Tag / Frida Kahlo

by jenpaulin111

The Life & Art of Frida Kahlo

        Frida Kahlo, birth name Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón was born in Coyoacán, Mexico City, Mexico on July 6, 1907, to her parents Wilhelm Kahlo and Matilde Calderon y Gonzalez. She married famed Mexican painter Diego Rivera two times, once from 1929-1940, then married again later that same year until Kahlo’s death. Most of her paintings consist of self-portraits, and her art is considered surrealism, specifically magical realism.

        Throughout her life, Kahlo has suffered a multitude of illnesses and accidents.  In her youth she caught polio, and it is debated whether she had a birth defect that affected her spine and legs. Her chronic pain led to her being bedridden for a great deal of her life, leading her to use her free time to paint her portraits. In 1953, her leg was amputated. One of the most influential events that impacted her art was a bus crash. Kahlo was involved in a bus accident on September 17, 1925. At the age of 18, she and her boyfriend at the time, Alejandro Gómez Arias were on a public bus on their way home when it suddenly crashed into an electric car. Her pelvic bone had been fractured and her uterus and abdomen were punctured. Additionally, her spine had been broken in three places, her right leg in 11 places, her shoulder was dislocated, her collar bone was broken, and doctors later discovered that three additional vertebrae had been broken as well. Her health caused her much distress, and in 1953 she stated, “I am not sick. I am broken. But I am happy to be alive as long as I can paint.” While recovering, she used her time painting and turned her pain into art, also painting on her body cast. Describing her journey finding comfort in art, Wes Kelley writes, “This body altering event led to a life of surgeries, recoveries, and pain. She became an alcoholic, an adulterer (like her husband), and a masterful painter. Her horrible physical condition became the inspiration for her morbid and macabre paintings. Kahlo’s pain created works focusing on the death, decay, and brokenness of the human body.”

Frida Kahlo. Self Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird, 1940. Oil on canvas; 24.11″ × 18.5″. Nickolas Muray collection at the Harry Ransom Center, Austin, TX. Image by FridaKahlo.org.

        Most of Kahlo’s works are portraits of her surrounded by a beautiful, tropical landscape. Perhaps her being confined to a bed while sick inspired her to feel close to nature. For example, one of her most famous portraits, Self Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird (1940), depicts Kahlo wearing a thorn necklace with a hummingbird attached to it. The necklace is so tight and sharp around her neck that it is drawing blood. On her left shoulder there is a black monkey, and there is a black cat, perhaps a panther, on her right. The background features many green leaves, suggesting that she is in a rainforest. Her stoic look in the painting may symbolize all the pain that she has endured, and how she has kept a brave face through it all. 

Frida Kahlo. Marxism Will Give Health to the Sick, 1954. Oil on masonite; 23.6″ x 29.9″. Frida Kahlo Museum, Mexico City, Mexico. Image by FridaKahlo.org

        Besides her poor health, Kahlo’s politics also influenced her art. Kahlo was a Marxist, joining the Young Communist League and the Mexican Communist Party while at school. She was born just three years before the Mexican Revolution. In her later years as a painter, she would want to show her political side more. For example, she has a piece called Marxism Will Give Health to the Sick (1954). In the self-portrait, Kahlo is standing in the middle of the canvas with her left arm stretched out to her side, and her right arm at her side with her holding a red book, which is She is wearing a long green skirt and a corset or upper body cast with straps. There are crutches at her side, indicating that she is unwell. In the right-hand corner of the painting, there is the head of Karl Marx attached to a hand, which is gripping onto a bald eagle with the head of Uncle Sam. There are two hands outstretched toward her. These may represent the hands of Marxism coming to save Kahlo from the oppression of imperialism and capitalism.

        Women are taught early on that body hair is “un-ladylike,” and because of this, many of them shave. Kahlo, however, heavily rejected society’s ideas of traditional femininity and what a woman “should” be. In her diary she once wrote, “I used to think I was the strangest person in the world but then I thought there are so many people in the world, there must be someone just like me who feels bizarre and flawed in the same ways I do. I would imagine her, and imagine that she must be out there thinking of me, too.” She was never afraid to stand out and break conventions, which is what makes her an important feminist figure today. She proudly sported a unibrow and mustache. She also did not shave her legs or underarms either. In all of her portraits, she makes her unibrow and mustache prominent.        

Kahlo died a week after her 47th birthday on July 13, 1954 in her home village from a pulmonary embolism.  Like most artists, Frida Kahlo did not get the full recognition for her art that she deserved until she died. Today, she remains an influential artist who used her misfortunes to guide her art.

Sources

Almeida, Laura. “Quotes from Frida Kahlo.” Denver Art Museum. Last modified December 28, 2020. https://www.denverartmuseum.org/en/blog/quotes-frida-kahlo 

Kahlo, Frida. “Marxism Will Give Health to the Sick – by Frida Kahlo.” Accessed December 13, 2021.  https://www.fridakahlo.org/marxism-will-give-health-to-the-sick.jsp. 

Kahlo, Frida. “Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird, 1940.” Accessed December 13, 2021.

https://www.fridakahlo.org/self-portrait-with-thorn-necklace-and-hummingbird.jsp.

Kelley, Wes. “The Painful Life of Frida Kahlo: How Injury Led to Inspiration.” Medium. Medium, May 18, 2020. https://medium.com/@wnkelley13/the-painful-life-of-frida-kahlo-how-injury-led-to-inspiration-839210d3b58. 

LibQuotes. “Frida Kahlo Quote.” Lib Quotes. Accessed December 13, 2021.

https://libquotes.com/frida-kahlo/quote/lbd2f7e

Maranzani, Barbara. “How a Horrific Bus Accident Changed Frida Kahlo’s Life.” Biography.com. A&E Networks Television, June 17, 2020. https://www.biography.com/news/frida-kahlo-bus-accident. The Art Story. “Frida Kahlo Biography, Life & Quotes.” The Art Story. Accessed on December 13, 2021  https://www.theartstory.org/artist/kahlo-frida/life-and-legacy/.

The Art Story. “Frida Kahlo Biography, Life & Quotes.” The Art Story. Accessed on December 13, 2021  https://www.theartstory.org/artist/kahlo-frida/life-and-legacy/.

by oliviawronka

Frida Kahlo: Challenging Western Gender and Identity Norms

Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón known in the art world as just Frida Kahlo was a Mexican painter whose work primarily focuses on themes of identity, death, and personal life experience.  Kahlo’s Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair and double self portrait The Two Fridas capture her struggle with identity. Kahlo’s colorful self-portraits and surrealist paintings challenged the gender and identity norms of the Western world.

Frida Kahlo. Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair, 1940. Oil on canvas; 40 x 27.9 cm. MoMA Collection, New York City, NY. Image by MoMA.

Kahlo disagreed with the Western concepts of gender from an early age. Directly challenging gender norms, Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair (1940) shows the artist in a men’s suit with a traditionally male haircut. She is seated in a chair in the center of the frame making eye contact with the viewer. She is holding scissors in one hand and a lock of hair in the other and it appears that she has just cut her own hair. There are locks of hair scattered throughout the foreground and middle ground of the painting. At the time of this painting, women traditionally presented with long hair and wearing a dress or skirt. In Mexico a women’s long hair was a sign of beauty and womanhood. 

She exhibits herself in this painting from an androgynous angle sporting mens attier and a short hair cut. By cutting her hair, Kahlo stripps herself of the idealistic portrayal of what a woman should look like. Due to the artist’s medical issues and injuries, Kahlo was unable to bear children and suffered multiple miscarriages. Carrying a child and raising a family was something that was expected of women at that time while the men worked to support the family financially. This burdened Kahlo and created personal conflict with her identity as a woman. This painting was created following the artist’s divorce to her husband in 1939. During this time Kahlo swore she would sell her art inorder to be financially independent from any man. Therefore, this painting where she appears more masculine can also represent her becoming her own husband, and show that women do not need to rely on a man to be independent. This painting broke boundaries of both feminine beauty and expectations. 

Frida Kahlo. The Two Fridas, 1939. Oil on canvas; 173.5 x 173 cm. Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City, Mexico. Image by Museo de Arte Moderno.

Not only did Kahlo document her ambiguity and experimentation with her identity as a woman, she also expressed her mixed heritage. In her painting The Two Fridas (1939) the artist depicts two sides of herself. On the left is Kahlo in a white European style dress in connection to her German heritage from her fathers side. And on the right she is depicted wearing a traditional Mexican skirt and blouse to represent her Mexican and Spanish heritage from her mothers side. The two figures are seated on a bench holding hands against a dark cloudy background. Their hearts are exposed and appear to be connected by a vein. 

Kahlo moved to the United States in 1930 during the time of the Great Depression. This was an uncertain time for immigrants coming from Mexico and discrimination against spanish-speaking individuals grew as unemployment rates rose. This painting shows how the artist’s two very different sides are connected. Kahlo was proud of her Mexican and Spanish heritage and she symbolizes this in the attire worn by her on the right. She shows that although she had immigrated from Mexico, She would not cut herself off from her Mexican heritage. America was thought to have been a “melting pot” where inorder to avoid discrimination a person had to abandon their culture to fit into the societal norms of the U.S. This painting fights this idea that a person had to fully conform to the identity of their location. 

The work of Frida Kahlo fights both gender constructs and the discrimination faced by immigrants. Her work stems from Kahlo’s own personal experiences and reality as a woman of both European and Mexican descent. Her work continues to be an inspiration by challenging the gender and identity norms of the Western world.

Sources

Bakewell, Liza. “Frida Kahlo: A Contemporary Feminist Reading.” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 13, no. 3 (1993): 165–89. https://doi.org/10.2307/3346753.

Blakemore, Erin. “The Brutal History of Anti-Latino Discrimination in America.” Google. Google, August 29, 2018. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.history.com/.amp/news/the-brutal-history-of-anti-lat ino-discrimination-in-america.

The Museum of Modern Art. 2021. Frida Kahlo. Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair. 1940 | MoMA. [online] Available at: https://www.moma.org/collection/works/78333?artist_id=2963&page=1&sov_referrer=artist.