After seeing the pyramids, could there really be an experience that would match it? Well, turns out in Mexico City there could! It was Frida Kahlo day!
As some of you know I have already declared this my Frida Kahlo year, for some reason Frida has just seemed to pop up everywhere.
Frida Kahlo's life began and ended in Mexico City in La Casa Azul - The Blue House - and that was where we were headed:
Frida Kahlo was married to Diego Rivera - the artist whose murals we had already admired. For most of their tumultuous marriage it was Diego who was the famous artist. Today Frida is considered one of Mexico's greatest painters, she is known for her self-portraits, for her vibrant colors, for painting her passion and her pain.To see her house, to walk in the rooms where she lived and to sit in her garden was to get a little closer to her, and it just made me admire her even more.
There are not many of Frida's paintings at the museum, but there are a few, here are two:
Before coming to Mexico City two books had made me especially curious about seeing La Casa Azul, "The man who loved dogs" by Leonardo Padura Fuentes and "The Lacuna" by Barbara Kingsolver. Both highlight the affair between Frida Kahlo and Leon Trotsky, and both speak of the Blue House where Trotsky and his wife first lived when they came to Mexico, and of "the red house" where Trotsky lived until he was assassinated. So after we had visited La Casa Azul we headed a few blocks down the street to see the Leon Trotsky Museum.
The house is red, but it is also sad - the closed off windows, the iron doors between the rooms, it all shows what kind of fear Trotsky lived with.
We left the house talking about how two houses could evoke such different feelings, how one made us feel happy and at home, while the other made us sad.
But it was Frida who stayed with us, her love of life - present even in her last painting:
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