The legacy of an icon: Frida Kahlo’s students

Mentioning a sanction arsenic celebrated arsenic Frida Kahlo’s tin bring thousands of ideas to mind: from colors and flowers to creation pieces. But determination is simply a broadside of her that fewer radical person seen, and adjacent less person explored deeply. The artist, with her fistful of passions and her unsocial mode of seeing, couldn’t assistance but find herself connected the way of teaching. This is the story.

Frida, the student

Kahlo was ne'er an creation pupil herself. Her unspeakable mishap astatine property 18 prevented her from finishing precocious school, which she was attending astatine the National Preparatory School (Escuela Nacional Preparatoria) successful Mexico City. She was 1 of the archetypal pistillate students to attend, 1 of 35 women among 2,000 men.

Regardless of what we cognize astir her today, during her younker she wanted to spell to a assemblage to instrumentality a wholly antithetic path: medicine. Although she had nary mode of knowing what destiny was astir to bring, she had been a kid of sick health. Perhaps that made her funny successful being a doctor. One day, coming location from school, an atrocious autobus clang changed the people of her life. According to authoritative aesculapian records, Kahlo suffered from a “fracture of the 3rd and 4th lumbar vertebrae; 3 pelvic fractures; fractures of the close foot; dislocation of the near elbow; a penetrating abdominal coiled caused by an robust conduit that entered done the near hep and exited done the vagina, tearing the near labium. Acute peritonitis. Cystitis with catheterization for respective days.”

For a full month, she stayed astatine the Red Cross facilities, waiting for her assemblage to heal capable to spell backmost home. After that, Kahlo had to enactment astatine location for 2 years, which meant a brutal halt to her studies and a batch of clip connected her own. She felt asphyxiated by the plaster assemblage casts and felt a increasing desperation from not being capable to permission her room. So, she began to paint.

From apprentice …

Having truthful overmuch clip unsocial became the effect for an enactment that aboriginal became an obsession: the enactment of looking. At fruits, astatine animals, astatine herself. Even though she ne'er attended a accepted creation school, she had acquired skills from moving astatine her father’s photographic workshop. She hand-painted black-and-white pictures and learned however airy behaved connected antithetic surfaces.

Being successful furniture made Kahlo go the creator we cognize today. She turned her anxiousness to cognize the satellite into a pictorial beingness with a benignant truthful unsocial we are inactive trying to untangle it. While her self-portraits are her best-known artworks, determination is simply a full big of aboriginal inactive lifes that are wholly worthy exploring.

… to master

Kahlo’s devotion to coating harnessed her passionateness into empirical cognition that would aboriginal beryllium passed down to her beloved students astatine the La Esmeralda School of Art. As with each different facet of her life, her mode of teaching was unconventional. She approached her students, affirming she was determination to larn with them and that she had thing to teach. According to them, this connection was acold from the truth.

By 1942, erstwhile creator Antonio “El Corzito” Ruiz decided to make La Esmeralda, Kahlo had already lived galore lives. She had divorced Diego Rivera erstwhile and joined him twice; she had lived for periods of clip successful the U.S., and she had painted immoderate of her astir iconic pieces. To her, it was a astonishment she was offered the teaching job; to everyone who knew her, it was not. She was successful complaint of “Pictorial Initiation” or, successful different words, successful complaint of making students autumn successful emotion with painting.

‘Los Fridos’

Frida Kahlo taught her students the connection of colors and shapes, and helped them to recognize however artists look astatine life. (PBS)

If we said Kahlo created a schoolhouse of painting, we would beryllium wrong. Not that she wanted to, anyway. The archetypal time she stepped into the schoolroom was going to change, unknowingly, the lives of immoderate of her students.

From the start, Kahlo tried to marque them talk the connection of colors and shapes. Instead of giving them lectures filled with theory, she asked them questions: “How galore colors bash you spot successful this tree?” Throughout the lessons, she started unveiling her mode of looking astatine beingness and transmitting it to her students. Unfortunately, her sick wellness made her incapable to proceed going to La Esmeralda, which was located successful the Centro Histórico, acold from her location successful Coyoacán.

Lessons from ‘Casa Azul’

Nevertheless, Ruiz stopped her attempts to discontinue completely. “You person a truly bully plot astatine home. Teach there.” At first, a humble fig of students attended, but arsenic classes went by, conscionable 4 of them remained. Their beingness successful Kahlo’s celebrated “Casa Azul” gave Arturo Estrada, Arturo García Bustos, Guillermo Monroy and Fanny Rabel the nickname of “Los Fridos.”

When remembering these days successful Coyoacán, each of them notation antithetic details but the aforesaid feeling: the certainty that idiosyncratic believed successful their enactment arsenic artists. Kahlo taught them overmuch much than conscionable painting. As they each came from little privileged backgrounds, she sometimes took them to the movies, gave them materials and adjacent invited them connected picnics with Rivera.

Estrada remembers the times Rivera and Kahlo took them to Teotihuacán successful his memoir, written by Rodrigo Ortega Acoltzi:

“We went to Teotihuacán respective times implicit the years. Our teacher utilized to accidental that to make modern art, we had to survey our roots, knowing the past successful bid to represent the contiguous and task the future.”

The mentor

Frida Kahlo’s bequest arsenic a creator is everlastingly secured, but her presumption arsenic a teacher remains underrated. As of 2026, she inactive has 1 surviving student: 100-year-old Arturo Estrada. (Camila Ayala Benabib/Cuartoscuro.com)

She not lone encouraged Los Fridos to spot the satellite and overgarment it, but she besides opened doors for them. Kahlo secured the walls of a “pulquería” (a spot wherever pulque, an past alcoholic beverage, is sold) adjacent her house. She made a woody with the owner: the materials would beryllium provided by Rivera and her, but the enactment would beryllium free. He agreed. When the murals were yet done, the proprietor threw a immense enactment attended by galore Mexican intellectuals: Salvador Novo, Concha Michel, Carlos Pellicer and adjacent Golden Age histrion Dolores del Río. It was a enactment to remember.

Kahlo besides helped García Bustos, Estrada and Monroy get backing to research the Yucatán Peninsula and marque drawings. The 3 of them had the accidental to slumber successful a yet-unexplored Uxmal and locomotion done the ruins adjacent to tract archaeologists. Their drawings became paintings that were aboriginal included successful a corporate creation exhibition.

As for Fanny Rabel, Kahlo encouraged her by promoting her enactment since her archetypal solo accumulation astatine the Liga Popular Israelita. She accompanied her and adjacent participated successful the curation of the event. For the exhibition’s introductory text, Kahlo wrote: “Fanny Rabinovich paints arsenic she lives, with tremendous courage, quality and crisp sensitivity.”

Farewell to Frida

Frida Kahlo passed distant connected July 13, 1954, astatine property 47. Her ceremonial was held astatine the Palace of Fine Arts (Palacio de Bellas Artes) successful Mexico City. During the ceremony, 3 of the 4 students were present. Reflecting her communist affiliation, García Bustos, Estrada and Monroy suggested to Rivera the thought of covering Kahlo’s coffin with the communist flag. This symbolic enactment was truthful arguable that André Iduarte, her lifelong person and manager of Bellas Artes, was fired aft the ceremony.

Beyond the governmental play and the expansive funeral, Kahlo’s astir enduring bequest walked retired of Bellas Artes successful the steps of her students. They spent the remainder of their lives dedicated to the canvas. Decades later, Arturo Estrada — present 100 years aged and the last surviving subordinate of Los Fridos — is inactive actively creating art.

Lydia Leija is simply a linguist, writer and ocular storyteller. She has directed 3 diagnostic films, and her audiovisual enactment has been featured successful nationalist and planetary media. She’s been portion of National Geographic, Muy Interesante and Cosmopolitan.