Fig. 1. Frida Kahlo, My Grandtparents, My Parents and I (Family Tree). 1936, Oil and tempera on metal panel, 12 1/8" x 13 5/8". Collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Allan Roos, M.D., and B. Mathieu Roos.

Jewish Roots

That Kahlo's father, Wilhelm Kahlo, was a Jew of Hungarian-German descent who emigrated to Mexico at the turn of the nineteenth century is a well-known fact never denied by the artist herself.⁷ Thus far, Kahlo's relationship to Judaism has been reduced to two amusing anecdotes, which attest both to the artist's casual acknowledgement of her Jewish roots and to her tendency to do so precisely when she felt that Jews were being persecuted or victimized. One incident occurred during a well-attended dinner party at the residence of Henry Ford. As the guests were sitting around the table, Kahlo is reported to have waited for a break in the conversation in order to publicly ask the host, a known anti-Semite, in mock­ innocence: "Mr. Ford, are you Jewish?"⁸

The second incident took place at the Wardell Hotel where Kahlo and Rivera were residing during their Detroit sojourn.⁹ After discovering that the hotel barred Jews from its premises, both artists declared that they had "Jewish blood" and threatened to leave at once. The hotel management had no choice but to change the discriminatory regulations.¹⁰

Another demonstration of Kahlo's awareness of the Jewish problem, particularly in the 1930s, was her support for an exhibition of portraits of Jews by Lionel Reiss which took place in New York City in 1933. The stated purpose of this show was to emphatically refute Nazi racial theories pertaining to the supposed inferiority of Jews. The endorsement of Kahlo and her husband is documented by a photograph of the couple attending the opening of the show.¹¹

To be sure, neither Kahlo nor her father ever were practicing Jews. In fact, shortly before her death the artist wrote in her journal that, as a dedicated communist, she "rejects all religions."¹² Yet this ide­ological statement notwithstanding, a close look at her art reveals that Kahlo's sense of religiosity and spirituality was much more complex.¹³

In the present context, a brief review of several as­pects of the artist's relationship to her Jewish heritage will suffice. Like many other twentieth century Mex­ican artists, Kahlo embraced "Mexicanidad" and, ac­cordingly, integrated non-European, Mexican motifs into her art and life. Her espousal of pre-Columbian "idols" and popular Mexican religious art is usually viewed as a non-religious, political statement of na­tional commitment.¹⁴

The artist's use of Christian symbols has been variously interpreted by those close to her and by scholars. As Kahlo's youthful letters reveal, her early Catholic upbringing, under the stern tutelage of her devout mother, clearly did not subside even when she was a teenager.¹⁵ Isolda Piñedo Kahlo, the artist's niece, insists that even as an adult Kahlo remained "basically, underneath the Communist rhetoric, al­ways Catholic. "¹⁶

In his study of Kahlo's 1937 painting Memory, Salomon Grimberg offers a slightly different view of this issue. A psychiatrist by profession, Grimberg stresses the connection between early childhood beliefs and their imprint on the adult's psyche and argues that Kahlo's use of Christian symbols exposes that, her rational view of herself as an atheist notwithstanding, her deep internal feeling for Catholicism never totally subsided.¹⁷

Kahlo's Judaism is a different story. In the strict sense of Jewish law Frida Kahlo was not Jewish, as her mother was not a Jew.¹⁸ However, according to the laws that dominated European society during the artist's adult life - the racist laws of Nazism - Kahlo certainly was Jewish. She was well aware of the fact that, had she been living in various parts of Europe during the 1930s and 1940s, she too would have been considered a member of the Jewish faith and as such would have shared the "Jewish fate" as well. Many of Kahlo's Jewish friends report that the artist often spoke of herself as "half-Jewish." After Hitler's rise to power, Kahlo is reported to have been deeply concerned not only about Nazism in general, but specifically about her Jewish relatives who apparently still resided in the vicinity of Baden-Baden.¹⁹

Indeed, although far removed from practicing Ju­daism, evidence points to the fact that Kahlo was interested in her Jewish roots and viewed them as part of her "genealogical identity." Traces of this covert identity may be found in at least two major paintings by the artist.

Taken From:

THE HIDDEN FRIDA

Frida Kahlo is not Our Hero, Rufino Tamayo is!

Rufino Tamayo (1899-1991) was a Zapotecan Indian born in the Mexican state of Oaxaca. He moved to México City where he attended the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plasticas "San Carlos." Tamayo was exposed to the cultural wealth of pre-Colombian México as he worked as a draftsman at the Museo Nacional de Arqueologia. While his contemporaries Siqueiros, Rivera and Orozco were advocating art with a message, often political, Tamayo's work focused on plastic forms integrated with a masterful use of colors and textures.

The Adani Gallery: Rufino Tamayo

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