“There have been two great accidents in my life. One was the train the other was Diego. Diego was by far the worst.”
Mexican painter Frida Kahlo is among the most remarkable figures of contemporary culture.
At a young age, she contracted polio, which left her right leg underdeveloped. A decade later, she was in a serious traffic accident, which resulted in multiple body fractures and internal lesions inflicted by an iron rod that had pierced her stomach and uterus.
For month she couldn’t move from her bed and during that dark period she discovered her love for painting.
In 1927, she met the painter Diego Rivera, who became her mentor. In 1929, Frida and Diego got married; but it wasn’t a serene marriage. Both had multiple affairs (Diego cheated on Frida even with her sister) and they left each other many times. Yet her bond with Diego was one of strong passion and immense love.
Kahlo’s love letters to Rivera, gathered in The Diary of Frida Kahlo: An Intimate Self-Portrait and written across the twenty-seven-year span of their relationship, show how deep and passionate their love was, full of anguish, pain, desire, joy, longing.
We have selected some of the most moving and sweet Frida’s love letters that will inspire you.
“Diego.
Truth is, so great, that I wouldn’t like to speak, or sleep, or listen, or love. To feel myself trapped, with no fear of blood, outside time and magic, within your own fear, and your great anguish, and within the very beating of your heart. All this madness, if I asked it of you, I know, in your silence, there would be only confusion. I ask you for violence, in the nonsense, and you, you give me grace, your light and your warmth. I’d like to paint you, but there are no colors, because there are so many, in my confusion, the tangible form of my great love.”
“Diego:
Nothing compares to your hands, nothing like the green-gold of your eyes. My body is filled with you for days and days. you are the mirror of the night. the violent flash of lightning. the dampness of the earth. The hollow of your armpits is my shelter. My fingers touch your blood. All my joy is to feel life spring from your flower-fountain that mine keeps to fill all the paths of my nerves which are yours.”
“For my Diego
the silent life giver of worlds, what is most important is the nonillusion. Morning breaks, the friendly reds, the big blues, hands full of leaves, noisy birds, fingers in the hair, pigeons’ nests a rare understanding of human struggle simplicity of the senseless song the folly of the wind in my heart, storm in the blood that comes in through the mouth — convulsion, omen, laughter and sheer teeth needles of pearl, for some gift on a seventh of July, I ask for it, I get it, I sing, sang, I’ll sing from now on our magic — love.”
“Auxochrome — Chromophore. Diego.
She who wears the color.
He who sees the color.
Since the year 1922.
Until always and forever. Now in 1944. After all the hours lived through. The vectors continue in their original direction. Nothing stops them. With no more knowledge than live emotion. With no other wish than to go on until they meet. Slowly. With great unease, but with the certainty that all is guided by the “golden section.” There is cellular arrangement. There is movement. There is light. All centers are the same. Folly doesn’t exist. We are the same as we were and as we will be. Not counting on idiotic destiny.”
