whole notion of culture for Chicana women. She inspired us. Her works didn’t have self pity, they had strength” (Ira Kamin, “Memories of Frida,” May 6, 1979, San Francisco Sun Examiner and Chronicle). Yañez too found great inspiration in Frida’s art. He said he felt pressure to put on a good show “because of who she was” (Kamin, “Memories of Frida”). Frida, according to René’s son Rio, was a muse for his father. Her image figures prominently in his work.
 
I wanted to know more about René Yañez’s love of Frida, so I asked Rio if he would be willing to answer some questions. Rio agreed to take time out of his busy schedule to talk to me. With his permission, I taped our conversation and the following is a portion of what Rio told me.
 
Celia: Do you know the first time your father became familiar with Frida Kahlo and her art?
 
Rio: I don’t know what the inception was. I think it goes pretty far back. …My dad’s generation had an awareness of the three mural masters: Siqueiros, Orozco, and Rivera. It was political work, a particular mold and I think he liked their work and took pride in it, but when he discovered Frida, it was exciting and thrilling to him because she was a surrealist. Her work was surreal and psychedelic and, personal. I think that’s what really connected him to her. If you look at his work, he’s creating his own language, yet, you see faces of friends incorporated into it and all these images are exploding in his artwork. There’s something deeply personal about the artwork as well. Part of it too was, she was Mexican and as much as he loved the big three masters [muralists], I think her aesthetic and subjects [in her work] were something he connected to as a Mexican and took pride in as a Mexican. There’s a powerful feeling for Frida in San Francisco.
 
Celia: You can feel your father’s deep love and knowledge of Frida and her work in videotaped interviews. Did he speak about specific paintings or aspects of what he liked about her work?
 
Rio: He liked her work technically. For him, she was a master and underappreciated. He could get lost in her work. My dad was a stoner and as a stoner, there was almost a deeper, cosmic appreciation for her work and imagery, her narratives, and yeah, I think it was the kind of thing where he would smoke a joint and see her work and feel a dimension to it. He had a cosmic appreciation for her work that went beyond words.
 
Celia: You mentioned that your father thought Frida was underappreciated. It strikes me as significant that he understood her importance in the 1970s, a time when most did not, especially men.
 
Rio: Yeah, I think part of it…he kind of supported the underdog, wanting to give others a chance. After he passed away, I was going through his archive and there were newspaper clippings he had gathered from this early period when she was referred to as Mrs. Rivera, Diego’s wife. And, you know, that was the context in which he was exposed to her. For him, there was so much more. Also, some of his earliest collaborations were with women like Amalia Mesa Bains. …The Galería and Amalia helped shape the narrative of Frida today.
 
Celia: I’m curious about the “Pasíon por Frida” tableaux vivants [living paintings] your father created for different Frida exhibitions, such as the 2008 San Francisco Museum of Modern Art show where Frida look-a-likes posed for paintings or performed various facets of Frida’s personality—walking through the museum accusing women of sleeping with Diego or playing guitar and singing while drinking in the café. Besides having fun with these performances, did your father see them as a means of conveying different aspects of Frida?
 
Rio: A part of his appreciation for Frida as an artist was her iconography. He liked her aesthetics, including in fashion. She wasn’t just Mrs. Rivera. She was complex, sometimes she was unruly, sometimes combative, and she had a very, very deep personality. There was a lot he connected to. There was a joy in playing with her image, to be theatrical with her personal narrative, her drama. She’s almost a folk hero. There was a lot he felt he could work with besides Frida as a visual artist.
 
Celia: Was he bothered at all by the commercialization of Frida?
 
Rio: I think it fascinated him because he had this memory of her as Diego Rivera’s wife. To see her become this iconic artist and pop culture phenomenon fascinated him. I don’t think he had any bad feelings about it. It wasn’t necessarily his thing, but it was fascinating. I’m sure he would have wanted her to be more recognized for her artwork and talked about more as a Mexican. There’s a lot that gets lost in talking about her, so I’m sure there’s more he’d like to see enter the conversation.
 
Celia: Yes, that conversation continues on and hopefully, it will turn more and more to Frida’s powerful paintings. Thank you so much for being generous with your time and thoughts about your father and Frida. I really appreciate it.
 
Rio: You’re welcome.

© Celia S. Stahr 2019