End of the Vodka – Mexico Locations
Frida Kahlo and Mexico
Oscar de Muriel is in BookTrail Towers today…………
He has brought a story about the iconic Friday Kahlo and has even more stories to tell….
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Though Frida Kahlo is proudly and indelibly associated with Mexico, it is fair to say that some of the most transformative moments in her life took place in two rather unlikely places – New York and Paris.
Coyoacán and the Frida Kahlo museum
Frida was indeed born in the then upcoming neighborhood of Coyoacán (place of coyotes in old nahuatl), in 1907 (though she would later claim she was 3 years younger…).
The area is now a vibrant, bohemian quarter. It doesn’t feel like you are in one of the biggest metropolis of the world, but in a buoyant town from many decades ago.
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Cobbled streets, brightly coloured colonial houses, museums, one of the most famous ice cream shops in the country, cafes and little eateries where you can just see the world go by. La crème de la crème of Mexican culture live or have lived there, including our very own Nobel prize of literature Octavio Paz.
Coyoacán already had its small town feel back when Frida Kahlo was growing up. Even more so as it wasn’t officially part of the city. Back then you had to take a tram or drive through a few miles of untouched countryside to get to “the city”.
Coyoacán area:
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Detroit and New York must have felt like a different planet to Frida. She was dragged to the former when her husband, the towering and larger than life (figuratively and literally!) Diego Rivera, was hired by the Fords to paint at least a dozen murals for the city. Frida complained bitterly about the place, the culture, the food and the fact that she couldn’t find tequila anywhere (true story!).
New York, some years later, was an entirely different experience. By then Frida was in the process of divorcing Diego, after he cheated on her with her own sister (again, true story!). Frida travelled solo for her very first art exhibit, and by then she was a brand new person.
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That was her moment of liberation. She had at least half a dozen affairs in New York (that we know of) and dined and drank with the cultural elite. It was then that she realized she could become an artist on her own right – Frida Kahlo and not simply Mrs Rivera.
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From there she sailed off straight to Paris for another solo exhibit, which in the end didn’t happen. In fact there were many mishaps in Paris. Frida only sold one painting there, which is now a big deal at the Centre Pompidou, but the experience nonetheless transformed her and her art forever.
We know that she visited the Louvre, and I can picture her walking by the Da Vincis, the Vermeers and the Caravaggios, and thinking – yeah, I need to up my game if I want to make it as an artist.
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Her painting took a decisive turn after this grand tour. Though we can see her budding style in previous paintings, it is now that the Frida we know was truly born – the bold self-portraits, her striking stare and the rich, detailed backgrounds and traditional frocks.
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Sadly her golden age of painting was short lived. By this point her health was in evident decline, relying on morphine and other “remedies” to ease chronic pains, so her art soon suffered. She had to re-marry Diego Rivera.
Say what you want about the man, but he proposed a platonic marriage so that Frida would not be left destitute if he died first, and it was at this point that he had built the now famous studio at Frida’s Casa Azul, airy and flooded with light throughout the day. From there Frida produced some of her most famous self-portraits, often using the plants in her garden – philodendrons and birds of paradise – as models.
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The house has been lovingly preserved as she left it. Her paintbrushes, palettes, books, hand decorated box files, it is all there, along with her embroidered Tehuana skirts, body casts and her doll houses.
Even Frida’s ashes are still in her old bedroom, resting in a clay urn shaped as a frog. Her nickname for Diego was “my toad-frog”. A touching testimony of their complicated, contradictory, but ultimately enduring love.
As the old kids used to say in Facebook – it’s complicated.
Thanks Oscar! © Oscar de Muriel, 2026
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