# I bought myself an aeroplane
# To see how high that it could take me
# I made it to the Milky Way
# But I'm still not even close
Frida Kahlo is one of the most famous female painters of the 20th century
With a life both scrutinised and immortalised
her work now attracts blockbuster audiences and sells for millions.
Born to an affluent family in revolutionary Mexico,
she had the courage to join the people's fight
and the bravery to turn personal tragedy into potent art.
Today, Frida is an inspiration to people across the world.
And though I'm no expert, she's an inspiration to me, too.
I first came across Frida's art when I was a teenager.
There was a real rawness. Love, loss, betrayal...
..pain, suffering. There's so much going on in these paintings
through a woman's eyes.
Four years ago, I was an unknown medical student,
but Frida's determination to pursue her art against all odds
inspired me to pursue my dream of making music.
And today, Frida is with me wherever I go.
This is my tattoo. I got this done four years ago.
As an artist, it's the bravery I wanted a piece of, you know?
So I feel like her being on my arm is the constant reminder
to not be afraid.
Now I'm taking time out from writing my second album
to reconnect with Frida on a deeper level.
For the first time ever, I'm going to her homeland of Mexico.
To see the place where she lived and painted.
This is where her spirit is left.
To meet the people who knew her best.
And to come face-to-face with her finest work.
She's made this.
Hoping to enter the mind and spirit -
Makes you feel like a bus.
- Of the woman who is under my skin.
Mexico City.
I've travelled over 5,000 miles to be here.
There's no better place to learn about her
than where she was inspired, where she was born.
Things she would have seen every day.
By coming to Mexico, I hope I can really understand Frida.
Frida adored Mexico.
Its culture, its politics and its people.
And Mexico came to adore her, too.
But 60 years after her death,
can her presence still be felt on the streets where she grew up?
Ciudadela is one of Mexico City's most famous craft markets.
I love this market.
It's all colourful. Very alive.
And it seems Frida is very much alive here, too.
She's the star of this market.
But can you take this adoration a little too far?
Oh, wow.
I have a feeling she wouldn't like it.
You know, perhaps her paintings being in a place would be cool for her,
but she didn't really court this kind of commerce.
But I just can't resist picking up my own little piece of Frida.
I got money. Frida money!
It's crazy she's on the money.
She is the queen of Mexico.
Officially!
It seems Frida's face is everywhere.
It's no surprise, because she made around 70 self-portraits.
Not bad for someone who had no intention of becoming a painter.
Frida was born in 1907 to an affluent middle-class family.
Her dad was a Jewish German immigrant,
her mum a Catholic from rural Mexico.
The cleverest of four sisters,
Frida had aspirations to become a doctor.
But I want to know how Frida came to make such powerful art
that secured her place as one of the leading artists of the 20th century.
Over on the other side of town is a hangout
for Mexico City's art students.
Here at La Bota cafe,
the walls are adorned with yet more of Frida's self-portraits.
They're strange pictures. Frida's face tells us very little.
But their meaning is in the detail.
Can you talk me through some of the symbolism in these pictures?
Well, one of the things that I find fascinating
in Frida's self-portraits
is the employment of Christian imagery that she does.
She was anti-clerical, she didn't believe in the church at all,
but at the same time, she used a lot of Christian symbols
because she realised that was something
that was very much embedded in Mexican culture.
So if she used for instance the crown of thorns,
people can immediately then identify that she's talking about suffering.
Yeah. Four years ago, I got this tattoo.
A thorn necklace portrait.
I don't know why you chose this one, but it's one of my favourites.
I am happy to see it and I think it's also very well done.
You are missing right here the hummingbird.
And some people say that it has to do with luck
that you can have in love.
OK. And I took out the monkey and the cat.
What do you think they represent in the portrait?
The traditional history,
they identify with a lot of sexual connotations.
Also, the black cat in the Christian symbol is to do with the Devil.
OK. So in some cultures, it's talking about
the way in which she was perceived.
I love my tattoo, but with Frida making so many self-portraits,
some think she may have been a little self-obsessed.
I don't think that was an issue with Friday.
I think she found a way to translate those very personal paintings
into something more.
Because it's not just about her life.
It's a statement about what life is.
Through self-portraits, Frida was able to make art
that spoke not just to herself.
Her work resonates with me and so many others around the world.
We're all essentially going through the same thing.
It's why, you know, even so many men relate to her and her art
as well as women. We're human.
Frida intended to work herself out, express herself.
And I'm starting to see the value in perhaps being more introspective
because the better that you know yourself,
the more articulate you can be.
But why did Frida paint so many self-portraits?
And how did her work come to have such resonance for so many people?
The answer can be traced back to one catastrophic and life-changing event
when Frida was just 18.
It was 1925.
Frida was on the threshold of adult life.
She was studying at the finest school in Mexico,
soon to embark on her medical career.
But that was to change on one fateful bus journey.
She was on her way back from school...
..and this would have been a familiar journey for her.
She would have been looking forward to getting home.
Seeing her dad, maybe what she was having for dinner.
Probably lost in her thoughts, I'd imagine.
One thing I'm certain of,
is she would have been completely unaware
of how her life was about to change.
The bus Frida was travelling in was smashed by a tram,
here in the heart of Mexico City.
It was a gruesome scene that left Frida's body mutilated.
She had a broken collarbone, broken ribs, broken spine
and her pelvis was pierced by the handrail.
It entered through her side and came out of her pelvis
through the vagina, so Frida's body was in quite a mess
by the end of this crash.
Doctors were unsure if Frida would live.
She spent a month in hospital, encased in a plaster cast.
Her spine was permanently damaged
and she'd be in pain for the rest of her days.
But this crossroads in the heart of Mexico City
would prove to be a crossroads in Frida's life.
Out in the suburbs of Mexico City, lies the Blue House.
Her childhood home.
This was the place Frida came to recuperate after the bus crash.
There's a strange feeling of I've been here already
or feeling like I've returned somewhere.
Today it's a shrine.
Home to her easel, her paintbox
and the many trinkets that made this place her home.
I love that they've left everything in place
and erm, you feel that Frida has just up and left the room
and maybe is coming back to finish off a piece of art.
This is a very special room.
But after the crash, this place was less a home, more a prison.
During the long process of recovery,
Frida was pretty much confined to bed.
To help past the time, a mirror was installed above her bed.
She was given a palette and encouraged to paint.
In this bed, Frida became an artist.
When artists create, that's where the energy is left.
I think this is where her spirit is left.
And the fact that she slept right here,
yeah, I can feel the energy and I think it still holds magic
somewhere, somehow.
Often alone and barely able to move,
Frida turned to the subject she knew the best.
Herself.
This would be the first of Frida's many self-portraits.
It was a tentative start.
I think this is a pretty piece of work.
You know, it's nice to look at, but it doesn't move me emotionally.
It doesn't really give me much insight into...into this woman.
It lacks the rawness and the honesty that is to come in later years.
Though born out of so much pain,
it seems Frida wasn't yet ready to express it on a canvas.
Even so, I think the painting is deeply symbolic.
For me, this picture is really a symbol
of her determination.
I think most people under such circumstances
would close themselves off from the world
and...become wrapped up in perhaps bitterness
or sadness, despair.
But she still wanted to create and
and tell the world who she was.
But more than this, Frida's first portrait is a reminder to me.
To embrace my own art and use it as a form of therapy.
Music has always allowed me to release a lot of stress, worry, thoughts.
You know, from the very first portrait we saw
I get the sense that it is true of Frida as well.
She needed to try and free herself of this sadness or these struggles,
so, yeah, I imagine painting would really give her that release.
An horrific accident had led Frida to make her first self-portrait.
But her work would only take on true emotional power
after a man had broken her heart.
Here in the Blue House, Frida spent around two years
recuperating after the bus crash.
But she was no stranger to sickness or confinement.
When Frida was six years old, she contracted polio
and that left her with a withered right leg.
So it confined her to La Casa Azure for about eight months.
Frida would go to her window, breathe on the window,
and draw a doorway.
And through the doorway she entered an imaginary world
and could escape her situation.
As a young girl, Frida had used her imagination to escape.
During her recovery from the bus crash,
she used painting.
Her portraits are accomplished, but they were just the beginning
of her journey to artistic greatness.
For now, Frida's greatest achievement was to leave her sick bed
and rejoin the world.
In Frida's day, the Tenampas were the young generation
who came to drink, dance and put the world to rights.
It's really cool. It's, like, full of energy and erm...
a place you want to get drunk in, I think.
I would have come here. It's nice and loud.
It's proper music.
After the Mexican revolution of 1910,
places like this were a hotbed of politics.
The country had been gripped by fighting and corruption,
and the youth of Mexico were campaigning for a better future.
Freed from the confines of the Blue House,
Frida joined the fight.
She's loved by the people and this is the spirit of Mexico,
so she embodies that.
In Frida's eyes, the only way to secure a better future
was through the politics of communism.
How did Frida get into politics?
Frida never lost her passion for politics.
In this later work, she is embraced by one of the great minds behind communism -
Karl Marx.
And even towards the end of her life,
she was still demonstrating on the streets.
But it was in the political ferment of the late 1920s
that Frida met the man who would change her life forever.
His name was Diego Rivera.
Rivera was seen as the greatest Mexican artist of his time,
known for painting huge public murals.
He was twice-married, twice her age, and definitely no looker.
So what did Frida see in him?
Here in Mexico City, few know better than Rina Lazo.
Now I want you to sit in Frida's chair.
Oh, wow. (LAUGHS) And I'll sit in Diego's chair.
As a young woman, she was Diego's assistant and intimate friend.
What kind of man was Diego?
Well, he always was admired by women.
Because women feel that he uh...
..encouraged them to be someone. Right.
Were you attracted to Diego?
Well, I think...yes.
But his attraction was his wisdom.
He could talk to you about everything.
And that made you feel like you are in love with him
because you are in love with his wisdom.
It was wonderful to work with him.
I think he was like a teacher and like a guide for...for your life.
Yes.
Meeting somebody that had worked so closely with Diego
really brought this whole experience to life.
Rina really spoke of his passion, his wisdom
and his real belief in women
and his understanding of beauty on a level
that perhaps other people don't understand.
So erm, yeah, I think I like Diego.
(LAUGHS)
And obviously, Frida felt the same.
They dated for just a year and in
To celebrate their love, Frida later made a painting.
And it's one that reveals a lot about how she saw her role in the marriage.
Diego was a big man, but she's painted herself very small in comparison.
It's very clear that he is the painter, he is the artist
and she is the wife.
I have this impression of Frida as an outspoken feminist, ballsy woman.
So to see her like this, a very sensitive, intimate side of her
and I think it's beautiful to see...
I don't think many people would have seen this side of her in real life,
so to see it displayed here in a painting,
her wanting to express that to the world,
I think it's quite brave of her, really.
Though Frida cast herself as the wife,
Diego could see her potential as a painter.
And he'd exert a powerful influence over her life and work.
Diego was fascinated by Mexico's cultural heritage.
Under his influence, Frida began to look back and interrogate
her own roots.
At the Blue House is a painting which explains how Frida's roots
were different to most.
This is a painting by Frida named My Family.
And here we have her parents, her mother, her father.
Her father was German and the mother was Mexican from Wahaca.
So in this time period, how unusual was it
to have a mix of cultures within one family?
It was not really common, but this mix was erm,
so important because Frida is not normal people of that period.
Frida is really...avant-garde for her period
and she was not normal.
Yeah. Frida grew up more influenced by her European father,
rather than the traditional Mexican roots of her mother.
Growing up in Scotland with a Zambian dad and an English mum,
I know just how the young Frida must have felt.
I just remember a real longing when I was younger
for this other erm, this other world,
which was half of me, but I knew nothing of.
There was no connection with Africa in Scotland,
so...you long for it, and I think that's what I found in music.
And I think Frida found the same in art.
She began making paintings that showed her affinity
with her Mexican roots.
They culminated with two staggering paintings.
Here, Frida is suckling at the breast of an Indian nurse.
And here she's depicted among some great icons of Mexico.
Symbolising betrayal, death and fertility.
But painting wasn't the only way Frida reclaimed her Mexican roots.
I have to show you something very interesting.
OK. Cibeles Henez-Throza
owns an unrivalled collection of traditional Mexican dresses
of the type Frida is now famous for.
That's the way we keep the dresses from my little town.
Her collection is amongst her most valuable heirlooms.
This is a skirt that you would use every day.
It's called "rabona".
Rabona. And this is called "repil."
It's a blouse.
These fabrics are made in England.
OK. Let me just show you this repil.
That is in the painting.
And who's the woman in the painting? My mother.
It's beautiful. It's the same one.
But there's one dress here that had a very special owner.
My mother gave Frida this dress.
This was Frida's dress? Frida's dress.
Wow.
Would you like to try it?
Yeah. (LAUGHS)
Today, Frida's dresses are priceless artefacts.
Who could resist trying one on?
And maybe a few accessories, too.
Because we have the shawl higher, we use this.
We put this...like that.
Ah, OK.
Do you want this one or another one?
Erm... There are many.
I'll try this one.
Here.
All right. I'll be back.
"Tonight, Matthew..." (LAUGHS)
"..I'll be Frida!"
Oh! (LAUGHS)
You look beautiful. Thank you.
I love it. (LAUGHS)
Beautiful. Thank you.
Do you want to...to...to try jewellery? Yes, please.
This one is called - (SPEAKS IN MEXICAN)
It feels quite spiritual, you know, to be in the same dress
as Frida Kahlo.
I feel like a different person in the dress.
Yeah, it feels powerful.
It's amazing.
Makes you feel like a bus. (LAUGHS)
Frida's dresses allowed her to project the pride and passion
she had in her Mexican roots.
Wearing Frida's dress, I didn't think that was...
would never, ever happen.
Just being alone, putting it on,
just felt like such a significant experience in my life.
And you feel transformed, you know?
I felt like a different person.
I'm sure Frida felt like a different person, too.
But I know of an obscure sketch that tells another story.
It shows that beneath the dress,
there remained a broken and fragile body.
I don't think she did really want people to know
how vulnerable she was.
And I think with the effects of polio on her right leg, spinal column...
she's broken underneath it all.
But this is giving her strength.
I'm sure it helped to wear something that gave her more power.
But Frida's insecurities ran deeper than the physical scars
that remained from childhood.
Hidden away in a corner of the Blue House
is a cabinet of curiousities
that betray Frida's most heartfelt desires.
These are miniature pieces of furniture and trinkets
that were for her doll's house
and she'd been collecting them since she was a child over the years,
just building this massive collection.
First things that stand out to me are the musical instruments.
She's got a grand piano, maybe a baby grand.
Oh, she's got another piano over there.
I wonder how musical she was?
Erm...yeah, I'd like a few of these things
enlarged to real life size. (LAUGHS)
To me, these are not mute objects.
They speak ever so quietly of Frida's deep longing to become a mother.
There's a baby wrapped up, there's a smaller baby on the bed.
The fact that she had this collection from when she was...
a child and continued to build it...
she was creating this world which does reflect her curiousity with motherhood.
But Frida would never fulfil her dream of motherhood.
Across her life, Frida suffered at least three devastating miscarriages.
The most harrowing of these happened in 1932, during a trip to America.
This remarkable footage was taken in Detroit.
It shows Diego hard at work on a new mural, while Frida watches on.
Under the glare of the lens,
she does her best to hide her inner anguish at her recent miscarriage.
But what happened in Detroit
would inspire one of Frida's most dramatic paintings.
You can see here in the background
there's an industrial background of Detroit.
You have the bed and then you have all these arteries
linking to these different aspects of things that she's lost.
You have the foetus. The lumbar spine.
The pelvis.
What strikes me about this picture
is it's a real departure from what we've seen so far from her work.
Erm, you know, the rawness and the honesty
which she becomes renowned for is really marked in this painting.
I think this is...this is the beginning of something
that is very raw.
And very dark.
In fact, Frida was being encouraged by Diego
to look back at a curious tradition in Mexican painting.
Today the tradition is all but dead.
But I've heard of an artist who's keeping it alive
in a place they call the Corner Of Miracles.
Alfredo Vichilles is a retablo painter.
He's commissioned to make work by people who have suffered misfortune
or a narrow escape from death.
Can you tell me more about retablo painting?
Why do you think that Frida turned to retablo for inspiration?
Retablos gave Frida's work a new and gruesome dimension.
Where human pain and suffering were laid bare.
She painted the bloody scene of her own birth.
The suicide of a showbiz starlet.
But Frida's most potent retablo would come
when the man she loved the most
committed the ultimate act of betrayal.
Around 1934, Diego began an affair with Frida's sister, Christina.
Though he'd had affairs before,
this relationship was a devastating blow.
It broke Frida's heart.
In one of her writings, Frida summed up how she was feeling in three words.
Erm, which were "murder by life."
When Frida felt able to take up the brush, she made a brutal retablo.
In it, she drew on the pain of others
to portray the pain of Diego's treachery.
Frida had read about a famous murder
and she was using this to symbolise how the affair had affected her.
So above here there's the banner saying, "A few small nips."
And this is what the murderer is quoted to have said in court.
And erm, it suggests a lack of remorse
and a lack of understanding as to what he had done
and the pain he'd caused, really.
So...I think it's a very clever way
of...of expressing how she felt after the affair.
But across her life, Frida had affairs of her own.
Celebrity photographer Nickolas Moray.
Modernist sculptor Isamu Noguchi.
And she's even rumoured to have had a fling with cabaret sensation Josephine Baker.
But in 1937, she would embark on one affair
that would have unforeseen consequences for her life and art.
This is the home of Leon Trotsky.
As a devotee of communism,
he'd helped lead the Russian revolution of 1917.
But political differences had sent him into exile
and in 1937, he'd washed up here in Mexico City.
Trotsky was idolised by Diego
and Frida must have been equally enthralled.
Frida's ideal man was someone of great intelligence.
I think that excited her, someone that was...
..was determined and capable of saving the world in some way.
A great intelligent man was probably her Achilles' Heel, I think.
It wasn't long before this meeting of minds became a passionate affair.
Frida was a very...disobedient person.
She seduced most of the men who were around her.
(LAUGHS) And at that time, even Frida confessed that
Diego did not know of this little affair
that was between Frida and Trotsky.
After the affair, Frida dedicated a painting to her ex-lover.
I think knowing how important her art was to her,
for her to dedicate a picture to Trotsky
was, you know, says a lot. This is her most precious...gift
and to give it to a man, that says quite a lot.
A man that's not her husband.
For a painter who's famed for pain and suffering,
it's rare to see Frida depict herself in such flirtatious mood.
She's holding a bouquet of flowers, there's flowers in her hair.
A brooch. It's just very delicate.
Yeah, this is Frida sending some late night texts. (LAUGHS)
But maybe there's more to this affair than painting and passion.
Perhaps it was revenge.
This is a man that is Diego's idol, so how better to achieve revenge?
You know, the love of your life sleeping with your sister
is going to scar you very deeply.
When Diego found out about the affair, he was furious.
It's rumoured that's why he filed for divorce in 1939.
Now in her early 30s, and after a decade of marriage,
Frida walked alone.
It was a time of deep emotional pain,
but it was now that Frida set to work on a new painting
of lost love and loneliness.
It was to be her first great masterpiece.
You do feel quite starstruck. It's right here in front of you.
I'm just seeing more detail than I've seen before.
The muscle tissue she's painted a different colour.
All the chambers are there, she's painted what is really underneath.
The Two Fridas was painted as the divorce papers came through.
If you look at the hearts, the Frida on the right
is the one Diego had loved.
The Frida on the left is the one he no longer loves.
And to me, this painting represents the moment that Frida's art
reached a new psychological depth.
When you really deeply love someone, they become you, you become them.
So when that falls apart,
you have to reconnect with yourself again.
You know, she has to be her own companion.
She has to be her own lifeline again.
I think she's completely alone here.
With herself. Yeah, I felt that.
Seeing the Two Fridas painting and tracing the path
that Frida took to get there, has made me understand
what it takes to make serious art.
As an artist, I think you're always trying to tap into your deepest emotions.
In the Two Fridas painting, I think Frida was trying to reveal
a deeper truth to us and that's how you create something that's great.
The braver you can be, the closer to the truth you'll get
But just as Frida was gaining a reputation as a great artist,
she would be betrayed again.
Not by a man, but by her own body.
Despite the wrench of divorce, Frida's seperation from Diego
lasted just a year.
Their lives too entangled, too dependent.
But the split was a catalyst.
Up until then, it had been Diego telling everyone,
"This is an amazing artist. One day you'll see."
I don't know how confident she was about her art.
But I'm sure someone bigging you up and claiming you almost,
I'm sure she would have felt quite flattered and quite like,
"Oh, I belong. Perhaps I belong somewhere now."
I want to trace Frida's footsteps out of the artistic wilderness
and into the limelight as the great painter I've come to know.
It's a story that begins back in 1938,
when Frida as discovered by the Surrealists
and their leader Andre Breton.
How did Frida come into contact with the Surrealists?
The Surrealists had pronounced interest in Mexico in general.
And Breton wrote that in the work of Frida,
you could see elements that were close or similar to Surrealism.
OK. And somehow that the work of Frida
expressed this Surrealist sensibility.
The Surrealists were fascinated by the subconscious mind
and their dreams.
Painting worlds that were beyond reality.
And in Frida, they claimed a Mexican Surrealist
who painted herself in strange landscapes.
And who painted the inner workings of her mind.
How did Frida's link to Surrealism affect her career?
I think Surrealism functioned as a platform of exposure
for her work during the '30s and '40s.
Though she never saw herself as a Surrealist,
her connection with them brought Frida to the big time.
1938 saw her first solo exhibition.
COMMENTATOR: New York is not only steel and salt,
it is people, too. A strange cosmopolitan paradise.
Held in New York City, it virtually sold out.
The following year she became the first modern Mexican painter
to be bought by the Louvre in Paris.
And Picasso was so impressed, he gave her a handy set of earrings.
When she made it into the pages of Vogue,
Frida had found recognition as an independent woman and artist.
I know what it must have felt like for Friday.
It's a journey I've been on myself.
The way I was discovered and the way I got into the industry
was through producer Naughty Boy,
so I kind of see him as the equivalent of Diego
because during those two, three years, I was in his shadow.
And then there came a point where we had to split up,
and I had to go and promote my album and be "Emeli Sande."
So I definitely understand how she feels,
how she would have felt at that moment.
But no sooner had the world opened up for Frida,
then she was forced to retreat.
In 1944, the physical pain that Frida had battled with since childhood
became more acute.
Surgeons performed numerous operations and spinal taps.
And Frida was forced to wear a restrictive corset
which she used as a canvas.
But it was now that Frida made what I think
is her most powerful and heartrending painting of pain and frustration.
Her body is failing her now.
It's a betrayal of her body.
So erm, it's real sadness, it's pain.
She's broken. She's desperately trying to bind it back together
and find a way to still stand, but it's erm...
you know, it's her disintegration.
So, yeah, there's a real pain and hurt.
Maybe it's become overwhelming at this point
because there is no attempt to cover it.
So, yeah, I think we're seeing a vulnerable woman now
and she's allowing us to see that.
As Frida's health deteriorated further,
her friends rallied around.
In 1953, they organised an exhibition of her work.
It was to be her first and only solo exhibition in her beloved Mexico.
It was less a celebration, more a farewell.
Arturo Bustos was a close friend of Frida
and witnessed her bravery on the night.
In 1954, just a year after her exhibition,
Frida was struck down with pneumonia.
She passed away.
She was 47 years old.
Today, Frida's work sells for millions
and is revered across the globe.
But hers is a legacy that goes far beyond painting.
As a feminist icon, she has an army of devoted fans
including myself.
And in the minds of those who knew her,
Frida's spirit will always live on.
I think by going to Mexico, I found...a human Frida.
Frida was trying to reveal a deeper truth to us
and perhaps examine herself at the same time.
I think her art speaks universally.
But it's Frida's commitment to giving us the truth of her feelings
that's so inspiring to me.
I'm going to say everything and I really don't care
what people are gonna think of me,
it's just how I need to express myself.
Whether they think it's awful or not, it's still the truth.
And I think there's beauty in the truth and greatness in the truth.
And I think that's how you create something that's great.
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