Being Frida

With London’s V&A about to open a major retrospective on Frida Kahlo, Marianna Cerini seeks the essence and legacy of the influential Mexican artist and feminist icon

- Marianna Cerini

Mexico City’s Blue House, the home Frida Kahlo shared with her muralist husband, Diego Rivera, is a moving celebration of the life and work of the influential Mexican, one of the most acclaimed artists and feminist trailblazers of the 20th century. Kahlo’s personal belongings lie seemingly untouched in the rooms in which she lived her creative, tumultuous and all-too-short life. Downstairs, her wardrobe is on display behind glass cabinets. There are colourful, bright dresses and sweeping, full-circle skirts, maxi shawls in boisterous prints, and necklaces inspired by Mexican folk craft. And there are more sombre items: body casts and corsets, which Kahlo had to wear for the rest of her life after a near-fatal bus crash left her heavily debilitated when she was 18, and a prosthetic leg she decorated with an embroidered red lace-up boot and a bell, which Kahlo had to use after losing her leg to gangrene in 1953.