“Unlocking the Past: Discover the Haunting Voice of Frida Kahlo in This Rarely Heard Recording”
“His high, dark, extremely intelligent and big eyes rarely hold still. They almost come out of their sockets because of their swollen and protuberant eyelids – like a toad’s. They allow his gaze to take in a much wider visual field, as if they were built especially for a painter of large spaces and crowds.”
The words were taken from an essay the artist wrote herself, titled Portrait of Diego, that paints a picture through Kahlo’s own words of her husband, famous muralist Diego Rivera. It was part of a 1949 exhibition catalogue at the Palace of Fine Arts celebrating 50 years of Rivera’s work.
The complete segment that aired on El Bachiller featured voices from a number of other prominent personalities, such as the voices of painter-writer Dr. Atl and Lupe Marín, who was the wife of poet Jorge Cuesta.
The sound library has approximately 1,300 recordings from the show, which they will continue to digitize with the hopes of possibly finding more recordings of Frida Kahlo’s voice.
While Frida Kahlo’s persona has endured the test of time, there was never documentation of her voice, though photographer Gisèle Freund described Kahlo’s voice as “melodious and warm.”
During her lifetime, Frida Kahlo used her distinct style of painting to explore social issues in Mexico, such as post-colonialism, class, and race. But the subject that she consistently drew back to was herself.
Kahlo famously depicted her own reflection in numerous self-portraits that expressed her internal struggles as an Indigenous artist, a lover, and someone with a disability.
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