A Brief History of the Mexican Votive Paintings That

Inspired Frida Kahlo

ARTSY EDITORIAL
BY ALEXXA GOTTHARDT
NOV 1ST, 2016 8:58 PM
https://www.ar tsy.net/ar ticle/ar tsy-editorial-the-traditional-mexican-votive-paintings-that-inspired-frida-kahlo , ACCESAT: 24.02.2017.

 Frida
Kahlo, Hen
r y Ford
Hospital
(la camo
volando),
1932. Colle
c tion of
Dolores
Olmedo
Mexico
City,
Mexico.

Last
week, as
the
Mexican
holiday
D ia De
Los
Muertos
a pproach
e d, I
found
myself
eyeing
images
of Frida
Kahlos
more
macabre paintings. One, called Henry Ford Hospital (1932), showed the artist lying naked on a
hospital bed surrounded by floating objects: a flower, a snail, and a fetus.
The resemblance of the work to other small, mystical, and gruesome paintings I had once
happened upon in a vintage store was striking. As I pored over the little panels, filled with
images of people prostrate on hospital beds, pursued by evil forces, or ejected from the backs
of unruly horses, the shopkeeper told me theyd originated from a Mexican church altar. It
sparked my curiositywhat were those tiny paintings, rendered on tin and featuring childlike
portraits of people in strife? And why the likeness to Kahlos work?

The small panels, usually measuring around 11 by 15 inches or less, were ex-votos. The
abridged translation of the term reads something like the vow made or in gratitude or
devotion, but this style of painting deserves a lengthier explanation. As I delved into my
research, I found that these types of narrative ex-voto paintings originated in rural Mexico and
often ended up in Mexican churches as offerings of gratitude to various Catholic saints.

Ex-voto by unknown painter (Mexican, 19th century). Image courtesy of El Paso Museum of Art.
A

person wishing to thank a higher power, usually for a miraculous intervention that had saved
them from certain death or interminable suffering, would ask a local artist to paint her story.
The resulting panel would show an image that captured the commissioners anguish, along
with the divine presence of her savior, usually floating ethereally in space. The compositions
are usually bordered by a story, penned in looping cursive or scribbled in thick paint,
describing the tale.

In one ex-voto that I happened upon, a man stands in his pajamas, in a field rimmed by
mountains. Hes frozen in fear and staring at a UFO that radiates a purple beam of light
containing a big-eyed alien. Over the mans head, on a puffy cloud, levitates the Virgin de
Guadalupe. The few sentences painted below the scene reveal that the saint rescued the man
from abduction and the life of a mute: The day January 14, 1965 with this I give the most
sincere thanks to the Virgin of Guadalupe, who gave me the miracle of regaining speech after I
saw a ship with an extraterrestrial coming out of it and was left speechless. It was signed Sr.
Juan Manuel Gutierrez..., 20 April of 1984.
The piece, like all the ex-votos Ive come across, is intensely personalfilled with one mans
fears, idiosyncrasies, and spiritual leanings. But the ex-voto tradition began long before the
80s, or even Kahlos time in the 1930s and 40s. In Mexico, they first cropped up in the 16th
century, during the colonial era, as Catholicism spread like wildfire across Latin America. The
practice became especially popular, however, in the throes and aftermath of Mexicos
successful battle for independence from Spain in the early 1800s, and again saw a renaissance
during the early 1900s, during the Mexican revolutionary war.


Left: The Lost Soul. Betty Byerley Collection, Museum of the Big Bend, Sul Ross State University, Alpine, Texas. Photo by Jim
Bones; Right: Ex-voto by unknown painter (Mexican, 19th century). Image courtesy of El Paso Museum of Art.

In one ex-voto, housed in a monastery-turned-museum in Mexico City, a bloody, messy battle

fills the composition; but look closely, and youll see a small saint hovering in the left-hand
corner. The inscription reads: In San Nicols on 2 December 1914, Andrs Len was in great
danger that day of being killed in combat. His mother invoked the miraculous Saint Nicholas
and he was saved. Amid the fear and uncertainty of wartime, ex-votos doubled as a means of
communication and thanksgiving between a human and her god and saints.
The powerful mingling of Mexican culture and spiritual lifethe earthbound and the divine
that the ex-votos contained caught the attention of avant-garde artists after the Mexican
Revolution. Artists like Diego Rivera and Kahlo sought to move away from the rigid academic
painting that took precedence in Mexican art schools at the time. In Mexican folk art, as in
the ex-votos that filled the churches where they were raised, they saw an alluring alternative:
a style that embodied both individual expression and faith.
Rivera and Kahlo became avid collectors of the little tin paintings. The anguish of our people
caused this strange flowering of painted ex-votos to rise up slowly against the walls of our
churches, Rivera once said, with his signature romantic bravado. But it was Kahlo who
incorporated the surrealistic qualities of ex-voto painting into works that fused mysticism and
mortality, with allusions to the earthlymaking reference, perhaps, to the torment of the
artists own physical afflictions.

Ex-voto by unknown painter (Mexican, 19th century). Image courtesy of El Paso Museum of Art.
Over the course of her life, Kahlo collected over 400 ex-votos, and many of them can still be
seen hanging on the walls of her famous Blue House in Mexico City. One of the ex-votos in her
cache bears striking resemblance to her Henry Ford Hospital. In the small votive painting, a
woman lies on a bed while a man bearing a knife hovers over her. But an elaborately cloaked
saint is also in the room, and the text tells us she came through: I thank the Blessed Virgin of
Talpa for the miracle that saved my life the day. 3rd of October 1934. M. Aragon.
Kahlos own Henry Ford Hospital was painted two years earlier, in 1932. At the time, the two
artists wouldnt have known each other, but there is nonetheless a powerful intimacy between
the paintings, conceived by artists who shared a language of individual expression and
spiritual salvation.

Alexxa Gotthardt