Guillermo Kahlo

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Guillermo Kahlo in a self-portrait, around 1900

Carl Wilhelm "Guillermo" Kahlo (born October 26, 1871 in Pforzheim ; † April 14, 1941 in Coyoacán , Mexico ) was a Mexican photographer of German origin and father of the painter Frida Kahlo .

Live and act

Carl Wilhelm Kahlo was the third child of the jewelry manufacturer Johann Heinrich Jacob Kahlo (1819–1903) and his wife Henriette, née Kaufmann (1840–1878), born in Pforzheim. In 1874 the father sold his jewelry factory and moved with his family to Lichtental . In April 1877, Carl Wilhelm's eldest sister died at the age of 14, and one year later the mother died giving birth to her fourth child. In 1881 the father remarried, his second wife was Ludovike Caroline Rahm. It is not yet known where Carl Wilhelm Kahlo went to school; Documents about his professional training are also missing. The fact that he was able to draw, paint and play the piano speaks for an artistic education.

Guillermo Kahlo: The Metlac Bridge with Train, 1903
Tabacalera cigar factory, 1907

As noted in his exit papers, Carl Wilhelm Kahlo emigrated from Pforzheim via Hamburg , where he was the only passenger to board the Hapag freight steamer “Borussia” on May 25, 1890 , to Veracruz in Mexico, where he called himself “Guillermo” from then on. Since Pforzheimer jewelry manufacturers had jewelry stores in Mexico, Kahlo worked there and in a hardware store as an accountant and applied for naturalization, which the country's president, Porfirio Díaz , signed in 1894. Kahlo never returned to Germany. In 1893 he married María Cárdena and was already a widower with two children in 1898 because his wife died in childbed. In the same year he married Matilde Calderón y González, the daughter of a photographer, for the second time. Shortly afterwards, Guillermo Kahlo received his first photo order, gave up his position in the trade and from then on worked as a photographer with his own studio in Mexico City .

Construcción del Palacio Legislativo , 1912, which later became the Monumento a la Revolución in Mexico City

After the death of his father in 1903 there were inheritance disputes, which ended with Guillermo Kahlo receiving a quarter of the fortune of 25,271.45 marks. His legacy enabled him to build a house in 1904 in Coyoacán, the then suburb of the Mexican capital, Mexico City. In 1907, Frida Kahlo was born in this house as the third of four daughters from his second marriage.

During this time, Guillermo Kahlo undertook long trips on behalf of the Mexican Interior Minister to photograph churches and national monuments in Mexico. This was followed by orders such as recordings of industrial plants. They secured his reputation as an exceptional photographer of architectural and industrial facilities. At the time of the Mexican Revolution from 1910, however, it became more difficult for Kahlo to get orders and to travel the country. The family therefore had to struggle with economic problems.

After the death of his wife Matilde in 1932, Guillermo Kahlo's physical symptoms worsened. He suffered from periodic epilepsy . His last documented photographs were taken in 1936. For the last eight years he had been living in seclusion in the house of his eldest daughter Matilde and died there on April 14, 1941 of a heart attack.

His photographs have been published in the magazines El Mundo Ilustrado , Artes y Letras , Cosmos and Tricolor , among others , and are contained in elaborately designed Mexican illustrated books.

  • Family photos

  • Matilde Calderón y González, 1897

  • Matilde, Adriana, Frida and Cristina Kahlo, 1916

  • Frida Kahlo, 1919

  • Frida Kahlo, 1926

  • Frida Kahlo, 1932

Afterlife

Casa Azul in Coyoacán , since 1958 the Museo Frida Kahlo . Photo from 2011

Frida Kahlo was acquired from the father's house, her birthplace, emphasize in indigo blue, and it was to La Casa Azul , the "Blue House" in which she and her husband, Diego Rivera , lived and that since 1958 the Museo Frida Kahlo is .

The artist was her father's favorite child from an early age. “Frida is the most intelligent of my daughters, she is the most similar to me.” They shared the joy of self-portraits, Guillermo with the camera, Frida with the brush. In 1951 Frida Kahlo created a posthumous portrait of her father Guillermo, which shows him with his camera. In the accompanying text, which she added to the painting by hand, she mentioned his Hungarian-German ancestry. Translated into German, the text reads: “I painted my father Wilhelm Kahlo, of Hungarian-German origin, artist and photographer by profession, of generous, intelligent and noble nature, courageously because he suffered from epilepsy for sixty years but never stopped working and to fight against Hitler. "

Frida's statements that her father was of “Hungarian-German descent” and had “Jewish roots” were included in biographies and other publications about the artist. In 2005, the historian Gabriele Franger and the Latin Americanist Rainer Huhle demonstrated in their book Frida's father: The photographer Wilhelm Kahlo that he was born in Pforzheim, Baden, to Lutheran parents and that the family in Germany can be traced back to the 16th century. There are several conjectures about the reasons that led Frida Kahlo to make these statements. Among other things, it was mentioned that she wanted to distance herself from National Socialist Germany or to support the Jewish persecuted. In addition, there was the thesis that it was a linguistic error when she wrote about her grandfather that he was a “jeweler” (jeweler) and that the word was confused with “jew”. However, the Museo Frida Kahlo continues to describe them as "Hija de Wilhelm (Guillermo) Kahlo de ascendencia húngaro-alemana."

estate

Part of Guillermo Kahlo's photographic estate can be found at the Ibero-American Institute (IAI) in Berlin. A total of 27 black and white photographs show factories and machines such as Fundidora de Fierro y Acero de Monterrey SA and Fábrica de Cerillos La Central and 13 interior and exterior shots of Mexican churches, taken around 1920.

Secondary literature

  • Gabriele Franger, Rainer Huhle: Frida's father: The photographer Wilhelm Kahlo. From Pforzheim to Mexico . Illustrated book with texts by Juan Coronel Rivera, Cristina Kahlo Alcalá, Helga Prignitz-Poda, Raquel Tibol and the editors. Schirmer / Mosel, Munich 2005, ISBN 978-3-8296-0197-9 .
  • Rosa Casanova: Guillermo Kahlo: luz, piedra y rostro (Colección mayor. Bellas Artes), Fondo Editorial Estado de México 2013, ISBN 978-607-495-294-0 .
  • Juan Coronel Rivera: Guillermo Kahlo Vida y Obra . Mexico 1993.
  • Linde Salber: Frida Kahlo. Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1997, ISBN 3-499-50534-7 .

Filmography

Web links

Commons : Guillermo Kahlo  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Matthias Gretzschel : The Father in the Shadow of the Daughter , Abendblatt.de, July 7, 2006, accessed on June 21, 2019
  2. ↑ Quoted after the web link bad-bad.de
  3. ^ Gabriele Franger: Guillermo Kahlo (1871–1941) and Max Diener (1860–1919). The photographer and the businessman - two careers in Pforzheim in Mexico , pp. 148–157 ( memento of March 6, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), mexiko.diplo.de, accessed on June 29, 2014
  4. ↑ Linde Salber: Frida Kahlo . Reinbek 1997, p. 18
  5. ^ Frida's father - The photographer Wilhelm Kahlo , welt.de, July 21, 2006, accessed on July 1, 2014
  6. ↑ Frida Kahlo: Portrait of Don Guillermo Kahlo, 1951. Oil on masonite, 60.4 × 46.4 cm. Frida Kahlo Museum, Mexico City, Mexico , abcgallery.com, accessed on June 29, 2014
  7. ↑ Matthias Gretzschel: The Father in the Shadow of the Daughter , Abendblatt.de, July 7, 2006, accessed on July 1, 2014
  8. ↑ Michael Wuliger : The imagined Semitic woman , Jüdische Allgemeine , July 15, 2010, accessed on July 28, 2014
  9. ↑ Museo Frida Kahlo: Biography , museofridakahlo.org.mx, accessed December 5, 2018
  10. ↑ Kahlo, Guillermo (1871–1941) , iai.spk-berlin.de, accessed on June 29, 2014
personal data
SURNAME Kahlo, Guillermo
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kahlo, Carl Wilhelm (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Mexican photographer
DATE OF BIRTH October 26, 1871
PLACE OF BIRTH Pforzheim
DATE OF DEATH April 14, 1941
Place of death Coyoacan , Mexico City , Mexico