by the El Reportero staff
Arturo Estrada Hernández, the last surviving member of “Los Fridos,” the small group of young artists who studied closely with Frida Kahlo, turned 101 on July 30, preserving a rare firsthand connection to one of Mexico’s most influential artistic generations.
Born in Panindícuaro, Michoacán, in 1925, Estrada moved to Mexico City as a young man to study painting. He attended the National School of Painting, Sculpture and Printmaking La Esmeralda, where his teachers included Kahlo, Diego Rivera, Raúl Anguiano and José Chávez Morado.
Estrada also worked alongside major Mexican muralists. He collaborated with José Clemente Orozco on a mural at the National Teachers College, assisted Juan O’Gorman and helped Rivera with mosaics at the Anahuacalli Museum and work at the University Olympic Stadium.
Kahlo began teaching at La Esmeralda in the early 1940s, but worsening health eventually made regular trips to the school difficult. She continued teaching from her home in Coyoacán, now the Frida Kahlo Museum.
Four students continued attending: Fanny Rabel, Guillermo Monroy, Arturo García Bustos and Estrada. They became known as “Los Fridos.”
For Estrada, Kahlo was more than the internationally recognized figure she later became. She was a teacher who encouraged her students to develop individual styles rather than imitate her work. Her lessons included drawing and color as well as Mexican history and culture. Estrada recalled that Kahlo sent him to Yucatán to study Maya culture.
Estrada went on to build a career spanning more than eight decades as a painter, muralist and educator. His works explore Mexican history, pre-Hispanic culture, political movements and everyday life through oils, acrylics, watercolors, drawings and mixed media. Artist Marcel Duchamp once purchased one of Estrada’s still lifes featuring geometrically arranged watermelon slices.
Estrada later returned to La Esmeralda as a professor, passing his experience to younger generations.
With Rabel’s death in 2008, García Bustos’ in 2017 and Monroy’s in 2021, Estrada became the last surviving member of the four Los Fridos.
In 2024, he received Mexico’s Fine Arts Gold Medal in Visual Arts. The following year, the National Institute of Fine Arts and Literature celebrated his 100th birthday with an exhibition of 100 works spanning more than seven decades.
At 101, Estrada remains a living link to Kahlo, Rivera and the defining era of 20th-century Mexican art.
