Kevin Tosca

Exit

Frida Kahlo, child of Germany and Mexico, was born after the birth of the twentieth century. She was a wild, intelligent, free- spirited young girl. At the age of eighteen a horrible trolley accident introduced her to pain. Her spinal column, her collarbone, her ribs, her pelvis, her leg, her foot, her shoulder: all broken or crushed. She walked again, eventually, but the operations, and the pain, never ceased. She painted. She married Diego Rivera, a famous muralist who betrayed her with a long succession of women, her sister Cristina included. She traveled. She visited and despised America. Its growth—its more—repulsed her. She met new pains, always, and she painted them. She could not bear children. She had at least three miscarriages. Her right leg, below the knee, was amputated. When asked, she said she painted because she had to, because of life, because of the pain. Her work is, and will always be, more important than her husband’s. In 1954, at the age of forty-seven, she died. In her diary, shortly before her death, Frida wrote: I hope the exit is joyful and I hope never to return.