La Casa Azul In Mexico City Draws Us Deep Into The Exceptional Life And Work Of Frida Kahlo

Emotion erupts, a wrangling of hope and sorrow colliding to birth the earthly manifestation of Frida Kahlo’s legacy, as we enter La Casa Azul (the Blue House). The imposing Frida Kahlo Museum is unmistakable to passersby with its stunning cobalt-blue exterior walls, beckoning us to explore her intimate life through memories and philosophical awakenings. Kahlo's spirit is palpable as we wander through the elaborate rooms, examining her paintings and the objects and ephemera that helped to guide her prolific career and wildly passionate political and personal experiences.

The house bursts with fervor, as if sensations pulsate from the walls, and we feel Kahlo’s inimitable presence. Standing 5-foot-three and harboring excruciating physical and emotional anguish after being struck by a bus at age 18, Kahlo the artist, the woman, the revolutionary, is a towering figure who continues to redefine art history, her posthumous market surging. Kahlo was born in the house, grew up there, lived in it for years with her husband, muralist Diego Rivera, weathering their volatile relationship, and died upstairs at age 47. The couple met when she joined the Mexican Communist Party in 1927, her commitment to human rights imbued in her art and throughout the home.

La Casa Azul was much larger than my son Michael Alexander and I had anticipated, revealing the magnitude of Kahlo’s first and last breaths, her last brushstroke conveying hope eternal, a love and lust for life triumphing over the most bitter adversity.

We imagine Kahlo walking alongside us, her elegance, her fierce energy, her empowered stance, knowing how the world should be and encumbered by what it is. Her revolutionary gaze directs us through her visceral grasp of social and creative ideals that are thwarted and trampled by the systems of power that continue to oppress people around the world.

Our gaze is fixed on Kahlo, who depicts herself, right arm outstretched, she lets go of her crutch, while grasping a red book in her left hand. She stands tall, clad in her leather corset and a ruffled green skirt with white trim. Created in the last year of her brief life, El marxismo dará salud a los enfermos (Marxism will heal the sick) the oversized hands, one emblazoned with a third eye of Karl Marx free her from physical pain, while a third hand of Marx strangles a grotesque hybrid of Uncle Sam and an eagle, two symbols of Imperialism in the United States. These opposing forces reappear throughout Kahlo’s oeuvre, reinforcing her tireless advocacy for human rights.

This gripping self portrait remains relevant, as so many people in the U.S. lack access to effective healthcare and suffer needlessly because of corporate greed. The un​​finished oil on masonite was originally titled Peace on Earth so the Marxist Science may Save the Sick and Those Oppressed by Criminal Yankee Capitalism.

Ripe with her tireless zeal for life, Kahlo’s Viva la Vida is believed to be the last painting she created. The luscious watermelons, exuding vibrancy, transform this still life into a tour de force. Eight days before she died, Kahlo eschewed any fear in favor of the most joyful message, imploring viewers to seek joy.

Painted in 1933, Composición sobre nueva york (inconcluso) speaks to all of us who cherish New York City. The neutral oil on canvas reads like an amalgam blueprint of the Statue of Liberty, the Manhattan skyline, and the people who breathe for and because of New York City. Like the complex use of lines in the unfinished Composition of New York, the city is always a work in progress, holding our hearts, our souls, our dreams, close to her dynamic and worldly bosom.

Moreover, we sense Kahlo’s conflict with a city of then-millionaires who oppress the poor and a wealth of art for all. That strife is magnified today with the existential wrestling of now-billionaires creating barriers to entry even for affluent, working folks and a proliferation of the global art world. Kahlo and Rivera traveled to Manhattan in November 1931 for the opening of Rivera’s exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, where she was wined and dined by the uber-rich, sickened by their use of servants, while indulging in the nourishment of the nation's art and culture capital.

Passing from room to room, we lose ourselves in her often obscure, sometimes creepy curation of otherworldly objects as she transfigures the quotidian to reveal her perverse divinity and devilish saintliness. Surveying Kahlo’s art supplies was a singular delight for emerging artist Michael Alexander.

Kahlo left her home as a museum so that visitors would enjoy her celebration of Mexican culture. Rivera enlisted Modernist Mexican poet Carlos Pellicer to establish the museum after her death in 1954. Pellicer and Rivera, along with Vicente Lombardo Toledano, José Clemente Orozco, and Xavier Guerrero, founded Grupo Solidario del Movimiento Obrero (Solidarity Group of the Workers' Movement). Pellicer’s deep commitment to workers’ rights underscores the ethos that exudes from every object Kahlo collected during her short but sensational life.

Located in the Coyoacán borough of Mexico City, the surrounding neighborhood bustles with outdoor eateries (my son and fellow pescatarian Michael Alexander and I enjoyed lunch at El Jardin Del Pulpo, which on weekends offers unctuous oysters alongside its array of raw and cooked fresh seafood) and the sprawling Coyoacan Market (Mercado de Coyoacán) where you’ll find authentic souvenirs. La Casa Azul gift shop also offers delightful, unique items to remind you of the singular experience.

Opened in 1958, La Casa Azul features pre-Columbian sculptures, photographs, documents, books, and furniture, along with Kahlo’s diverse array of paintings. On a sunny day, the garden is a refuge and a portal into Kahlo’s private moments, visions, and ancestry.