Frida Kahlo Psychology

As a young child Frida Kahlo was a very intelligent girl with hopes of becoming a doctor. She developed polio as a young child and at the age of eighteen was seriously injured in a traffic accident that caused her to become weak throughout the rest of her life. In 1920 for ten years she traveled

According to The Life and Times of Frida Kahlo, “horrific trolley car accident left her debilitated… husband cheated on her with younger sister Cristina.” Kahlo was lugging around an enemy her whole life. Her husband tested her in many ways and mentally and physically brought her self-esteem down. She constantly had to deal with the comparison. What was even worse was that he had cheated on her with her own sister.

Frida Kahlo's home, La Casa Azul, was turned into a museum after her death. It now receives over 25, 000 visitors monthly. Frida Kahlo was one of the world’s most famous female Latin American artists famous for her revolutionary self- portraits. Frida Kahlo played a revolutionary role in the globalizing twentieth century, because she influenced feminism, suffered remarkable tragedies, and was remembered for her self- portraits showcasing pain, passion, and surrealism. Frida Kahlo was born

Also, it seems that the monkey on Frida’s shoulder is trying to dismantle this thorn necklace, so even with these other guardians or friends that Frida has transcended from her mind to the canvas she still exists in some from of anguish. To extrapolate one step further, Frida feels that no one can help her in this world of suffering, even if they desire to, and she is ultimately isolated in her own sense of reality.

Frida Kahlo was one of the most fascinating visual artists of the nineteenth century. Her art and life were filled with pain that was both emotional and physical which she expressed through her paintings. Frida was her art. Frida did not conform to most cultural norms or gender roles in her life time, she was a free spirit trapped in an invalid body. While she did not assume very much acclaim during her lifetime she did manage to be very well traveled even though she was born and died in the same home. She eventually developed a cult-like following in the nineteen-eighties and nineties. She has become a poster girl for modern feminism and a political force of her own time, through all of her physical pain and heartache she was able to

In contrast with most of Frida’s other paintings, this one actually depicts a few actual aspects. The skeleton, for example, is something Frida truly had on top of her bed; It did not have fireworks attached to it, but rather it was just a life-sized paper mache skeleton named “Juda”. Frida often referred to it as an “amusing reminder of mortality” and she used it for the same reason in this painting. Like previously stated, the skeleton lacks fireworks in real life. Frida actually puts them in to symbolize the suddenness of death and to emphasize her death was to be celebrated. The vines that envelop her body are painted to represent not only life, but also rebirth. The woman in the bed is, in fact, Frida and she looked sickly because, at the time this painting was made, Frida was close to death. Frida, however, does not look sad or mournful, but instead, she looks simply content. The colors used in this painting are bright and happy, something Frida wanted to use to depict a happy and celebratory mood. Lastly, the bed appears to be floating in the sky, levitating towards heaven and also showing the expansiveness of life and death, much like the sky is. The author of the article titled Feel My Pain, Natasha Walters (2005), had this to say about how to interpret Frida’s themes, “If we want to read the art as the story of a woman, we have to be aware that we will never

In “The Broken Column” Frida expresses anguish and suffering in a straightforward manner as we see metal nails piercing Frida’s face, arms, breasts, torso, and what we can assume is her upper thigh underneath a white sheet. Frida has duplicated herself bound and constrained in what appears to be a body brace. At Frida’s torso is a fissure like split allowing us to view an exposed broken column in place of her spine. The column itself seems to be weak and on the verge of collapsing to ruble. The landscape behind Frida seems to be barren with areas of dark ravines. The tears on her face almost seem out of place in the sense that her facial expression remains calm, reserved and strong. Her whole body seems to be supported only by the brace wrapped around body and yet she shows spiritual triumph. We see this in how we can see she's in physical anguish, and yet she looks straight ahead and challenges both herself and the audience to face her situation.

During their travel the street car they were riding in was hit by a bus and a steel handrail went straight through her hip, fracturing her pelvis and spine. She endured a long painful recovery and coped by painting. Frida said “I paint myself because I am often alone and I am the subject I know best.” After painting a few pieces she met back up with Diego to view her work. They clicked immediately and go married only a year later. They had a very rough relationship. They would travel around everywhere and Diego would have affairs which left Frida heartbroken, but she always stayed. Due to her fractured pelvis she was unable to have children and encountered 2 miscarriages which killed her emotionally. (Frida Kahlo Biography 2)

Although his love for art was immense, Rivera’s relationship with the passionate Frida Kahlo would rival against it. After they met through a mutual friend (“Chronology” 6), Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, a Mexican artist (Krull 85), were married in Coyoacán on August 21, 1929 (“Chronology” 6). Rivera was 42 years old, and Frida was 22 years old (“Chronology”6). They were nicknamed the Elephant and the Dove because Rivera was over six feet tall and weighed 300 pounds as opposed to Frida, who was five feet three inches and weighed 98 pounds (Krull 85). This marriage was Rivera’s third and Frida’s first (Krull 85).

Frida attended a National Preparatory School in 1922 hoping to become a doctor. At the same school, she saw Diego Rivera, painting “The Creation” (“Biography.com”). Frida was inspired and approached Diego with her compliments. He told her to go home and return with a painting in one week for him to judge. When she did as he asked, he was very impressed with her artistic ability and they became close (“Frida Kahlo: Biography”). Their relationship progressed and then Frida got into her terrible bus accident.

Frida Kahlo was born in Mexico City on July 7, 1907. Though she wanted many to believe that she was born in 1910, the year of the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution. Her father was a photographer of Hungarian Jewish decent, and her mother was Spanish and Native American. From an early age Frida's life would be marked by years of physical suffering. At the age of six she was stricken with polio, this left her right leg to appear much thinner than the other, as well as leaving her with a limp. Though she suffered dearly as a child, she was fearless and brave. She was also extremely intelligent.

Frida’s rise to success was defined by the challenges she endured over time. She had this sense of durability, strength and resilience. She can be rude and bold and also smoke and drink like the men. . At first Frida”s painted what she felt, but it wasn’t to show anyone or sell any paintings. . Every tragedy that affected her she would paint it and express it. In my opinion her rise began once she witness her husband having and affair with her sister. it hurt her so much inside the only way to let it go and let it out was she had to paint it. After that, she went on her own and began painting her pain. Through out her life she endured many hardships that hurt her internally. This shifted her point of view

Frida from one side to the other at the level of the pelvis (104). Frida Kahlo was left with a broken spinal column, a broken collarbone, several broken ribs, a broken pelvis, and eleven fractures in her right leg. In addition her right foot was dislocated and crushed, and her shoulder was out of joint. For a month, Frida was forced to stay flat on her back, encased in a plaster cast and enclosed in a boxlike structure. The steel handrail from the tram had literally gone through her body at the level of the abdomen; entering on the left side, it had gone out through the vagina. Due to this accident, Frida underwent thirty different operations and three miscarriages. It was during this time that Frida Kahlo discovered her talent for painting and drawing, also during this challenging time for her she produced "The Broken Spine". Having to depend on everyone but herself, Kahlo portrays herself as weak and helpless. She depicts her self-portrait with metal rods supporting her broken spine. Although Frida's recovery was miraculous, she did have relapses of tremendous pain and fatigue all throughout her life, which cause her to be hospitalized for long periods of time, bedridden at times (106). She underwent tremendous stress

Frida was a very skilled painter who did mainly self-portraits where she expressed her feelings and portrayed herself in unconventional ways. Frida would take some of the events of her life and paint them. For example, Frida painted the auto accident she was in that left her with traumatizing pain, the miscarriages she suffered as a result of the accident, the heartbreak she

The painting is of two versions of Frida Kahlo, closely gripping hands and sharing one heart between them. They are dressed in contrary clothing, with the Frida on the left dressed in modern European garb, while the other to the right is in traditional Mexican clothing. When viewing the painting, we are immediately attracted to the left Frida, who has nearly all of the light in the painting shining down on her. Her European clothing, popular in Mexico at the time, feels very constricting for both the subject and the viewer,specifically the collar grasping her neck so very tightly. Her upright and fragile stance and her almost limp grasp of the second Frida’s is understandable as we see the gaping hole where her heart should be. The pulsating anatomy of her wound bleeds into the room, while her face is completely indifferent. A single vein connects the hole in left Frida to the heart of right Frida. In left Frida’s unclenched hand, a delicate pair of scissors, indicating that she had wretched the heart out of her own bosom. It is this connection that guides us to the Frida to the right, but not before we notice the background behind them. A gray and cloudy backdrop that seems to embody Kahlo’s emotional state at the time, it is hard to distinguish the right Frida from its murky depths. A shadow presiding all around her, the right Frida is dressed in a traditional Mexican dress, with a posture and facial expression completely identical to the other Frida’s. The most eye-catching feature of hers, however, is the pulsating heart that the left Frida is lacking beating out of her chest. This gruesome and oblivious picture is made only more extraordinary when we make out the object right Frida is