Frida Kahlo

Frida Kahlo (July 6, 1907 - July 13, 1954) was a Mexican painter who depicted the indigenous culture of her country in a style combining Realism, Symbolism and Surrealism. An active communist supporter, she was the wife of Mexican muralist and cubist painter Diego Rivera. She is widely known for her self-portraits often expressing her physical pain and suffering through symbolism. In the last three decades she has gained admiration in Europe and the US resulting in the 2002 movie about her life starring Salma Hayek, which sparked even further interest in the life and arts of Frida Kahlo. Her house in Coyoacán, Mexico is a museum and visited by large numbers of tourists every year.

This painting is entitled Self-Portrait with Monkey.

Frida Kahlo Biography

Frida Kahlo, born Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón, born to Hungarian-Jewish [atheist] immigrant Father and Mexican [catholic] Mother, lived from July 6, 1907 to July 13, 1954. During her short lived life, she had many accomplishments. She was a surrealist artist who expressed her feelings and thoughts through her paintings. To the public she was a high spirited rebellious woman. Her paintings were full of personal content. They expressed her internal feelings. Her creative style was always breathtaking yet bewildering. Frida was probably the most idolized woman artist of her time and she is a figure of legendary power (this painting is entitled The Flower of Life).

She did not originally plan to become an artist. A survivor of polio, she entered a pre-med program in Mexico City. At the age of 18, she was seriously injured in a bus accident. She spent over a year in bed recovering from fractures to her spine, collarbone and ribs, a shattered pelvis, and shoulder and foot injuries, making her a life-time sufferer of chronic pain. She endured more than 30 operations in her lifetime, and during her convalescence she began to paint. Her paintings, mostly self-portraits and still life, were deliberately naïve, and filled with the colors and forms of Mexican folk art. At 22, she married the famous Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, 20 years her senior. Their stormy, passionate relationship survived infidelities, the pressures of careers, divorce, remarriage, Frida's lesbian affairs, her poor health and her inability to have children. Frida once said: "I suffered two grave accidents in my life; one in which a streetcar knocked me down and the other was Diego."

During her lifetime, Frida created some 200 paintings, drawings and sketches related to her experiences in life, physical and emotional pain and her turbulent relationship with Diego. She produced 143 paintings, 55 of which are self-portraits. When asked why she painted so many self-portraits, Frida replied: "Because I am so often alone, because I am the person I know best."

Frida Kahlo Painting Diego on My Mind

Diego was, and remained the love of Frida's life. Married to him twice and often promised to leave him for good, she never was able to cut the ties, despite of his many infidelities (and hers) throughout their stormy, but very inspiring relationship.

Frida Kahlo Painting Luther Burbank 1931

While Frida Kahlo was openly drawn to communist ideology, throughout her life she expressed an internal turmoil and conflicting world views, as if she'd been undecided between a deep Catholic belief system and that of Marxism. In many of her painting she depicted religion-inspired themes.

Frida Kahlo Painting Moses Nucleus of Creation

Frida Kahlo Painting Self Portrait 1926

Frida painted many self-portraits and she was very good at it! It is interesting to walk through some of the most impressive ones and follow the various stages of her life and professional development.

Frida Kahlo's Painting Self Portrait

Self-Portrait Dedicated to Leon Trotsky
1937
Oil on Masonite, 30 x 24 in.
Gift of the Honorable Clare Boothe Luce

This self-portrait shows the same Frida Kahlo seen in numerous photographs: intense, with broad, expressive eyebrows and a fondness for traditional Mexican garb. However, it omits the overt symbolism and sometimes-harrowing depictions of her medical history featured in many other self-portraits.

Frida Kahlo's Painting Self Portrait

Frida Kahlo Painting "Frame"

Frida Kahlo Painting Self Portrait Dedicated to Dr. Eloesser

Frida Kahlo Painting Self Portrait with Cropped Hair

The Museum of Modern Art, MoMA Highlights, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, revised 2004, originally published 1999, p. 181

Kahlo painted Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair shortly after she divorced her unfaithful husband, the artist Diego Rivera. As a painter of many self- portraits, she had often shown herself wearing a Mexican woman's traditional dresses and flowing hair; now, in renunciation of Rivera, she painted herself short haired and in a man's shirt, shoes, and oversized suit (presumably her former husband's).

Kahlo knew adventurous European and American art, and her own work was embraced by the Surrealists, whose leader, André Breton, described it as "a ribbon around a bomb." But her stylistic inspirations were chiefly Mexican, especially nineteenth-century religious painting, and she would say, "I do not know if my paintings are Surrealist or not, but I do know that they are the most frank expression of myself." The queasily animate locks of fresh-cut hair in this painting must also be linked to her feelings of estrangement from Rivera (whom she remarried the following year), and they also have the dreamlike quality of Surrealism. For, into the work she has written the lyric of a Mexican song: "Look, if I loved you it was because of your hair. Now that you are without hair, I don't love you anymore."

Frida Kahlo Painting Self Portrait with Monkey 1938

Kahlo's imagery reflects a preoccupation with the exploration of love and its connection to pain in her life. She had many lovers, both male and female, and was married twice--first in 1929 and again in 1940--to the famous Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, whom she loved obsessively. The small, slender Kahlo was a stark contrast to the portly Rivera. Her father remarked, "It was like the marriage between an elephant and a dove." Their stormy relationship inspired many of her paintings. As her biographer, Hayden Herrera, noted, "Every time Diego left her, there's another painting with tears or gashes." In Kahlo's own words, Rivera showed her "the revolutionary sense of life and the true sense of color."

Kahlo preferred dressing in native Mexican costume and paid great attention to her hair and make-up even when gravely ill. The numerous self-portraits she created range in mood from violent (i.e. showing herself as a deer shot through with arrows or a woman ripped open from neck to navel and covered with nails), to heart-rending (showing herself naked and bleeding profusely from complications of childbirth), to more serene images such as the Gallery's Self-Portrait with Monkey.

In Self-Portrait with Monkey,Kahlo's signature icon-her joined eyebrows-is emphasized. She chose a monkey as her companion because she admired its childlike and playful nature. The apparently naïve (unschooled) drawing, bright and bizarre colors, and dramatic and fantastical images reflect her inspiration in native Mexican art.

Kahlo was a famous personality in her time, and lived a life full of drama and passion right to the end. When her first major exhibition finally opened in Mexico City's Gallery of Contemporary Art in 1953, she was not expected to attend due to the grave condition of her health. To the surprise and delight of her patrons and fans, however, she arrived on a hospital stretcher and was enthroned in her canopy bed, which had been installed in the Gallery that afternoon. Less than a year later, she died from an overdose of tranquilizers. Her popularity has taken an upswing lately, due both to the avid collection of her work by celebrities such as Madonna and the relevance of themes such as androgyny and violence in the 1990s.

Frida Kahlo Self-portrait on the Borderline Between Mexico and the US

Mexico and the United States, 1932, Oil on metal, 12 1/2" x 13 3/4", Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Manuel Reyero

In 1930, when Diego received several commissions to paint murals in the United States, the couple packed their bags and headed north. At the end of four years, Diego remained content in his American surroundings, but Frida was homesick and miserable. Her experience living in "Gringolandia" inspired the painting, Self-portrait on the Borderline Between Mexico and the United States.

Frida Kahlo Painting Yo Y Mis Pericos

Frida Kahlo Painting Magnolias

Frida was an avid gardener and admired Nature. Flowers, birds, crops, fruits, and other Nature related concepts often appear on her paintings.

Frida Kahlo Painting Fruit of the Earth

Frida Kahlo Painting Still Life with Parrot

Frida Kahlo Painting The Tree of Hope

In the painting Tree of Hope, again we see two Fridas. One is in bright Tehuana costume and guards over the injured Frida, who is seen on a hospital gurney with surgical cuts on her back.

Frida Kahlo Painting Dona Rosita Morillo

Portrait painting was one of Frida Kahlo's strongest skills. She did not only create self portraits, but also was rather successful in depicting important people in her life, such as the portraits indicate below.

Frida Kahlo Painting Portrait of Alicia Galant

Frida Kahlo Painting Portrait of My Sister Christina

Frida Kahlo Painting Portrait of Virginia 1929

Frida Kahlo Painting Retrato de la Senora Natasha Gelman

Frida Kahlo Painting Retrato de la Marian Morillo Safa

Frida Kahlo Painting Two Women

Frida Kahlo Painting The Little Deer

Not completely without Salvador Dali's influence, Frida tried her wings in surrealistic painting. In the painting entitled Little Deer, she painted a running deer with her own head inserted where the deer's head would be at. Her tormented soul was trying to escape from a lot of things at the same time. In the painting below, her body shows in the bathtub as disintegrated into pieces. She was trying to express her internal pain and sorrow over the fact that she could not become a mother, and her trauma over her injuries both physical and emotional in nature.

Frida Kahlo Painting What the Water Gave Me

Frida Kahlo Painting My Dress Hangs There

Frida Kahlo Painting The Two Fridas

The Two Fridas, 1939, Oil on canvas, 67" x 67", Collection of the Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City

Painted in 1939 at the time of her divorce from Diego, The Two Fridas is believed to be an expression of Frida's feelings at the time. This double self-portrait was the first large-scale work painted by Frida.

The Two Fridas, was painted around the time she and Diego got a divorce. One Frida is the loved Frida, dark-skinned and wearing Mexican dress, holding a picture of Diego. She is holding hands with the other Frida, who is paler and in European dress and who has a broken, exposed heart. Her torn emotions are clearly displayed on the canvas. Yet a year later she and Diego remarried. However, her pain continued as her health worsened in the 1940s. She had numerous operations (about 35), had to wear a steel corset to support her spinal column, and was frequently in the hospital. Months were spent in bed, but she continued to paint.

Frida Kahlo Painting Thinking of Death

Frida's health got even worse in 1950 and she was hospitalized for a year. She had more operations and her leg had to be amputated. Of this she wrote in her diary: "Feet, what do I need them for, if I have wings to fly?" She still painted in bed when she could, as painting had become a tremendous source of spiritual support for her. Yet the pain was becoming unbearable and she wanted to die. She was suffering more than ever in her life. She was preoccupied with death. Her paintings reflected her depression, often including skeletons and other grim images. She eventually died on July 13, 1954. Diego later described that day as the most tragic day of his life. Frida lived her life to the fullest, despite immense pain, handicaps, and suffering. She had a gift for communicating her emotions to the world through painting. Her paintings are beautiful, often heartbreaking works, and are uniquely her style

Frida Kahlo Link List

Frida Kahlo: Here is a link to a gallery displaying some of Frida Kahlo's paintings. To display this page you need a browser with JavaScript support.
Reproduction art oil paintings of Frida Kahlo: Reproduction Art of Frida Kahlo, Including, Motherhood 1916, Modesta and Inesita, Self Portrait 1941 and many others.
Tate Modern Gallery Frida Kahlo: The Mexican artist Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) is now regarded as one of the most significant artists of the twentieth century and this is the first major UK exhibition dedicated to her work to take place for over twenty years. This is a website of the London Tate Gallery.
The Life and Times of Frida Kahlo | PBS: This documentary explores the extraordinary life of 20th-century Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, who became an international sensation in the worlds of modern art and radical politics. Rita Moreno narrates the film. you can order it if you missed the broadcast.