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Kahlo's father, Wilhelm, was an eighteen-year-old student at Nuremberg University when two events changed his life. As a result of a fall, he began to suffer from epileptic seizures and, at about the same time, his mother died and his father remarried. Following the remarriage, young Wilhelm immigrated to Mexico. In his new country, Wilhelm – or Guillermo, as he renamed himself – became a professional photographer whose magnum opus was the documentation of Mexico's architectural heritage. He was also an amateur painter. |
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| Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) Portrait of My Father, 1951 (click images for more) |
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Frida was very close to her father since childhood. During her bout with polio at age six, her father became the primary caregiver who nursed her back to health. She identified with him on many different levels. Like him, she was ill most of her life. Like him, she was a visual artist. From the beginning, two conflicting forces clashed within the daughter: her deliberate commitment to Mexicanidad, and her deep emotional bond and profound empathy for Herr Kahlo, as she called her father in jest, stressing his German origins and her own identity as an immigrant's daughter. |
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