In the Absence of Miracle: Frida Kahlo’s subversion of retablo and ex-voto tradition

by Tia Merotto

The socio-political climate of post-revolutionary Mexico provided fertile grounds for negotiations of cultural and national identity, setting the stage for a continuous dialogue which would manifest directly through the artistic production of the period. Though the Muralists, in particular Los Tres Grandes (Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros), have been largely accredited as the visual architects of twentieth-century Mexican national identity, response to the question of mexicanidad was varied. Frida Kahlo’s body of work proffered a compelling alternative to the government-endorsed Muralist movement, championing the intimacies of individual experience as opposed to the centralised nationalist rhetoric which reigned prevalent amongst her contemporaries. As a means of supplementing this approach, her paintings borrow purposefully from the popular imagery of the Mexican folk retablo genre. Traditional systems of iconography designed to elicit or document divine encounter are effectively co-opted and reimagined throughout her visual world to create sites of personal encounter, which explore understandings of faith, suffering and identity on both private and collective levels. The resulting images emphasize the ways in which Kahlo's relationship to herself, tradition and the nation are inextricably linked.

The creation and distribution of devotional images used for home-altars was a thriving folk art tradition in Mexico throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Painted in oil on sheets of tin by self-taught retablero artists, these retablo images would typically depict holy personages (retablo Santos, de Guadalupe or serve as thanksgiving for a particular event or miracle (retablo ex-voto, El Señor de la Misericordia (1954)). The works themselves are characterised by a vibrant approach to colour and ornamentation. Due to the artists’ lack of formal training, retablo works often have a skewed perspective and inexact depiction of anatomical elements. Brought to the Americas as a strategy for Catholic conversion during the Spanish conquest, retablo art took on a life of its own when it merged with pre-existing indigenous pagan belief systems and practices in Mexico. The resulting genre serves as a unique expression of syncretic Mexican popular identity, as it transcended the boundaries of officially sanctioned Catholic religion. Essentially, retablo art emerged as a means to depict authentic accounts of the events, hopes and struggles of local Mexican communities. 

de Guadalupe, oil on tin, 25cm x 36cm from Mexican Folk Retablos by Gloria Kay Giffords

El Señor de la Misericordia (1954) oil on tin, 15cm x 23cm, from Mexican Folk Retablos by Gloria Kay Giffords

Relevant both to the private nature of devotional practice in Mexico and communal identity, the retablo form was already widely familiar to the Mexican consciousness by the start of the twentieth century. This familiarity in turn presented opportunity for innovation- the genre could be harnessed poetically as a bridge between individual and collective experiences, as seen in the works of Kahlo. 

Kahlo’s love for Mexican folk art was a vital source of inspiration for her own work. Along with her husband, Diego Rivera, she was known to have kept a collection of around two thousand retablo images displayed around her residence, The Blue House, in Coyoacán. Kahlo’s mother, Matilda Calderon, was a devout Catholic and had her daughters educated in religious schools. While Kahlo herself was a pronounced atheist, she continued to make use of Catholic imagery and iconographic language in her artwork. Many of her paintings directly adopt the format of the ex-voto, mimicking the genre’s approach to narrative and medium, as well as its stylised treatment of colour and form. Her actual subject matter is then frequently utilised to a subversive end; the viewer is often made uncomfortably aware of the absence of miracle usually commemorated in ex-voto art. Kahlo’s faith in her own self clearly supersedes her faith in divine intervention, as suggested in Mi Nacimiento (1932). Painted in the traditional ex-voto manner of oil on metal in small dimensions, the scene depicts the aftermath of a traumatic birth. Life and death, personified through the newly born baby and the deceased mother respectively, are presented in chilling concurrence; a violent juxtaposition echoed by the brutal contrast of blood against white bed sheets. Below the bed stretches a horizontal scroll, which is importantly left blank- there has been no miracle for which to give thanks. A framed retablo of the Mater Dolorosa (Virgin of Sorrows) on the wall looks out over the scene, symbolising the suffering experienced by the subjects and alluding to Kahlo’s own linkage with the Dolorosa.

Frida Kahlo, Mi nacimiento (1932), https://historia-arte.com/obras/mi-nacimiento.

Imagery of the Mater Dolorosa in Kahlo’s art lends itself to allegorical interpretation within a postcolonial context. Oriana Baddeley has outlined the connection between Mexico’s colonised past and La Llorona, ‘the weeping woman’ of popular myth as well as La Chingada, the so-called mother of mestizo culture and female embodiment of post-conquest Mexico, a chain of symbolism which can be further extended to the Virgin of Sorrows. A personification of Mary’s deep grief at the suffering and crucifixion of Christ, the Mater Dolorosa can be interpreted as yet another archetypal embodiment of the agony accompanying mother-loss, and subsequently as a visual counterpart of the injured, defiled manifestation of Mexico’s colonised past.

Kahlo’s self-identification with the figure of the Virgin of Sorrows can be sensed throughout much of her self-imagery, as well as in her personal writing- one letter to Alejandro Gomez Arias written in 1926 is even signed as ‘Virgen Lacrimorum’, or Virgin of the Tears. This relation to Mary’s suffering is used as a means of examining the pain which would follow Kahlo throughout her own life, as seen in Henry Ford Hospital (1932). Here, Kahlo’s use of symbolic objects is found to mirror the iconography of the retablo santo tradition, specifically that commonly used to symbolise the seven sorrows of the Virgin. One such retablo (seen below Mater Dolorosa) illustrates the efficacy of this vocabulary: the figure of the Virgin in her distinguishing red and blue gownery is surrounded by symbols of Christ’s Passion, including the reed with which he was beaten (reinterpreted as a corn-stalk), a crown of thorns, three nails used for his crucifixion, and the Sacred Heart.

Frida Kahlo, Henry Ford Hospital Room (1932), https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/henry-ford-hospital/kgHTa-02kVhHJA?hl=en-GB&avm=2.

Mater Dolorosa, oil on tin, 12cm x 17cm

Clear parallels can be drawn between the iconographic language found in retablo paintings and the symbolism Kahlo uses in Henry Ford Hospital to explain her own mother-loss tragedy: the misscarriage she suffered in Detroit that same year. Naked in a hospital bed, Kahlo is shown connected through vein-like red ribbons to various emblematic objects: the fetus of her unborn son; a snail and an orchid, both symbols of fertility; a skeletal pelvis and a machine used to make casts, in reference to the ongoing medical problems stemming from her accident in 1925; and what appears to be an anatomical figure of the female reproductive system. Beyond these iconographic similarities, there is a significant likeness between the facial expression of Kahlo’s self-portrait, shown as visibly weeping, and the image of the Dolorosa. Similarities of their suffering are continuously accentuated to communicate an implicit hopefulness; as the Virgin of Sorrows was evoked at the loss of a child, Kahlo’s self-identification with her image following her own miscarriage implies her position as self-declared hero within her own tragic narrative. This sentiment in turn resonates with the wider national struggle felt across Mexico throughout the twentieth century: as a continuation of the archetypal image of mother-loss, Kahlo’s status as hero within her own story sets an example for the overcoming of shared national traumas, including colonialism and war. Thus, while the immediate subject matter of Henry Ford Hospital is Kahlo’s miscarriage and personal suffering, the nature of retablo and ex-voto traditions is such that the personal and the collective are profoundly entwined. Kahlo’s tortured self, acting as the subject of most of her work, not only parallels the imagery and suffering of the Virgin but also acts as a visual counterpart to the injury and suffering inflicted by Mexico’s colonised past. She is simultaneously La Llorona of popular myth and the Catholic Virgin of Sorrows, but above all she is Frida; her struggle is at once indicative of the collective suffering harboured in Mexico's cultural memory and entirely her own. 

The retablo provided an ideal model for the expression of cultural distinction and self-determination amongst Mexican artists of the post-revolutionary period. References to the genre throughout the works of Frida Kahlo, demonstrate how she connected to her own heritage whilst recycling the retablo’s known iconographic language of suffering to a subversive end. In opposition to traditional feminizations of colonial trauma, the images of female suffering presented in her paintings are strong, enduring images which assert the potential for dignified cultural resistance. Imbued with an essential sense of mexicanidad which transcends time and political circumstance, her works parting message is one which resonated powerfully throughout post-revolutionary Mexico: just as perseverance in the face of suffering and against odds would come to define Kahlo’s own career and personal life, so too should it define the spirit of Mexican identity, if it was to prevail.

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