Frida Kahlo’s secret revenge affair with Leon Trotsky
To get back at her much older husband for his most recent infidelity, Frida Kahlo’s odd choice of a lover was their new housemate, the even older and also married Leon Trotsky. It is a plot out of a French farce, soap opera, proper high-brow opera, or an episode of The Jerry Springer Show if he had Marxist Revolutionary Week.
The exiled 58-year-old Leon Trotsky and his second wife Natalia Sedova arrived in Tampico, Mexico on a heavily guarded Norwegian oil tanker on January 9, 1937. The muralist and dedicated Trotskyite Diego Rivera had lobbied the Mexican government to offer Trotsky political asylum. Diego, ill and hospitalized, could not be at the port to meet the Trotskys. Instead his young wife, surrealist artist Frida Kahlo, was at the dock with journalists, Communist Party members, and government officials. She accompanied the couple back to Coyoacán and the home she shared with Diego, La Casa Azul (The Blue House), where the Trotskys lived heavily protected and catered to for two years.
Still angry and hurt from discovering Diego’s affair with her beautiful younger sister Cristina, Frida lost no time in openly flirting with Trotsky, who must have been flattered as hell at the attention. That spring their emotional affair grew into a physical one. Some of Frida and Trotsky’s clandestine meetings took place at Cristina’s house, which Diego had probably bought for her, along with a suite of red leather furniture. Frida and and Trotsky spoke English in front of their spouses, whose grasp of the language was paltry to non-existent, in Natalia’s case. He sneaked love letters to Frida between the pages of books he loaned to her.
Rivera was, by all accounts, an unrepentant philanderer with the hypocritical tendency to randomly fly into jealous rage when Frida behaved similarly with other men during their stormy marriage. (Her affairs with women, like Josephine Baker, didn’t bother him.) Stephanie Mencimer wrote in Washington Monthly, “Legend has it that for American women traveling to Mexico, having sex with Rivera was considered as essential as visiting Tenochtitlan.”
Quote: Frank Cannon wrote in post #2Since these dopes were all Commie Pinkos, sleeping with others spouses shouldn't have mattered a bit. Frida was part of the collective after all.
one for all and all for one and all that...
******************* Christianity teaches to share what we have earned, the "cheerful giver" model. Christianity: It's mine but I choose to give away Socialism: What's yours should be mine
Quite interesting, Rev. Thank you for adding this. I also agree with Frank when he said, Since these dopes were all Commie Pinkos, sleeping with others spouses shouldn't have mattered a bit. To these people normal standards of morality are "bourgeoisie" values and they are above all that.
(2) I once read a report that one of the reasons Trotsky was murdered by Stalin was not just the rivalry that existed between the two but that Trotsky had agreed to testify before our Congress on the Soviet Union's espionage activities in the United States. Given that Trotsky was killed in 1940, a time when Americans were complacent about Communism and the New Deal was totally infiltrated by Soviet agents, this claim may be dubious, so I wonder if anyone else has heard of it and has proof of its truth.
After being attached to a number of actors, directors, and producers, this long-gestating biography of one of Mexico's most prominent, iconoclastic painters reaches the screen under the guiding hand of producer/star Salma Hayek. Hayek ages some 30 years onscreen as she charts Frida Kahlo's life from feisty schoolgirl to Diego Rivera protégée to world-renowned artist in her own right. Frida details Kahlo's affluent upbringing in Mexico City, and her nurturing relationship with her traditional mother (Patricia Reyes Spindola) and philosophical father (Roger Rees). Having already suffered the crippling effects of polio, Kahlo sustains further injuries when a city bus accident nearly ends her life. But in her bed-ridden state, the young artist produces dozens upon dozens of pieces; when she recovers, she presents them to the legendary -- and legendarily temperamental -- Rivera (Alfred Molina), who takes her under his wing as an artist, a political revolutionary, and, inevitably, a lover. But their relationship is fraught with trouble, as the philandering Rivera traverses the globe painting murals, and Kahlo languishes in obscurity, longing to make her mark on her own. Frida was directed by Julie Taymor, whose Broadway production of The Lion King won her international acclaim.
Never saw this, of course. Has anyone on here? I suspect it was a propaganda piece, a feminist rant that did not touch upon Frida or Rivera's Marxism, or her promiscuity (his, yeah). Typical Hollywood bs? Anyone know?
sorry Cincy, don't know anything about Frida. I'll go on record that I do like sex [but I try to keep it between my wife and I] Although that single eyebrow lady that @PzLdr was pointing out looks pretty inviting. Evidently Leon agreed!
******************* Christianity teaches to share what we have earned, the "cheerful giver" model. Christianity: It's mine but I choose to give away Socialism: What's yours should be mine
Quote: Rev wrote in post #1Frida Kahlo’s secret revenge affair with Leon Trotsky
Looks like this guy with the balloon was standing behind Mr. Trotsky...
******************* Christianity teaches to share what we have earned, the "cheerful giver" model. Christianity: It's mine but I choose to give away Socialism: What's yours should be mine