Becoming Frida Kahlo

-Let me tell you about a little girl born in Mexico.

She would grow up to be one of the most famous artists in the world.

We all recognize her face, and that look.

But who was she really?

And why is she more loved now, than ever before?

This daughter of the revolution lived no ordinary life, and hers is no easy tale to tell.

-Frida Kahlo was a rule-breaker.

-The way she broke taboos, the way she broke the norm was completely revolutionary and transgressive.

-She doesn't respect things that should be respected, like birth -- blood, miscarriages.

-She made no concessions about her art.

-She was strong and ambitious and answered to no one.

But she was also driven and tormented by love.

-She said, "I love Diego more than I love my own life."

-She would always come back to Diego Rivera, like an obsession.

An obsession that was painful.

-So why do we still idolize her, this mixed-up mess of contradictions?

And why can't we take our eyes off her?

-What people see in her is all that power of rebellion, irreverence.

-For people who are queer, for people who are brown, for people who are creative in different ways.

-She teaches us about identity.

Art was her superpower.

-In the end, I don't need her perfect.

She was genius.

[ Train whistle blows ] -Mamacita Linda, the route to San Francisco is just spectacular.

The train travels all along the coast.

I was delighted to see the sea for the first time.

[ Train whistle blows ] -When Frida first arrived in the U.S., she's 23, and Diego is 43.

She's been married a little over a year.

So when they arrive, yeah, they're newlyweds, on one level, but, it's not, you know, like, "Oh, everything is so blissful."

They've already gone through a lot.

But, you know, she had been wanting to come to San Francisco since she was a teenager.

And so this was a dream for her, you know, come true.

-I mean, arriving in San Francisco, even today, it's considered the New York of the West Coast, very upscale, very cosmopolitan, with theaters and promenades.

-This city is in a marvelous location.

There are neighborhoods for foreigners from every part of the world.

We live near Chinatown.

Imagine, there are 10,000 Chinese residents here.

They sell beautiful things in the stores -- handmade clothing and textiles made of the finest silks.

-She had to be dazzled by this glistening city.

Frida just loved seeing the Bay, Fisherman's Wharf.

She really thought -- was fascinated with the Italian fishermen, as she writes to her mother on a postcard.

You know, at that time, it was fish [chuckles] and -- and coffee smells.

-Diego hasn't started work yet painting the mural, so I'm going here and there with him all day, and we are very happy.

He's good to me, and he loves me, at least up to now, very much.

-It's Diego's world.

He's the famous artist, he is kind of at the height of his career.

She's just starting out.

She was mostly known as the little wife to the great, you know, maestro.

[ Chuckles ] -She's got a lot of heart, a lot of chutzpah.

But she's 23.

She had no friends, she's in a foreign country.

Segregationist signage that one would see -- no Mexicans, no dogs, no Negroes -- this was a common occurrence.

Frida must have felt a little bit -- felt a little bit as if she were a second-class citizen.

-Diego gave a talk yesterday at the ladies' club.

The gringos are so dull here that any foolishness attracts their attention.

They just stand there, with their mouths gaping, when they see my jade necklaces.

They size me up as if I was some kind of rare beast.

-Never is Frida more Mexican than when she's in the U.S. -She brought this trunk, actually, full of Mexican clothes and the jewelry and everything.

She wants to distinguish herself from the Americans, from the gringas.

She hates their style.

She says they're dull and they're scarecrows.

-She develops her persona and her style.

She transforms herself.

-People are really taken with her because, you know, there's really nobody in San Francisco who's dressed like this, and so there are stories, you know, about them walking down the street, in North Beach and people stopping, and kind of commenting, you know, on what she's wearing.

And she loves it.

-All the photographers come to see Diego Rivera, and they find this beautiful, beautiful flamboyant woman.

-The photographers, they're going wild over her.

-It was a collaboration, and you can see it.

She knows how to compose herself and strike a pose and craft the way she was looking.

She was never an object.

She always had agency.

-Diego loved the United States.

So I think that the idea of Diego to go to the United States with his murals is, "I'm gonna be the king of the most important country of the world."

-Diego is happy to be painting here.

He has a lot of subject matter to sketch and draw.

You know how he loves machines, factories, and everything like that.

-Rivera is invited to paint at the Stock Exchange, and he made plans to have this marvelous mural.

-As you know, in his heart, Diego was a communist.

He believed in equality.

Yet he paints this mural in a building that is a monument to capitalism.

-Yes, he's kind of mild in his criticism in the Stock Exchange.

Why?

Because he was amazed at what he saw.

You're standing in this mine of gold.

We have oil, we have minerals, we have industry.

So he becomes seduced by the U.S., no?

-Yesterday, Diego gave a conference.

A large crowd of people attended, and everybody congratulated him.

He's el grand... here in San Francisco.

They don't even let the poor fellow go to the bathroom in peace.

-Frida sees that Diego was treated as a cultural hero, no?

This must have been very impressive for Frida.

This thing about becoming an artist is a serious issue.

You can make a living.

You can be respected.

You can be heard.

-I've been painting quite a lot, almost all day.

I've made six pictures, and everyone has liked them very much.

I think this might be the only opportunity I have to meet people who, perhaps, in the future, might be interested in buying my paintings.

-She clearly had ambitions.

She's really, I think, flourishing.

-Diego, he was proud, of her work, no?

He was there to support Frida.

-Diego wants me to have an exhibition here.

It's an opportunity for me because I can sell something.

It would be more than silly for me to pass up on this chance.

Don't you agree?

-So, Diego wanted to find a woman to represent California.

This woman, she becomes the earth mother of the mural.

She's the focus of it.

He meets the tennis star Helen Wills Moody.

She is a star.

She was just on the cover of famous magazines, she'd won Wimbledon, she was, you know, really riding this wave, and he really is taken with her.

He refers to her as having the fine, chiseled features of a Greek statue.

She's spending all this time with Diego.

She's posing nude.

Helen had a convertible, and they would be seen driving on the hills of San Francisco.

And, you know, Diego wouldn't come home.

I think, you know, Frida knew what was going on.

Diego wasn't just unfaithful, he could be quite cruel.

You know, he could really throw these affairs in her face.

He's creating this huge image of her on this wall, and she's exactly the opposite of Frida.

-Mamacita Linda, I just want to leave this place.

These dumb gringos really annoy me now.

I am painting, and I hope I can do the exhibition.

-Frida was not happy in the U.S., but this doesn't mean she didn't realize what you could achieve.

-A lot of people look at this painting and they think that Frida is showing herself as "the little wife" to the great, you know, maestro.

[ Chuckles ] But she is making herself stand out.

What is she wearing?

This beautiful red rebozo.

I mean, it just ignites this painting.

At the top of the painting, she has included a ribbon, and it says she's painted it for Albert Bender, Albert Bender who's one of the most important art patrons of the San Francisco Bay Area.

His business was insurance, but he loved art.

Frida knew exactly what she was doing.

If she had just done a self-portrait, I don't think, at that time, it would have had the same interest for people wanting to show it throughout the U.S. because they didn't know who Frida Kahlo was.

But if they say, "Oh, yeah, here's this famous Diego Rivera.

We know him.

Oh, and there's his wife, Frida.

Oh.

Oh, and she made the painting!

Oh, how interesting!"

She's very canny.

[ Chuckles ] And you know what?

It worked, because Albert Bender did loan it to this exhibition, at the Palace of the Legion of Honor.

It ended up getting discussed in the Oakland Tribune, and it was actually featured as the image for this article.

-It is in San Francisco where Frida Kahlo shows professionally as an artist the first time.

So, the year and a half she's in San Francisco, she does achieve something important for her.

"I am becoming an artist, a professional artist, an artist with my own voice.

All my hard work will take me somewhere."

[ Ship horn blares ] -Diego Rivera is a very ambitious artist.

So if he is going to be painting large-scale murals, he needs power-player patrons.

-Rockefeller was the richest man ever existed on Earth.

Nobody else ever has put so many money in one hand, ever.

How it was possible that he was doing murals to Rockefeller?

Being a communist and work for Rockefeller, if you can think of the worst thing in life, was Rockefeller.

The Rockefeller family were one of the largest art patrons, and they were the force behind the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

Abby Rockefeller, she commissioned Diego and was comfortable with the communist element in his persona, in his history, in his politics, and in his art.

-So, she seemed to be rather radical for her position in life.

And Frida really liked Abby Rockefeller.

They seemed to get along well.

-Modern art was brand-new in the United States, so for him to be included in a group of modern artists, like Picasso and Matisse, his career is about to, uh...go viral.

[ Laughter ] [ Projector whirring ] -Diego is painting at The Museum of Modern Art.

After working all day, he has to get dressed up in a tuxedo and go out to dine.

Everyone has received us very well.

But no matter what, one just can't enter into this class of society.

Although the gringas I've met here are good people, I don't feel that comfortable with them.

And besides, I don't really enjoy friendships that much.

-"November 16, 1931.

New York City.

Met Frida and Diego at this banquet that was held in his honor.

I got so excited about Rivera, I spoke for the entire evening.

I asked Rivera if I could help him with his huge frescos, and to my surprise, he said sure."

These are just a few diaries of my grandmother.

My grandmother, Lucienne Bloch, was a single woman, 22 years old, aspiring artist.

After discussing fresco for hours at this banquet, Frida walked up to my grandmother, and she said, "I hate you."

She thought she was flirting with her husband, Diego.

Then my grandmother explained, "I have no signs at all to ever make it for your husband," and explained that she was raised in a household, where her father always had girlfriends.

My grandmother knew exactly what Frida was going through, but she said that she would never, ever do that to Frida.

And that was the beginning of their friendship.

-Mamacita Linda, we're living in a very good hotel, with every comfort, the Barbizon Plaza Hotel.

The hotel is good but very expensive.

It's a block away from Fifth Avenue, where all the shameless, super-rich ricachones live.

-"Went to see Frida at her Hotel Barbizon Plaza, which she can't stand, since the elevator boys snub her, because they can see she is no rich person.

The other day, she called one of them a son of a bitch."

They're snubbing her.

They think she's just a poor pauper.

She's a Mexican, she's wearing a long skirt, she's not fancy.

So, and elevator boys are kind of like, "Pfft.

Get your own bag."

-The Barbizon Hotel was situated at the heart of one of the most expensive neighborhoods in Manhattan.

Saks Fifth Avenue, Bergdorf Goodman, is the place where nobody can afford to shop.

The Barbizon Hotel overlooks this beautiful, relatively young park that is normally breathtaking.

But at that time... When they got to San Francisco, the Great Depression hadn't really taken hold of the country yet.

By the time they got to New York in 1931, where wealth and poverty have routinely lived side by side, now they were literally on top of each other.

That had to be very disturbing for both of them.

-New York is a Babylon.

There is so much wealth and such misery at the same time that it seems unbelievable that people can bear such a difference in classes.

There are millions of people without work and without food and homeless, and they don't have even a shimmer of hope.

-People were starving everywhere.

There were protests.

And the violence against labor union was severe.

-What Frida realizes when she's here is that this idea that the United States is kind of this land of the free, this place where, no matter who you are, you can rise up the ladder and you can make it as long as you work hard, what she's discovering is that a lot of those ideals are myths.

-What's interesting in the MOMA exhibition is that, because the Depression has gotten worse, that there is a lot more room for critiques of capitalism.

Diego Rivera, he essentially does a series of frescos, the central piece, where you have these three different layers, you have the tremendous prosperity of New York City, even in the middle of a Depression, and then underneath that, is a flop house.

You have lots of unemployed, their frozen assets, its human capital, that's not being put to work.

And then in the bottom level, you have another set of frozen assets, and that is a very secure vault where rich capitalists are keeping their money.

It is a bold thing to do, and I think this was a pot shot of sorts that the Rockefellers were willing to take.

This fresco is his most overt critique of U.S. capitalism up until that point.

And he gets away with it.

Right?

He's a star.

-One would give a right arm to be invited to a Museum of Modern Art opening.

Because of the people you're rubbing elbows with, the elites of New York, like the Astors and the Whitneys.

-Frida was surrounded by well-known people like actors Paul Roebson, and Edward G. Robinson.

You also have Alfred Stieglitz, the gallery owner and photographer, and his wife, Georgia O'Keeffe, the painter.

Frida meets Georgia O'Keeffe, and, yeah, they seem to -- they seem to hit it off.

You know, they're at really different places in their careers.

You know, I mean Georgia O'Keeffe is very well known at this point.

In terms of women artists, she's one of the most well-known, which, for Frida, would have been important.

Right?

Here's a role model, somebody who made it as a professional artist.

She sees that it's possible for a woman artist to become successful.

She really likes Georgia, and there's this connection.

They did have something more than just a friendship.

-Frida Kahlo and Georgia O'Keeffe became friends.

They had a small affair.

They had a connection on a very personal level.

But nobody could have substituted what Rivera meant for Kahlo.

-Winter here is the saddest thing.

The sky is the color of a fly's wing, and the streets are full of melting snow.

I'm completely disillusioned with the famous United States.

Everything is just for appearances.

But underneath it all is nothing but crap.

Diego feels more or less the same.

He has developed a distaste for this country.

Unfortunately, he has to work, so we're going to Detroit.

Diego has a crazy dream of painting the steel industry there.

Diego Rivera, he is a man of two minds, as many of us are.

You know, we want to earn a living, we want to improve our station in life.

We also understand, as workers, what that means.

So it's a tightrope to navigate.

-The Fords, another wealthy American family, who made their millions producing cars.

Ford, he's making his living by overworking the workers, and with the Depression, nobody's buying cars, so you have to lay people off.

-These workers don't have unemployment benefits.

They're just laid off, and that's -- that's it.

[ Gunfire ] [ Gunfire ] -Violence, confrontations, four deaths, many people injured.

It's a very complex moment that Diego and Frida arrive in.

The question is, will he convey this in the mural?

-Obviously, Frida, yeah, she was quite disturbed that, "Okay.

Here's your patron, this man who just, you know, ordered these peaceful protestors to be killed."

-There is never the question of refusing to paint this mural.

Rivera has left his politics, but I think, ultimately, they're secondary to his desire to paint, right?

I mean, that's his real passion.

There is something, you know, very uncomfortable about it.

And then there's something extraordinary about what he paints.

-He is deliberately creating a mural that glorifies working men in a modern factory setting.

That had to be deliberate slap in the face to Ford.

He thinks that the revolution is going to occur by marrying the technology of the United States with the sort of communist philosophy of, you know, emphasis on workers' rights.

-These workers on the assembly line, they're the real creators of a utopian future.

-The city seems to me like a shabby old village.

I don't like it at all.

The industrial part of Detroit is really the most interesting.

The rest is, as in all of the United States, ugly and stupid.

But Diego is working very happily here, like a child with a new toy.

-She starts actually going to a studio that was set up for her at the Detroit Institute of Arts.

While Diego's creating in the courtyard, she's creating in her studio.

-A little bit about what she thought about Detroit comes out in "Self-Portrait on the Borderline," where she's standing on a sort of pedestal in a very pretty pink dress, very uncharacteristic, not a Tijuana dress.

She's in a little fluffy pink dress.

One side in the background is Mexico, the United States on the right.

The United States is awful.

It's got smoke stacks besmirching the sky.

-For Frida, this is little more of a critique.

You see the American flag in the smoke of Ford Industry.

She's making a statement about the United States and the power of somebody like Ford Industries.

You know, that somebody like Henry Ford, this man who just, you know, ordered these peaceful protestors to be killed, if he can be a hero in the United States, the land of the free, what does that mean?

-When Diego's working full-time on the mural, Frida's just homesick.

"What am I doing all by myself in this Detroit apartment, in a place I don't know, without any friends?"

And then, my grandmother comes along, and Frida said, "Don't leave.

Just stay with us for a while.

Stay with me."

"June 11, 1932, Detroit.

My God, I never wrote of Frida's baby.

It has been the biggest subject in everyone's minds since I'm here."

-I am two months pregnant.

I want to vomit all the time, and I am fed up.

I get tired from everything since my spine hurts.

At this moment, the situation for me is rather difficult, since poor little Diego, no matter how much he wants to take care of me, he cannot.

So I will not count on him for anything.

I do not know whether it would be good or not to have a child.

-He didn't want any kids.

He said, "If you had a baby, and I have a commission, wherever that is, way out of Mexico, you remain here, with the baby.

There's no way we can take the baby around wherever I am going, so you decide.

You decide.

I cannot lead the type of life that I want with babies.

I can take you with me, whenever you want, but that's it."

-I think what I would say is, she felt really conflicted.

I think, yes, a part of her very much wanted to have a child.

-"Tuesday, July 5, 1932.

Detroit.

Sunday evening, Frida was so blue and menstruating, so went to bed, and the doctor came and told her, as usual, that it was nothing.

In the night, I heard the worst cries of despair, but thinking that Diego would call me if could help, I only dozed and had nightmares.

At 5: 00, Diego rushes in the room, all disheveled and pale, and asks me to call the doctor up.

They came at 6: 00 with ambulance and got her in the agonies of birth pain out of the pools of blood she had made and over the huge clots of blood she kept losing.

She looked so tiny, 12 years old, her tresses wet with tears."

-Bad news.

Yesterday, I miscarried without apparent reason.

It's all over.

-"Went to visit Frida today.

I brought her a fake telegram from Henry Ford.

She laughed and, at the same instant, cried more and more at the idea of not being able to have kids."

-The fetus did not take form, since he came out all disintegrated, in spite of my being already 3 1/2 months pregnant.

Who knows what the devil is going on inside of me.

I had such hope to have a little Dieguito.

-This is...

This is heartbreaking, uh... Small in size, but... just completely overwhelming.

She is broken.

She almost died here.

She calls it "The Lost Desire."

She doesn't call it Henry Ford Hospital the first time she shows it.

Even if you're ambivalent about having a child, if you lose a pregnancy... it's a loss.

Lying in her hospital bed, floating in a vast empty plane, and way in the distance is the Rouge plant, where Rivera was.

A sense of solitude is amplified.

She's -- It's as though, with Frida Kahlo, pain drove her to paint.

It's a woman not shown from a man's perspective but from the perspective of her own self.

That is incredibly personal.

-August 1932.

We watched eclipse from the museum roof.

Frida was cross, and so I hardly spoke to her.

Frida working hard, but she was like the wildest animal when anyone came into the studio.

She would be so cross, she would swear each time a fly came settling on her arm.

September 1932.

During lunch, there came a telegram for Frida.

I said how I hated the things, since they generally always had bad news.

This one did.

Her ma is very sick in Mexico.

Frida knows that she's got to rush to Mexico immediately, and Diego says, "You need to go with her."

[ Train whistle blows ] My grandmother had her little Brownie box camera.

You can tell she's just so melancholy when you know what she's just experienced within the last month.

Sadness.

You can see sadness.

-"Friday, September 16, 1932.

Mexico.

Went to Coyoacan with Frida.

Her ma is in awful shape and looks deadly pale.

Her pa is a dear, very fussy, deaf and shabby.

Worry hangs on the whole house."

Her mother is sent to the hospital to have gallstones removed, and then, she can't withstand -- Like 72 hours after, she passes away.

-Your mother is your root.

No matter what kind of relationship you have with her, life changes when your mother is gone, and that is something all of us have learned.

Because no matter when your mother dies, it's always premature.

You're never prepared.

-If you can think about the losses she's endured in just a few months.

Loses her child, and then, her mother dies.

Trauma is something that can't be remembered and can't be forgotten, because it's so painful.

You can't find the words to express it.

It's unsayable.

Frida Kahlo is a woman who can paint something that has been almost impossible to communicate in the past.

No one ever, ever thought that such experiences were worthy of representation.

-I adore you, my Diego.

I feel I have left my child alone and that he needs me.

I can't live without you, my darling little child.

Everything seems horrible to me without you.

I am more in love with you than ever, and every day, more and more.

I send you all my love.

Your nia chiquitita.

-I know that my grandmother talks about, when they get back, that he looked very thin.

She could barely recognize him, but that the work that he had done was incredible.

-Diego adds a child to his mural.

I think that, you know, he was affected by the trauma of the miscarriage, as well, yeah.

I think he did care.

I think he was really -- I think Diego was really afraid that Frida was going to die.

-"Went to see Frida today.

She seemed so glad to see us and said she's been sometimes so lonely in the afternoons that she would just cry."

"We passed all afternoon in a movie to see the gruesome film 'Frankenstein,' which Frida wanted to see again.

It was the kind of thing to joke about..." -It's alive!

-"...so exaggerated was the gloominess.

Then went to a Spanish restaurant and had a kind of strong stuff like vodka, which one drinks with lemon and salt.

We acted most crazy and laughed a lot together."

I do think it's pretty nice, yeah, that they got to hang out and just be normal together.

-The Rockefeller Center is a money-making capitalist dream come true.

Taller than almost any other buildings in the country, 70 floors of offices.

You know, TV, film studios, retail shops, there is a skating rink.

It is impressive.

The mural shows a man at the center standing over kind of a glass orb.

With options.

On his right, he can opt for an orderly communist world.

On the other side of the mural is the decadent capitalist world, where babies are crawling around naked, unattended, where people are drinking alcohol.

-The repression of striking workers, the use of gas masks.

So far, you know, provocative, but okay.

And then, he decides, if he's gotten this far, he can go one step further.

[ Laughs ] He inserts Lenin in the mural.

Lenin is the communist Russian leader who ousts the Tsars, who were the Rockefellers of Russia, in a very aggressive way, and converts Russia into a country where, theoretically, wealth is going to be shared equally, and there will be no super rich and no extremely poor.

So this man is the anti-Christ to wealthy America.

-I think he has something to prove.

I mean, in some ways, he more than makes up for not taking a stand in Detroit.

-He was asked to remove the portrait of Lenin, but Diego Rivera, a card-carrying communist, absolutely refuses to alter his mural.

As a result, a disaster occurs.

-"Frida told me not to lose a minute and make photos of the fresco, since things rash might happen anytime now."

[ Flash bulb pops ] "I got up at 7:00 and went to Rockefeller Center to make photos, though it was absolutely forbidden.

They couldn't possibly do anything to such a tremendous piece of artwork."

And she slips her camera out at one point.

She doesn't put it up to her face, but she puts it right here and she just snaps some photographs, as much as she can.

And these are the only existing photographs.

"Four armed guards walked into the lobby.

I saw them guarding the gates, covering every glass space with tarpaulin so no one would know what was happening from outside.

I was so furious, my heart almost burst.

We were the last out.

The rest is in the papers."

Workers for the Rockefellers came in the wee hours with pickaxes and hacked it off the wall.

-Of course, it puts him at the center of a controversy and on the front pages of newspapers.

-You can not destroy a 40-foot work of art by one of the most renowned artists in the world.

But what can you do?

It's destroyed.

You can't fix it now.

Imagine all of this happening for the young Frida Kahlo in her early 20s.

-I think she was fed up with the situation.

She felt powerless.

She realizes how important he is.

But then, when they're censored, this same system can destroy you if you don't follow the rules.

She said, "What are we doing here?

If they don't appreciate who you are, let's go back."

-So, when they get back to Mexico, he -- I think he's having a kind of existential crisis, because it's like, "Okay.

Well, what do I do now?"

He's on top of the world, and then everything falls apart.

-He was grumpy and miserable.

He was furious at Frida for making him go back to Mexico.

-It wasn't her doing.

it was his own doing that forced him to go back to Mexico.

-They were not getting along at all.

-So, he returns to the National Palace, and he paints the last wall.

It sort of completes the staircase mural that he starts in 1929.

In that last wall, "The Present and Future of Mexico," he paints this sort of radical vision of Mexico sort of consumed in class confrontation.

And he paints Frida and her sister right next to each other.

-Mi abuela Cristina era la hermana menor de Frida.

La relacin entre ellas desde nias siempre fue muy, muy cercana.

Y en un momento dado, Frida propone a Diego: "Deberas de contratar a mi hermana como asistente".

-Cristina has left her husband, so, you know, she kind of becomes a part of their world.

They take her in to help her out.

-Frida is portrayed as a teacher.

Sitting right next to her is Cristina, presented in a much more sensual way.

-Mi abuela era bellsima.

Era muy distinta a Frida.

O sea, Frida y mi abuela tenan bellezas distintas.

Eso seguramente hace que Diego se fije en Cristina.

He's representing Frida along with her sister at the same time that he's sleeping with her sister.

-It was completely devastating.

-This, for Frida, was a treason.

-She cut her hair off.

She cut off her long hair, and he loved her long hair.

-She was mad as hell.

-It was impossible for Frida to prevent that Rivera couldn't have affairs with other women.

As long as this woman meant nothing to him, she was safe.

She was the principal woman in his life.

She was the partner, she was the wife, she was the friend, and the lover.

-Mira.

No s exactamente cmo se dio la situacin, pero te puedo decir que Diego Rivera era un seductor.

O sea -- No, a l le gustaba seducir.

Le gustaba sentir que las mujeres le hacan caso.

Frida wrote, "I thought this was nothing, and now I realize how wrong I am."

Rivera was not only playing with Cristina, he was thinking of having something more stable.

He helped Cristina to find a place where they can meet.

This was not something that was over a couple of weeks later.

So it becomes something different.

What does he want?

To have them both at the same time.

-For the first time in her life, Cristina dreamt of being the wife of Diego Rivera and enjoying the place that her sister had, like being introduced to wonderful people and receiving all kinds of attentions.

The threesome, it's both ways -- your husband and your -- not only your sister, your -- your best friend, your companion, your -- your all.

[ Chuckles ] It was terrible.

That is the the reason of painting "Unos Cuantos Piquetitos!"

-It just shows her absolute rage and misery at that time.

She said, "I had to paint it because I felt murdered by life."

-Her body torn apart through stabbing and full of blood.

Woman as a sexual object, used and thrown away.

Just imagine this in the 1930s in Mexico.

-It's about her pain, but I think it's about the pain that women endure, you know, violence committed against women.

-She doesn't know where she's standing anymore with Diego.

The affair made her rethink, what was Rivera capable of?

Was he selfish enough to destroy everything they had?

-Consumed by pain and passion, Frida's art imitates life.

-I believe the painting is a message for Rivera.

-Despite it all... -Everything is falling apart.

-...she continues to paint.

The final installment of "Becoming Frida Kahlo."

-Whoever opens a door or a window opens it for everybody.

And Frida Kahlo opened windows.