Diego Quotes - page 2
One Sunday, Diego came to the house to see my paintings and critiqued all of them in a very clear manner, and he told me all the possibilities he saw in them. Then I painted two or three things, which are around the house, that to me seem very influenced by him [circa 1928]. They are portraits of thirteen- or fourteen-year-old kids... In 1929, I joined the Communist Party, I got married to Diego, and I had my first abortion. In that year I painted a portrait of Cristina Moya.... and other drawings that Morillo Safa [her main patron] owns. The unfinished [self-]portrait of my first abortion was my first Surrealist painting ['Frida and the Caesarean', she painted in 1929] but not completely. I have it [at home].
Frida Kahlo
We [Frida and Diego] moved from the house on Reforma [street] to Coyoacán, and that had an enormous influence on me. How we painted the house and the Mexican furniture, all that influenced my painting a lot. While still on Reforma, I painted a self-portrait [Self-portrait 'Time Flies', 1929] that is owned by Morillo Safa. Once in Coyoacán I began to make paintings with backgrounds and Mexican things in them. I painted the portraits of Hale's sister.. ..and the one of Diego, which I did not finish [this painting is lost and was never documented before]. Those three paintings, who knows where they are. Mirillo Safa has the third self-portrait [her Self-portrait of 1930], showing me bald and sitting in a cane chair. (1950)
Frida Kahlo
I returned to school [after the bus accident], but I felt very sore and had little strength. I took my paintings to Diego [Rivera], and he liked them a lot, most of all the self-portrait. But of the rest he told me that I was influenced by Doctor Atl [a Mexican painter and revolutionary] and by Montenegro, and that I should try to paint whatever I wanted without being influenced by anyone else. That impressed me a lot, and I began to paint that I believed in. Then the friendship and almost courtship with Diego began. I would go to see him paint in the afternoon, and afterwards he would take me home by bus or in a Fordcito – a little Ford that he had – and he would kiss me. (1950)
Frida Kahlo
I first met Diego [who became later her husband] while he was painting the amphitheater [at the Escuela National Preparatoria, where Rivera was painting the mural 'La Créación', 1922 -1923] and I would really cherish going to see him paint. Orozco [famous Mexican painter] was also painting [murals] in the Prepa, and I remember one time a group of kids wanted to scratch the paintings of Diego and Orozco... Every day we went for ice cream at a stand opposite the law school... Sometimes Diego himself would pass by, and we would tease him. One day they asked me who I wanted to marry, and I said I would not marry, but I did want to have a child by Diego Rivera.
Frida Kahlo
I'll be in Detroit two more weeks. I would like to tell you every thing that happened to me since the last time we saw each other, but most of them are sad and you mustn't know sad things now. After all I shouldn't complain because I have been happy in many ways though. Diego is good to me, and you can't imagine how happy he has been working on the frescoes here. I have been painting a little too and that helped. I thought of you a lot and never forget your wonderful hands and the color of your eyes. I will see you soon. I am sure that in New York I will be much happier. If you still in the hospital when I come back I will bring you flowers.
Frida Kahlo
José Clemente Orozco [became later a famous Mexican painter as well] and I would travel on the same trolley from Coyoacán to Mexico City, and I would carry his papers. We became pals, and I invited him to the house. I had painted four or five things when he visited, and he gave me a hug and said I had a lot of talent, and he chatted on about the horrors of Diego [Rivera]. There was beginning to be talk about Diego; that he had returned from Russia and was giving talks on on Russian theater and art. I would go to hear him. Afterwards, he began to paint at the Prepa. [Escuela Prepatoria] and later at the Secretaríade Educación. I was studying at the Prepa, but the [bus] accident [in 1925] messed me up.
Frida Kahlo
His [Diego Rivera's] supposed mythomania is in direct relation to his tremendous imagination. That is to say, he is as much of a liar as the poets or as the children who have not yet been turned into idiots by school or mothers. I have heard him tell all kinds of lies: from the most innocent, to the most complicated stories about people whom his imagination combined in a fantastic situation or actions, always with a great sense of humor and a marvelous critical sense; but I have never heard him say a single stupid or banal lie. Lying, or playing at lying, he unmasks many people, he learns the interior mechanism of others, who are much more ingenuously liars than he, and the most curious thing about the supposed lies of Diego, is that in the long and short of it, those who are involved in the imaginary combination become angry, not because of the lie, but because of the truth contained in the lie, that always comes to the surface.
Frida Kahlo
Five years ago I spent two and a half months in Berlin, and every day I visited the museum to have at least a brief look at this divine masterpiece [a portrait of the soldier of fortune, Alessandro del Borro, then attributed to Diego Velazquez, and later to an unknown master], and every day my soul sang in response to it stronger and stronger. I was very sick then, and that genius alone reconciled me to my life when there was so much suffering in it. Looking at his creation, at these lines, at these half-tones (remember that shadowed jaw against the background or the column against the dress), at all this charm of the art, at this grand style, I started to want to live again, to see it again and again, to live on by painting and perhaps by painting alone.
Marianne von Werefkin
I had been on another procedural show, 'Cold Case,' for seven years, and I certainly respected the legacy of 'Law & Order,' even though I had only seen a handful of episodes. Being a dad meant the reality was that I probably knew more about Dora and Diego. But I saw the show with fresh eyes, and I wasn't coming in with a bunch of baggage.
Danny Pino