It is time for rebirth. Between announced reforms and huge economic resources to be used to re-establish a country that will be different and, hopefully, better. But we are ready to “remove the mask” and find a smile again to start again as if nothing had ever happened
The variants and the summer, which has just begun, is already undermined by new health uncertainties. Even if vaccinated, buffered and provided with a green pass, as experts say, behaviors of responsible prudence and awareness of the risks are required.
After the deprivation of hugs, the suspension of relationships and projects, the perception of time also seems to have changed. Slower and more mysterious than it is per se. Born of an unknown virus, it upsets and confuses us.
How much time has passed, in our most intimate feeling
And what time awaits us to overcome the anxieties and that “fatigue from Covid” which, together with habits, has sharpened indifference, extinguished enthusiasm and desires
The effectiveness of the vaccination plan has removed the contagion but not the fear. In the frailty of sociality and affections, the fear of a world to be reinvented thus reveals the danger of perhaps more ancient and profound suffering.
For philosophers, the problem of time raises constant questions about our identity and the flow of existence. And what remains in our memory, after the trauma suffered
But time and also the hope of what we will be. So, let us listen to the heart and savor, with optimism, the dreams of the future to come!
The story of Frida Kahlo, which transforms suffering into love for life represented by the beauty of art, perhaps, can teach us something. Death and life seen in a continuous mirroring, with the power of feeling that defeats death.
Frida was born on 6 July 1907 and died, at the age of 47, on 13 July 1954. We remember her as the iconic artist of female themes. Symbol of independence, non-conformism, determination, resilience and courage of women.
Frida, the elegant and melancholy woman, with a proud look that is always straight, accentuated by thick eyebrows designed like bird’s wings.
The woman who “lived by dying”, as it was said of her, struck by polio at the age of six, or, for others, suffering from a severe deformation of the vertebrae. “Pata de Palo” (wooden leg), derided by her peers. And then, the victim of a very serious accident, in the tram, forced to undergo about thirty surgeries and, at the age of 18, a very long period of immobility. A four-poster bed equipped with a mirror on the ceiling to continue the painting. A production of 55 self-portraits, over a third of her paintings.
Her works are the symbol of the pain of the body and soul through a bold and never victimistic representation and, as a convinced communist, also of the suffering of society. Fears and anxieties represented in a strong way by the artist, in a constant comparison with the image of extraordinary courage of the woman.
A contrast that becomes a metaphor of the fragility of existence and universal suffering, touching deep chords and transforming itself into a passionate attachment to life. It is Frida’s message for a humanity today lost.
Her life has been a constant challenge. “I’m not sick. I’m broken. But I’m happy, as long as I can paint, ”she said.
His painting intimates, restores dignity to a tortured body threatened daily by the “pelona” (death). There is the narration of emotions, feelings and moods, in the most significant moments of her difficult life. But the look, the bright colors, the jewels represented in her paintings are a hymn to life.
Love letters and painting are the diary of daily suffering but also of amorous passion and eroticism.
A slow and demanding path with a therapeutic value. “They thought I was a surrealist, but I wasn’t. I’ve never painted dreams. I painted my reality, ”she explained.
In August 1929, the marriage with Diego Rivera, a well-known mural artist, storyteller and don Juan, then the divorce (1939) and then married again the following year.
A tormented and unconventional bond, always alive and deep, even between mutual betrayals and oddities. Until Frida’s death. The unrealizable desire for motherhood and three abortions.
“I have had two serious accidents in my life. The first was when a tram knocked me out, the other was Diego ”, said Frida Kahlo speaking of her about her great love for Rivera, to whom I dedicate letters and love phrases. “I love you more than my own skin”, she wrote, turning to the painter. And again, and the woman of absolute love: “Since I fell in love with you, everything has transformed and is so full of beauty… Love is like a perfume, like a current, like rain. You know, my heaven, you are like rain and I, like the earth, receive and welcome you ”.
But it is love that hurts. “The two Fridas” are the painting with which the painter talks about herself after her divorce. Sitting, against the backdrop of a cloudy gray sky, a Frida in traditional Mexican clothes carries the image of Diego as a child. Next to her is a second wounded Frida, of Western style, who is losing blood and holding a medical forceps, perhaps, to want to cut that painful experience. A painful duality, the Frida abandoned by Rivera and the Frida he loved. But also the desire for rebirth.
The painter died in her hometown, of pulmonary embolism, in the Blue House of Coyoacan, today a destination for visitors, which remained intact, at the behest of Diego Rivera, who gave it to Mexico. A simple and beautiful house, with colorful walls, full of life. Like her inner strength.
The fame of Kahlo in the world is timeless. For some, she is the greatest painter of the twentieth century. Celebrated by exhibitions, films, documentaries, biographies. The United States Post Office, after her death, issued a postage stamp bearing the effigy of her, the first of her with a Hispanic woman.
In recent months, in Italy, the exhibitions in Naples, Rome, Turin and Milan describe the artistic, human and spiritual dimension of Frida.
The artist and the woman Frida Kahlo. The woman of contradictions and transgression, of suffering and loneliness, an immortal icon of the contemporary world, urges us today to go, however, to meet life.
It has transformed suffering into beauty, it has shown women the possibility of affirming the freedom to be themselves even in suffering. “Feet, because I want them if I have wings to fly
”.
“Fall in love with you, with life and after whoever you want”. It is the manifesto of independence, passion and courage also of today’s women.
Looking into the depths of the soul, to see true beauty. “If only our eyes could see the soul instead of the body, our beauty standards would be different”.
A cry of love and joy the last painting, “Viva la vida”, made a few days before its end, depicts a still life with watermelons. Symbol of passion, watermelon, nourishment for the afterlife in the Egyptian tradition. A fruit to be savored to the last drop. Like life.
