Frida's Fire
September 17, 1925 - On an overcast and drizzly day, Frida Kahlo and her friend Alejandro Gómez Arias boarded a bus headed toward Coyoacán, a leafy borough of Mexico City. Shortly after they sat down, the bus lost control and slammed into an electric trolley car traveling at full speed. The iconic Mexican painter, then 18, was impaled by an iron handrail that pierced her abdomen and uterus and smashed her spinal column, causing multiple fractures. She struggled with the horrific injuries for the rest of her life. (She died at age 47.)
What few people knew was that to get her through the pain, on most days she used cannabis and hemp salves. After the crash, Kahlo felt the bottom had dropped out of everything she’d known. As her body slowly healed, her views on life and art changed. While confined to bed, she began feverishly painting. “The loneliness led her to start expressing in a way that she wasn’t doing before,” says performer Vanessa Severo, creator of the play Frida... A Self Portrait. “She was telling her story by painting it.”
And the cannabis plant was at the heart of it, according to Kahlo’s great-grand- niece, Frida Hentschel. Although Kahlo used topicals daily, whether she smoked is shrouded in mystery—sorta. Of course, there are depictions of Kahlo smoking hand-rolled cigarillos (mota joints?) in her artwork. Was it tobacco or something else? Judy Chicago in her book Frida Kahlo: Face to Face claims that the cigarette Kahlo holds in her 1938 painting Itzcuintli Dog with Me is cannabis. Kahlo’s husband, the titan Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, was a known partaker—actor Errol Flynn wrote about getting high with him.
Fittingly, the late revolutionary artist now has her own cannabis brand. Her estate has partnered with LA-based Hierba Buena, a Latina-owned cannabis company, to launch Alas Pa’ Volar (Spanish for ‘wings to fly’). The brand’s packaging and visual identity, created by Mexican artist Francisco Herrera, features a winged spider monkey, evoking Kahlo’s surrealist style and her favorite pet monkey, Fulang-Chang. Herrera, best known for his work with Disney and Marvel Comics, is said to be inspired by Kahlo’s beloved pets and fantastical imagery.
The artisanal cannabis products, bred by Raven Glass Company, add a dash of mysticism and Latina heritage to the line, which includes flower, handcrafted edibles, and balms. The CBD levels are a whopping 12% and act quickly.
Kahlo was a trailblazer ahead of her time, amassing a cult following for her strength, resilience, authenticity, and devastating, symbol-laden aesthetic. She experienced cannabis as a powerful tool for healing, wellness, and self-expression.
