Original subtitles

It is certain that they are going to amputate my right leg.

Details I don't know much but the opinions are reliable.

I'm worried.

But at the same time I feel it could be a relief.

Everybody knows Frida Kahlo.

An artist, an icon,...

..a woman, a wife, a saint, a martyr.

She has become a symbol, an ideal,...

..but there is so much more to her story.

Frida Kahlo was born, lived and died in the Casa Azul.

She would go back there, it was her home, her intimate world, her universe.

She even depicted it in several of her paintings.

When I was asked ...

.."What can I do? Everything has already been said, and written about Frida."

"Many books have been published..."

"I don't know what to do here." I really didn't know.

The trunks had been sealed for 50 years.

The Museum technical committee asked me to open those places,...

..and my team and I did so,...

..uncovering wonders that changed Frida's story.

It was not badly written, but the nuances were missing.

When we started opening all the boxes and trunks I felt like I was...

I felt like...

I had mixed feelings.

Analyzing those objects meant invading her privacy,...

..and that's hard, nobody wants to do that.

I think that...

Those of us who work there have learnt what art is through Frida.

When you work so close to an artist...

..you discover things books don't teach.

There's no better way to understand Frida Kahlo...

..than through her letters and her diary.

Frida has always been a very good storyteller.

She always played with facts and fiction with life and myth.

Outline of my life.

1910.

I was born in the room on the corner of Calle Londres and Calle Allende in Coyoacán.

At one o'clock in the morning. My father, Guillermo Kahlo, emigrated to Mexico in the 19th century.

He settled here for the rest of his life. He married a Mexican girl.

When his wife died, he married Mathilde Calderòn y Gonzalez.

One of twelve children of my grandfather Antonio Calderòn.

A man of an indigenous race from the state of Michoacan...

..and my grandmother Isabel Gonzalez y Gonzalez.

Who was the daughter of a Spanish general.

My childhood was wonderful, even though my father was not a healthy man.

He was an immense example for me of tenderness and work.

He was a photographer and also a painter.

I saw with my own eyes the clash between Zapata's peasants and the forces of Carranza.

My position was very clear.

We were four sisters.

Matita. Adri.

Me, Frida, and Cristina, the chubby midget. I'll talk about her later.

With a caring family and a reawakened nation,...

..the young Frida had a bright future ahead of her,...

..but a terrible accident would change everything.

A little while ago, not much more than a few days ago,...

..I was a child who went about in a world of colors.

Of hard and tangible forms.

Everything was mysterious and something was hidden.

Guessing hat it was a game for me.

If you knew how terrible it is to know suddenly.

As if a bolt of lightning elucidated the earth.

Now I live in a painful planet, transparent as ice.

But it is as if I had learned everything at once in seconds.

I became old in instants and everything today is bland and lucid.

I know that nothing lies behind. If there was something, I would see it.

It was on this corner that Frida had a accident while returning home with her boyfriend Alejandro.

The bus collided with a streetcar, ...

..a crushed foot, a fractured leg, a splintered column,...

..but the most horrifying thing...

..was that a hand-rail went through her abdomen and out of her pelvis.

Frida would spend one month in the Red Cross hospital...

..and another 8 at home.

That's when she started to paint. The accident changed her life.

And in that moment, in that place...

..two Fridas were born.

The first is that which becomes the icon everyone knows,...

..the independent and strong woman tormented by agony and love.

The second is the artist unleashed from her physical restraints.

The affliction of one fed the vision of the other.

The energy of one kept the other alive.

Two faces of the same person sharing one heart.

On their own, they would never have endured what life had in store for them.

After the accident, Frida spent many months convalescencing in bed.

Spending so much time alone...

..converted her art into self-representation.

"I paint myself because I am the person I know best".

This is the bed adapted for Frida after the accident.

Her mother had a mirror rigged up,...

..and her father built her a piece of furniture so she could paint and see herself in the mirror.

In her early portraits, Frida Khalo paints herself in very rigid style, very European style,...

..especially in "Self-portrait in a velvet dress",...

..where she appears so rigid.

Perhaps, one year after her accident,...

..she was remembering how her body had been, longing for what she had lost.

"I never painted dreams" she would say, "I painted my own reality".

But looking at those bloody reds and her abyss-like blacks,...

..it is clear that Frida was still holding back a hurricane.

Her was a fiery butterfly within to burst.

All she needed for it to pop was a little push...

..or, even better, a gunshot.

Diego in my urine. Diego in my mouth, in my heart,...

..in my madness, in my dream, in the blotting paper.

In the tip of the pen, in the landscapes, in the food, in my imagination.

In the ruptures, in his eyes, in his mouth, in his lie.

It is said that Frida came here with her work...

..and showed it to Diego Rivera while he was painting these wonderful murals.

"I want you to see my work. Will I be an artist one day?"

He came down from his scaffolding to look at the pictures.

She was amazed by his little hands and large cyclopean eyes.

She would love him forever.

When Frida and Diego became friends,...

..Diego Rivera showed interest in her and visited her at the house in Coyoacán.

Now it's a museum, but once it was the home of the Kahlo family.

..

.."I see that you are interested in my daughter".

"Yes, otherwise I would not come to Coyoacán to visit her".

And Guillermo Kahlo, ...

.."I warn you, she is a demon".

"I know, and it's fine".

So he began to come to the house to visit her.

WELCOME HOME...

On August 21, 1929, Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo got married.

...

..Diego Rivera was so big and Frida so small,...

..and people said they looked like an elephant and a dove.

Diego Rivera was the most famous artist in Mexico...

..and Frida was one of the few who manage to stand up to him.

No matter how difficult things became at certain times...

..and despite the troubles they got into...

..their relationship was so solid that they were literally living one inside the other.

I think that opening these spaces...

..hasn't changed Frida and Diego's story, but it gives it a new perspective.

Through her objects we have discovered the person inside the artist,...

..the bohemian, cheerful Frida,...

..who knew how to turn pain into a work of art.

She knew she could die, but she wanted to live life to the fullest.

That's why for her, friendship or love...

..today it's here, tomorrow it's gone.

She was frustrated and bedridden,...

..but she decided to live her life and with colors.

There is a very nice phrase I love.

Frida wrote very well,...

..she was very precise, and very sensitive, too,...

"You welcomed me destroyed, and you gave me back whole."

In this urn,...

..a pre-Hispanic frog-toad,...

..are Frida's ashes.

She is in a frog-toad, because Diego was nicknamed "Saporrana",...

..and she'd call him "my little toad".

The reason her ashes are here is that Frida rests inside Diego,...

..this is a pre-Hispanic Diego.

In this urn Diego put, on top of her ashes,...

..her bodice...

..and her Mexican shawl.

It is very moving because it speaks of the great love,...

..affection and respect that Diego... had for Frida.

In 1930, three months pregnant,...

..Frida performed an abortion.

Miscarriages will haunt Frida for the rest of her life...

..and she tried to exorcise these ghosts by portraying her sorrow...

..with her brushes dipped into oil and tears.

No matter what Frida does or where she goes...

..the shadow of the streetcar accident is constantly cast upon her.

A trauma that generates new scars,...

..running deep in her body and inside her mind.

Buzzing, stoning, whiteness of gray road,...

..silhouette, tenderness, ballad.

Gangrene, Petrarch, sunflower, sinister blues.

Acute, rosemary.

Circumlocutions, garbage, yesterday, lap, tumbling.

Visions, illusive, sleeping, pillar, friendly columns.

Murmurs of glass, abuses, nearby, lies, passion.

Arcane, thousands, money, vigor, overlapping conscience.

Prostitute palm grove, the strength marine.

Hunchback control, looks I say,...

..withered lair, "mikado" .

Senile gurgle, square bright star seized,...

..at russet dawn, at the green lie.

Here in Gringoland, I spend my life dreaming of returning to Mexico.

A few months after Frida's first miscarriage,...

..the couple moved to the United States.

Diego Rivera was invited to paint murals in Detroit,...

..San Francisco and New York.

He accepted these commissions offered by the great capitalism...

..represented by Henry Ford, Rockefeller, financers,...

..or the San Francisco Stock Exchange.

He thought that in these great works of art he could represent his socialist ideals...

..and defend the working class.

Frida couldn't stand the American way of life.

She got tired of speaking English all the time...

..and found the local citizens boring, and lacking in personality.

Many of these gringos called her indigenous comrades "monkeys".

These were the enemies who raped, poisoned and robbed the land she loved so much.

During the time spent in the United States,...

..Frida experienced contradictions and conflict because,...

..she missed her beloved Mexico,...

..faced with what she considered the cold,...

..industrialized,...

..and dehumanized society of the United States.

During this time, ...

.."My dress hangs there",...

..and "Self-Portrait on the Border Line", 1933.

She painted "Self-Portrait" in two parts,...

..one full of light and sun representing Mexico,...

..with elements of pre-Hispanic pieces and popular art.

In the darkest part there are factories,...

..skyscrapers, smoke.

It's the same with "My dress hangs there",...

..where the dress is herself, floating, as if she wasn't there,...

..as if she were carrying out an analysis, and its representation goes beyond art,...

..becoming a political and social analysis of that time.

Frida rejected the exploitative,...

..neo-colonialist mores of this terrifying new world...

..with its social disparities and injustices.

Hers was a primordial need a craving ...

..pre-Columbian Mexico.

When Frida came here Teotihuacan, you know...

Some of this hasn't really changed very much...

..but she would have seen the pyramid of the Sun here.

What we see today it's our version of Teotihuacan or a version of Teotihuacan...

We see a version of Teotihuacan now that was basically constructed in the 20th Century

to foment national pride in the ancient past, in the glories of the past.

That's why tourists will come here today...

..to kind of glory in that amazing past.

Kahlo would have also been very interested in the concept of dualities...

..how you could get a sense of that here in Teotihuacan.

You had a pyramid of the Sun which of course represented the day and that all aspect...

..the heat, light, life, and then the Moon which would have been associated...

..with night and darkness and perhaps even death.

These dualities, for Mesoamerican people, including the Aztecs,...

..structured their whole cosmos and universe, life and death.

These two parts would have been not separate...

..like evil and good are separate in the Christian tradition,...

..but really more integrated into a whole that neither side alone was enough...

..but only the two together create this single cosmic force.

The theme of Aztec dualism...

..is explored in "The Love Embrace of the Universe,...

..the Earth Myself, Diego and Señor Xolotl".

The canvas is split in half...

..divided into night and day, nature and soul,...

..and Frida is holding a baby with Diego's face.

Her breasts are covered and although she looks at peace,...

..teardrops mark her cheeks,...

..and blood spurts onto her chest from a bright red crack.

The connection between Frida, and the feminine energies of the Earth are clear...

..as the various layers of the universe,...

..depicted in a female form embrace each other, united.

The mother-daughter relationship is more evident in "My Nurse and I".

Based on her childhood memories,...

..she is about to be breast fed by her native indigenous wet nurse.

The artist was obviously too young to remember her,...

..and that's why she is depicted without a face,...

..wearing instead a pre-Columbian funerary mask.

Once again, Life and Death.

Such was the importance of Pre-Columbian culture...

..that Diego and Frida began collecting a huge number of ancient artifacts.

The collection became the cornerstone of the Anahuacalli Museum.

The couple wanted to leave a record for the ages,...

..creating a firm bond between their people and roots.

From a cultural point of view, they were the perfect couple.

They both loved the same Mexican culture,...

..they both loved our country and they believed in our people.

The idea of Diego was to create a house for his pre-Columbian collection...

..that would serve future generations.

That's why he built this, so future generations could learn about it see it,...

..live with it and feel proud, and help them in their cultural growth.

Diego wanted to preserve that and that was one of his dreams.

He was very romantic, and, as well as Frida,...

..very passionate of Mexican culture and history.

Flesh offerings were one of the leitmotifs of Aztec culture.

In order to repay their debts to the gods...

..priests gave the blood of their people.

Frida, too, was to understand the meaning of sacrifice...

..during the course of her life.

Dualism returns in "The Tree of Hope"...

..where we can see two different Fridas.

One is ...

..her bloody battered body is mercilessly offered to a hungry Sun God.

She is tired, in pain,...

..and doesn't even have the strength to show her face.

The other is watching over her...

..illuminated only by moonlight ...

.."Arbol de la Esperanza, mantente firme",...

..or "Tree of hope, keep firm".

She is strong, proud, but cannot keep back her tears...

..as if she knew that pain was often necessary to generate beauty.

On July 4th 1932,...

..while Detroit is illuminated by the fireworks celebrating Independence Day...

..Frida loses her second unborn baby.

The second miscarriage, in Detroit,...

..was very traumatic, and left Frida devastated.

She asked the doctor to bring her the fetus and a book.

She wanted to know what happened within her body,...

..and with that material, she painted the small, but important, "Henry Ford Hospital".

Frida is lying on a bed, bleeding,...

..circled by six objects held together by six ribbons...

..coming out of her stomach like umbilical cords.

A cold, dehumanized machine,...

..an orchid, a gift from Diego,...

..the fractured pelvic bone, that is the cause of all her problems,...

..an orthopedic cast,...

..a snail, symbolizing the slowness of the abortion,...

..and, at the center, her unborn son.

His lifeless body is floating above her like a ghost,...

..but she is staring in our direction...

..as if she cannot bear the nightmarish vision.

Its qualities and potency are undeniable...

..as is its representation of a woman's resilience to pain and suffering.

A representation depicted through the Mexican ex-voto form.

All of Frida Khalo's easel works are inspired by ex-voto paintings.

Ex-votos are stories told by people to thank a saint,...

..or the virgin Mary.

They might give thanks only because they are alive.

Ex-votos are short films with a beginning and an end,...

..a scene illustrating the moment, and a text telling the story.

Ex-voto paintings come from Europe,...

..but it is here in Mexico that they take on more human warmth.

When people tell me a story, I feel they expose themselves,...

..trusting me with their feelings.

The retablero's task is to explain what people want.

Sometimes it is painful, but it is necessary.

Here in Mexico we have to give thanks for this.

By the end of 1933,...

..about 1 year and a half after the abortion in Detroit,...

..Diego reluctantly agrees to take his wife back to Mexico.

This has a big backlash on the balance of the couple relationship.

Frida is happy to end this grim chapter of her life.

She is unaware that the worst is yet to come.

I had never suffered so much. And did not think I could take so much pain.

You cannot even imagine what state I'm in.

And I know it is going to take me years to get out of this mess that I have in my head.

At the beginning I thought there was a solution.

I thought that what had happened would be something that would last a short time and wouldn't be serious.

But every day I am more and more convinced that it was just wishful thinking.

After a time in the United States,...

..Frida and Diego moved to these twin houses Diego had commissioned his friend,...

..the architect and extraordinary painter Juan O'Gorman,...

..to build in the San Ángel district.

The houses are separated.

Two houses,...

..one is for Diego, with a studio and one room,...

..and the other house with a study is for Frida.

Diego, when asked for the eccentricity of the twin separated houses,...

..would answer in a very amusing way that they preserved conjugal peace.

Frida Kahlo lived only a short time in these houses.

Her emotional balance was precarious.

When she lived here, she learnt of Diego's romance with Cristina, her sister.

It created a deep emotional fracture between them.

Reciprocal infidelities had been a constant in their marriage,...

..but learning that Diego had been with her sister Cristina...

..proved to be a blow too low for Frida.

She leaves Rivera, and goes to live on her own for almost a year.

She is trying to reinvent herself,...

..to emancipate herself from her broken body and failed love story...

..using the canvas as a reminder of what she has chosen to leave behind.

She creates one of her most visceral, ...

.."A Few Small Nips".

Inside a tiny frame Frida represents a bloodied woman lying on a bed,...

..her blood-splattered killer still wielding the knife in his right hand.

In an image of surreal horror...

..her upper and lower body are portrayed in inverse directions.

The killer in the painting is portrayed as the classic Latino-macho cliché...

..standing strong and proud with a beast-like glare.

The woman is reduced to a lifeless object...

..unable to answer the observer's questions...

..as to what has happened.

It is at this point in her life...

..that Frida learns how to support herself,...

..how to emerge out of Diego's shadow.

She starts, consciously or not, to work on her image as an icon.

Each object is part of her life, of her personality.

Through the object you discover the artist, the person.

She knew this well, that's why she dressed as she did and wore necklaces.

She knew well the meaning all these things had in her life, and in her work.

And she turned her-self into a work of art.

With all these things...

It's very interesting.

She rebuilt herself with the objects that surrounded her.

And these things gave her life. They are part of her work.

"I paint to paint, I paint what surrounds me, what I love".

They also reveal a woman intellectually restless,...

..who is not weak at all.

Frida weak? No.

She was a cheerful woman...

She loved mariachi, tequila, the will to live.

She turned her house, her clothes, and her objects

into art for herself.

She turned them into art...

..in her house, on herself, and in her paintings.

This is from Tehuantepec in Oaxaca.

It is incredibly well preserved because it is made of very fragile material.

She used these things to decorate.

Tehuantepec is a major city in the state of Oaxaca...

..in south-western Mexico.

It is the center of Zapotec culture...

..and has a reputation for been a matriarchal society.

The women of Tehuantepec still dominate the local market...

..and are famous for their traditional dresses.

Frida never got to see this place, but fell in love with its ideals and aesthetics,...

..especially with the "huipil grande", the traditional headdress,...

..in which she frames her face in "Self Portrait" as a Tehuana.

Flowers garnish her forehead like a crown endowing her with a royal look.

She is graceful, ethereal.

The perfect representation of a completely different world.

The Zapotec world of Tehuantepec or Juchitan is very interesting...

..because it is not as modern as other places,...

..at least until recently, when I visited Juchitan.

They like partying a lot.

This is what happens after a "kidnapping". They call it kidnapping but it's not that.

The bride's mother tells them her daughter is not a virgin,..

..and they dance of joy, but they also cry because it's a drama.

Bride and groom go to the groom's parents house,...

..where they take away her virginity with a finger.

It's hard but that's how it goes.

If the next day his mother, they are at his house, sees there is blood,...

..which means the girl was a virgin,...

..they place red tulips and confetti,...

..and then they sing, celebrate sand cry.

Frida was a very sensitive woman, she loved this,...

and that's how she dressed, with her shawls and her jewelry...

A lot of her jewelry was stolen when she died.

She was really in love with Mexican clothes and jewelry.

She even tried getting clothes she liked through her favorite dealers.

This is a party. Both women and men drink a lot.

Men fall down but women do not, they handle it better.

Women sell at the market.

Men are not allowed to go.

Women manage the family economy. We call it matriarchy.

I do not know whether it is a special situation here in Mexico,...

..but for us Mexicans, when someone suffers severe pain,...

..we feel a sort of compassion, and she was made a saint, right?

Frida was made a saint, and this is the most visited museum that most people go to.

It is a very important image, for everybody.

I don't relieve in the myth of Saint Frida, and that she was feminist...

I do not think it's true.

When feminists present Frida as a feminist, I wonder why.

No, she was not a feminist.

She was a liberated woman,...

..like Diego, free to have sex with whomever she liked, women, men,

..but, I think always submissive with Diego.

The most intense of these liaisons are with the photographer Nickolas Muray,...

..and the Japanese-American artist, Isamu Noguchi.

She is happy again. And this is something Diego cannot stand.

He storms off to her home, armed as usual,...

..in order to reclaim her.

Diego's return opens a new chapter in Frida's life,...

one where their house becomes a beacon, for the most prominent intellectuals of the time.

Leo Trotsky goes on trial at the home of Mr and Mrs Diego Rivera in Mexico.

The trial's entirely unofficial.

In Moscow the Russian government charged Trotsky, on left, of being a counter-revolutionist.

Diego managed to convince the Mexican president...

..to give asylum to the Soviet exile.

It didn't take long for Frida and Trotsky to become attracted to each other.

Their secret affair didn't last long,...

..but Diego's jealous reaction to his political hero, sufficed to give her immense satisfaction.

In 1938, the Surrealism theorist, André Breton, landed in Mexico.

Together with Rivera and Trotsky,...

..he published the "Manifesto for an Independent Revolutionary Art",...

..with the intent of using culture as a weapon against totalitarian regimes.

It was Frida's works that captured his attention.

Comparing them to the European surrealist movement,...

..he describes them as a "ribbon around a bomb".

Frida rejected the comparison.

She didn't want to represent the petit bourgeois dream landscape, for its own sake.

She wanted to use her vision to represent the Mexican underbelly,...

..filtered through its cultural iconography.

I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality.

In "What the Water Gave Me", something extraordinary happens.

We finally see the world from Frida's point of view.

It's a rare, intimate portrayal of her creative process.

Under the apparently calm, relaxed waters of a daily bath,...

..we witness her visual stream of consciousness.

There's a sense of melancholy, as Frida remembers some of her past works her parents,...

..and the terrible American years...

..shown through an Empire State Building swallowed by a volcano.

The flowering desert plants, and their roots betray a desire for rebirth.

Her vision is further explored in "The Dream",...

..where a Día de Los Muertos skeleton floats,...

..above a sleeping Frida wired with explosives.

The artist, on the other side, is covered with green plants,...

..challenging the Grim Reaper with the beauty of Life.

She is mocking Death in a typical Mexican style.

She has this beautiful painting where she is lying in bed, and death is lying above her.

I think she said the same

"The Skull smiled at us", fate gave us a second chance.

A nice thing in Mexico is that we play with death,...

..we laugh with it, we eat it, we entertain ourselves with it, we paint it.

It is a tradition here in Mexico.

We play with it when we put on a death mask,...

..we eat it in the Skull shaped sweets sold in November,...

..we laugh with it because we paint it drunk and playful.

I think we all carry death on our backs,...

..that's how it is for me,...

...

"Enough, let's go," or "Be happy and enjoy your life".

In 1938, things with Diego start worsening again...

..to the point on 6th of November, their marriage is over.

The day the divorce documents reach Frida,...

..she finished her largest ...

.."The Two Fridas".

Here we have one of the most well-known, painting by Frida Kahlo, "The Two Fridas".

It is a single person depicted twice.

She had just divorced Diego Rivera,...

..and here she depicts him in a small portrait from which comes out...

..an artery uniting the two hearts of Frida Kahlo,...

..to represent her racial richness, Spanish, indigenous, Criollo.

A hemostat stop the blood which turns into flowers.

Blood becomes life, as everything does with Frida. Pain becomes art.

A dark sky announces a storm, loneliness.

The fact I painted myself twice.

Doesn't mean it was only a representation of solitude. It's almost like.

Turning to myself, searching for my own help.

It's for this reason that the two figures shake hands.

I don't think the difference in style of the clothes...

..is of greater importance than that of the color or form.

The most vivid object in the picture is the hearts.

That are enjoined by imaginary arteries. To become just one.

After the divorce Frida's body continues to torment her.

She is used to it now, and knows she will never escape from her cage of flesh...

..facing her sorrow with great dignity and calm,...

..even when thorns pierce her neck, like the crown on Jesus' head.

The apparent grace of the flora and fauna surrounding her,...

..are a wretched reminder of what she has lost.

A once lively, brightly-colored humming bird is dark,...

..hanging from her necklace, while a monkey distractedly proceeds,...

..with the tightening of her instrument of torture.

This time, Frida will not give her captors the satisfaction of seeing her cry.

Coyoacán, near Mexico City, August 20th, 1940.

A young man plunges a mountain climber's axe in the old man's skull.

The exiled, Leon Trotsky, is dead.

After Trosky's death, Frida is put in custody,...

..and questioned by the police for twelve hours.

A few months earlier Diego had fled to the U.S. because he was among the suspects.

When he learns that Frida is being arrested, and about her health conditions,...

..he urges her to join him in the United States.

It is there, for some reason, that they decide to remarry.

Despite the ups and downs between Diego Rivera and Frida Khalo...

..due to multiple affairs on both sides,...

they were always friends, they were always close.

Frida forgave Diego for his affair with her sister Cristina,...

..and they remarried.

Frida agreed to remarry under some conditions.

There were two main conditions. The first one is no sex.

The second, determined by Frida's increased confidence in her art,...

..in her creativity,...

..was that she would pay her own way after the marriage.

In the early forties, Frida's career takes off.

She is now accepted worldwide...

..as one of Mexico's most prominent painters, and her commissions skyrocket.

She's on the verge of achieving full artistic recognition,...

..but health-wise, there would be a heavy price to pay.

Frida's backbone and right foot start worsening.

Her vertebras cannot sustain her body anymore.

A bone surgeon prescribes her complete rest and a bust to support her spine.

Well, here we have Frida's corsets. She could not walk without them.

She depicts this physical limitation...

..in one of her most important paintings, "The Broken Column",...

..a fragmented column.

She is crying, she illustrates pain,...

..but she looks straight ahead and is not overwhelmed by life.

Here she brings together pain and life.

She is accustomed to facing life, and she invites the onlooker to look at her,...

..at her feelings, at her deepest being.

In 1946, Frida goes to New York to undergo surgery...

..that would later reveal itself to be a complete failure.

To solve her spine problem, 4 vertebras are fused together...

..with a piece of bone removed from her pelvis,...

..and a five-inch long metal bar.

Pain is real.

And if you ever experience pain in your life, you know pain is not romantic at all.

Pain is disgusting.

Frida is obsessed with it, and she wants to know everything about her suffering.

Frida's pain gets worse and worse,...

and she represents it in emblematic works of art such as "The Wounded Deer",...

..a desolate, deserted landscape with sad trees.

The arrows piercing her body represent the pain she feels.

I leave you my portrait. So that you will have my presence.

All the days and nights, that I am away from you.

The sadness is portrayed in all my painting.

But that's my condition. I do not have any composure.

Imagine how poor Frida had to paint wearing these things.

I had the opportunity to visit Frida Kahlo's museum a few years ago...

when Hilda asked me to photograph her "huipiles".

I noticed that they had just opened her bathroom, after 50 years.

When Frida Kahlo died in the year '54,...

..Diego said that this bathroom was not to be opened for 15 years,...

..that's where all her belongings were,...

..but 50 years went by and the bathroom was not opened.

When I saw it, right after it had been opened,...

..I asked for permission to photograph all of Frida's objects,...

...

..corsets, crutches,...

..prosthesis, all these objects of pain.

Everything was in the tub.

I simply took Frida's objects and interpreted them,...

..in the bathroom and in other places,...

..to have a report on Frida's pain, because it is her pain.

Possibly, in reaction to her own physical limits,...

..Frida's artistic vision gains in scope.

A wide open space surrounds her small world in paintings,...

..such as Moses or The Nucleus of Creation,...

..where her traditional landmarks merge with spiritual elements from all over the world,...

..as the titular baby is ready to come into existence.

"People need to make up gods and heroes", Frida said,...

.."because they are afraid of life and death".

There's a sense of purpose in this masterpiece of clarity.

As if this ensemble of Frida's protectors and villains,...

..inspirations and failures,...

..turned her into the artist we all know,...

..taking her by the hand and never leaving her alone.

I must have been six years old,...

..when I had the intense experience of an imaginary friendship with a little girl.

I used to breathe on one of the top panes.

And with my finger I would draw a "door".

Through that "door" I would leave, in my imagination, and hurriedly, with immense happiness.

I don't remember her appearance or her color.

But I do remember her joyfulness.

She laughed a lot. Soundlessly.

She was agile and danced as if she were weightless.

I followed her in every movement.

And while she danced, I told her my secret problems.

I was happy.

Life hasn't been kind to Frida.

The more it takes from her, the more her liberating cry gets louder.

Since 1950 Frida Kahlo's physical condition began to seriously deteriorate,...

..and she has to go repeatedly to hospital.

In 1950 she was hospitalized on seven different occasions.

It was a very difficult time for her.

Gangrene set into four toes of her right foot,...

..and her leg had to be amputated.

In the spring of 1953,...

..it is clear to everybody that Frida is about to enter the last chapter of her life.

Possibly influenced by her physical situation,...

..a personal exhibition of her works...

..is organized at the Lola Alvarez Bravo Gallery, in Mexico City.

Her face looks like a mortuary mask,...

..with cheekbones piercing her pale skin,...

..and her unblinking eyes fixed upon every stare they come into contact with.

The artist may have been receiving the accolades of a lifetime,...

..but the woman was waiting upon her own untimely funeral.

August 1953.

It is certain that they are going to amputate my right leg.

Details I don't know much but the opinions are reliable.

I'm very, very worried.

But at the same time I feel it could be a relief.

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.

I hope the exit is joyful.

And I hope never to return.

On July 13th 1954 Frida Kahlo died.

The official cause of death was pulmonary embolism.

First the illness she suffered as a child,...

..according to what I read, and then the streetcar accident that pierced her,...

..that's agony,...

..but the pain she paints is the one that carries in her soul.

These are my feet, in Frida's tub.

I have a problem in my foot, ...

.."Fridita, please forgive me", because I laid down in her tub.

This is my foot after the surgery. That's me, I laid down and took a photo.

It's a self-portrait, but I think I did something wrong.

When I have surgery, I'll light a candle to Santa Frida, so she can cure me.

I discovered Frida Kahlo when I was about ten years old, reading a book.

I remember I felt confused, I thought "poor woman",...

..she must have suffered a lot, and she was my father's aunt.

But I think that I keep discovering Frida, we all keep discovering her.

Frida Kahlo was like a child, and in her house, with all those things.

She is playing with you, she is playing with the viewer, right?

She is leaving clues for you to find.

this is the part of myself I want people to see.

Before her departure, she picked up her brush for one last time...

..to write a short sentence.

"Viva la Vida".