Fertility and the Reluctant Artist

Frida Kahlo started off life like any other little girl. She wanted a career, to be married and have children. But that wasn’t her life. On September 17, 1925, at the age 18 she was involved in a bus accident that changed the direction of things for her forever. During a collision with a streetcar, Kahlo was impaled by a steel handrail which went into her hip and came out the other side. She suffered several serious injuries which included multiple fractures to her spine and pelvis.

During her recuperation from this tragic accident, Frida took up painting to relieve the boredom. She is quoted as saying that there wasn’t much else for her to do.  Her art work gave voice to her inner world which we’ve come to know about through more than 200 paintings, drawings and sketchings. Much of her paintings capture her personal private feelings and as a picture says a thousand words, you could say that her art work quite possibly forms her biography.

Stories about her physical condition, her philosophy, nature and life, as well as her turbulent relationship with her husband, Diego Rivera are vividly cataloged for us in her imagery. In fact, so evocative are her pieces, that for years now historians and doctors alike have focused on how her art work reflected her physical condition of chronic pain.

But one person, Dr. Fernando Antelo saw something else. He became intrigued by Frida’s images of reproduction and fertility. Something didn’t sit right for him. So much so, that the surgical pathologist of the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles felt her paintings warranted much further investigation. Antelo felt that there was an untold hidden story in her art and he recently set about investigating why Kahlo, who died at age 47, suffered numerous miscarriages and underwent at least three therapeutic abortions.  

On the 22nd April 2012, he presented his conclusions at the American Association of Anatomists’ Annual meeting. Antelo believes that Kahlo suffered from a rare condition called Asherman’s Syndrome that occurs when the lining of the uterus, or endometrium, is damaged and scar tissue forms. It’s likely that Kahlo’s condition originated with the streetcar accident, as it left her skeletal framework and internal organs, including her uterus severely damaged.

Today, doctors can treat the condition by carefully removing the scar tissue. But even if Kahlo had been diagnosed, Antelo says, “with the technology that they had then, they really couldn’t treat it.”…. “She kept attempting to have children with a uterus that wasn’t in any condition to do that,”  and the resulting therapeutic abortions and miscarriages likely exacerbated her condition. Although Antelo acknowledges there could be other contributing factors, in his mind the key had to be the major injury to the uterus.

When I read this report, I’m struck by the fact that as a young woman, Frida didn’t want to be a painter -  she’d wanted to become a physician.

I’m haunted knowing that in years later, her pieces speak so eloquently that they seem to call out from her artist pad to a doctor who cared to look deeper. Did she “paint and paint and paint” (Kahlo’s own words) to expunge herself of her condition? Would she have been relieved to have her unseen condition finally seen? Would it have affected her art work?

In the end, my struggle is that I wish Kahlo would have known. Maybe it wouldn’t have made a difference to her life, but on the other hand, maybe she would’ve been able to make peace with her in inability to bear children.

Petaluma resident S. Fenella Das Gupta has a doctorate in Neuroscience and is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (#47275). Her specialty is Infertility and Fertility issues. Fenella is the author of the forthcoming book "Two Pink Lines: Getting Pregnant and Dealing with Fertility Issues."