In 2004 Mexican art historians made a sensational discovery in Frida Kahlo’s bathroom. Inside this space, sealed since the 1950s, was an enormous archive of documents, photographs and personal possessions. This hoard forms the basis of Frida Kahlo: Making Herself Up, an exhibition at the V&A.
Oscar Wilde once remarked that ‘one should either be a work of art or wear a work of art’. Kahlo opted for both, and she didn’t stop there. Though she was a Marxist who numbered Trotsky among her many lovers, she also channelled the role of saint and martyr.
She was neater than Francis Bacon, whose studio-floor detritus has also been subjected to zealous forensic analysis — but the clutter Kahlo left behind her was similarly eclectic. Some of the exhibits were required because of her multiple disabilities. Kahlo suffered polio at the age of six followed by a near-fatal bus crash in 1925, which shattered her spine.
On show are the medicaments she took and the plaster corsets she had to wear, and, most poignant of all, a prosthetic limb necessary after Kahlo’s right leg had been amputated towards the end of her life.
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