10.01.2023
Exiled from the Soviet Union, Trotsky came to Mexico at the invitation of the famous artist Diego Rivera. Unfortunately, both guest and host suffered from epileptic seizures.
But if Trotsky’s epilepsy was an ordinary “panic attack,” Diego Rivera had episodes of somnambulism, when the painter turned into a man seized by frenzied aggression.
Perhaps Trotsky had the same morbid syndrome. It was not for nothing that he was unjustifiably cruel.
Diego was married more than once. His first wife was Angelina Belova, a Russian artist from St. Petersburg, then he had a crush on another Russian woman, and no one could count his Mexican beauties.
The daughter of a German immigrant and a Mexican of Indian origin, Frida Kahlo was Rivera’s pupil at the preparatory school of the Academy of Fine Arts. At six years old the girl had polio, at eighteen had an accident. After several operations stood up, chained in a heavy plaster cast. But it was then that she created enough works to show them to Puzan, as Diego Rivera was nicknamed at the academy for his obesity. Frida came to the Palace of Justice, where Diego, standing on scaffolding, was painting the walls, and scraggily shouted:
– Hey, Rivera! Come down here! I want to show you something.
Spoiled by female attention, Rivera interpreted her words in his own way and came down.
She was twenty years younger than him and, judging by the drawings, undoubtedly talented.
Very soon Rivera proposed to her. At the wedding, one of the guests pulled up her skirt and, pointing to the legs of the sickly Frida, drunkenly shouted: “Look at this, and for these ‘matches’ Diego traded my adorable legs.
Diego was always proud of the fact that he was the one who discovered Frida the artist. But it was in Diego’s rules to refuse his admirers, and he always told his young wife about them, believing that there should be no secrets between them. And four years later, Diego seduced her younger sister Christina. Which he honestly confessed to her. Perhaps Frida decided to repay him in the same way.That year, Trotsky and his wife, Natalia Sedova, came to them at Diego’s invitation.
Leon Trotsky, who by that time had already turned 58 years old, met with the 29-year-old Frida Kahlo. His constant references to her were the words: “Oh, my love, my love!” The mistress of the house was smart, talented, educated, kept the conversation on any topic, even political, and attracted a revolutionary exile. Between them began a light flirtation with correspondence. One day Trotsky invited Frida to the mansion of San Miguel Regla, 130 kilometers from Mexico City. This country house was rented for his friend by the same kind-hearted Diego. The couple spent a whole week in nature among cacti, but Lev Davidovich did not calculate his strength, and he was taken to the hospital with suspected appendicitis. Natalia Sedova promised that she would not interfere with his happiness and left. But Trotsky persuaded her in letters: “I beg you, stop competing with a woman who means so little. Perhaps other passions meant just as little to him: the Englishwoman Claire Sheridan, a sculptor who came to Soviet Russia with one sole purpose: to sculpt a bust of the hero of the October Revolution. The work on the bust caused ambiguous speculation at the time. Or Larissa Reisner, who wrote the poem “Sviyazhsk” after spending the summer month of 1918 on the Eastern Front near Sviyazhsk in the company of the tireless revolutionary.
Diego believed in the ideal revolutionary hero and even depicted the figures of Lenin and Trotsky in the main mural at Rockefeller Center in New York, terrifying his clients. Their friendship lasted two years. Trotsky repaid his benefactor and admirer in a more than peculiar way.
Many years later, Frida Kahlo painted her next self-portrait with the face of Lev Davidovich on his chest and the face of his wife, Natalia Sedova, in her forehead.
After Trotsky’s death, Rivera and Frieda parted ways. He went to San Francisco and she went to Paris, where she was to have her own exhibition. Here she met Picasso, and another friend of Diego fell at her feet. Perhaps he was intrigued by the fact that he was dealing with Trotsky’s girlfriend.
