Frida Kahlo

At one point or another, we all have been exposed to unconventional woman in art who has been more recognizable by her signature unibrow and flower headdresses. This woman is known as Frida Kahlo, a well known Mexican American surrealist artist who went through many struggles in dealings with a challenging upbringing in a time of revolution and a lifetime of pain. But with a challenge, there is also strength. Kahlo possessed many strengths that allowed her to prevail against these factors that went against her and become an icon in art.

People may refer to Frida Kahlo as the lady with the unibrow, but others refer to her as one the greatest Mexican painters. She was born on July 6, 1907 in Coyocoan Mexico. When she was about 6 she was diagnosed with polio which is a highly contagious viral infection that can lead to paralysis, breathing problems, or even death. (Crosta 1) Due to polio she was bedridden for 9 months. Frida attended the National Preparatory School where she first noticed Diego Rivera who is a famous muralist. At this time she fell in love with another man Alejandro Gomez Arias. She and Alejandro were on a trip when a monumental moment happened which will change her life forever…. (Frida Kahlo Biography 1)

Hayden Herrera’s book Frida, A Biography of Frida Kahlo (1983) writes with engrossing detail the life story of the famous Mexican painter Frida Kahlo known for her folk art with vibrant colors and elements of surrealism. Herrera captivates her audience by telling the challenging journey and the various important obstacles Kahlo had to face throughout her entire life during the twentieth-century. Herrera explains how Kahlo’s various masterpieces have been shaped by her life circumstances and experiences like her childhood in Mexico City during the Mexican Revolution; the traumatic accident when she was a young girl that left her incapacitated and unable to bear children; her turbulent marriage with muralist Diego Rivera and love affairs;

They say, “pictures are worth a thousand words” and I believe when it comes to my chosen artist, Frida Kahlo, her portraits could not be a better example of that saying. All of the 200 paintings done by Frida Kahlo say more about her life and what she experienced than any article I have ever read about her. From her health issues and violent bus accident to her tumultuous marriage with her husband, Diego Rivera is all an influence in her paintings.

Frida Kahlo was a Mexican painter who is best known for her self portraits. Frida was born as Magdalena Carmen Frieda Kahlo y Calderón but later changed it to Frida Kahlo. She was born on July 6, 1907 in her parents house known as La Casa Azul in Coyoacán, Mexico. At that time, Coyoacan was a small town on the outskirts of Mexico City. Later throughout the years Kahlo claimed to have been born on July 7, 1910 to coincide with the date of when the Mexican Revolution began. Her parents were Guillermo Kahlo and Matilde Calderón y González which they had four daughters, Matilde (1898-1951), Adriana (1902-1968), Frida (1907-1954) and Cristina (1908-1964), Kahlo was the third daughter. By age 16 Frida Kahlo was able to read not only in Spanish but English and German as well.

According to this article focused on Frida’s life. She was born in 1907 in Coyoacan three years before the Mexican Revolution broke out. Her mother was Matilde Calderon, of mixed Spanish and Indian, and her father Guillermo Kahlo, a German-Jewish expatriate of Hungarian decent. On September 1925, Frida was in a near fatal bus accident. She sustained multiple fractures of the back, right leg and pelvis. Frida represent a host of contradictory qualities and behaviors: strength and resilience in the face of tragedy and continuous physical and psychic pains. Frida was also a strong political consciousness active in her daily life and painting (Barnet 243).

Frida Kahlo is one of the definitive Latina women in the history of the world. Her image and art are synonymous with the Latin American experience and she is an inspiration to many Latin Americans today. Her life and image have been co-opted by so many people over the years after her death that her life has become a post-modern cultural icon. If you look at Frida’s life, she can be whatever you want her to be. She can be seen as an inspirational artist, Diego Rivera’s wife, a revolutionary, a communist, a Mexican role model, feminist queen, etc. the list goes on and on. In this way, she reminds me of Marilyn Monroe. Marilyn Monroe can be interpreted in many ways as well such as sex symbol, actress, model, fashion and glamour muse, etc. Marilyn Monroe is the Western societal representation of perfection in a woman but Frida Kahlo is a representation of imperfect perfection. She was not traditionally pretty for a lot of reasons. Her body was severely disfigured by some unfortunate accidents and this hindered her ability to ever meet Western beauty standards (the ableism of Western beauty standards was alive and well even in the early 1900’s). Frida’s influence to feminists and people who study body image is how she related to life and how she thought of herself outside of traditional societal standards.

Frida, Kahlo, the daughter of a Spanish and Mexican Indian mother and a German father, gained fame in Mexico and around the world for their vividly colored paintings. They have been called intense and bizarre, surrealist and realist.

Born the middle child to her family in 1907 to a country in political unrest, Frida Kahlo is a controversial and famous Mexican artist whose life experiences, although traumatic, were the driving force behind her art which has inspired feminists and contemporary artists for decades. On the outside, Mexico appeared to be an economically and socially prospering country. Crime rates had been lowered, railroads abound, and new factories being built. Leading from 1876-1911, Porfirio Diaz urbanized and industrialized Mexico as an elitist dictator. Under the ruse of a “President”, Diaz held regular elections that were controlled in every aspect by him. 1910 marked the beginnings of a revolution, the country demanded democracy and was planning to overthrow Diaz. In 1911, Diaz was promptly thrown out of office and replaced with Francisco Madero, who refused to appease to the people and offer the reforms they were demanding. ("Modern History”) The world of political instability and revolutions is the one that Kahlo was born into.

The artwork ‘'Self Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird' is a self portrait created by Frida Kahlo using oil on canvas. The piece depicts Kahlo from the shoulders up, facing directly towards the audience with an emotionless facial expression. She is in a tropical environment with a background consisting primarily of large tropical leaves, in the top right corner you can see the blue sky and some clouds. Kahlo is wearing a plain white shirt and around her neck there are intertwined thorn branches. One branch is wrapped quite tightly around her neck and you can see some trickles of blood running down her chest from where the thorns are piercing the skin. Hanging from this branch is a black, lifeless hummingbird, it appears to be attached

Julie Taymor has taken the astonishing story of Frida Kahlo one of Mexico’s best-known artists, and turned it into her own piece of artistic brilliance, ‘Frida’. Frida, played by Salma Hayek experiences a number of events that impact her life which influences her to tell her stories through the use of visual art. After a tragic bus accident that almost killed her, Frida began unravelling who she was and started to paint the views she had of herself at times that were beautiful and times that were not. Throughout the film Taymor has taken pieces of artwork and made use of ‘pans’ to cut to unrealistic scenes reflecting the unfamiliar emotions of characters in Frida. It is particularly seen within the film that Frida is constantly presented as

Frida Kahlo was born on July 6th 1907, but she told people that she was born three years later. Her dad was of German decent and her mother of Spanish as well as American Indian. Her household was home to four girls including her. At the early age of six, she was diagnosed with Polio, which caused one of her legs to be smaller than the other.

Frida Kahlo was an artist who saw things in a new light, but most of all she shows us her life through her artwork. She shows us the pain she feels, or how she may feel lonely, in very few words. Frida Kahlo lived and died in the same place, in the “Blue House” at 247 Londres Street in Coyoacán. Her life was centered on this home, even though she did not live there her entire life she always ended up returning to the place where it all began.

Film Frida tells a life of a Mexican artist, Frida Kahlo. Her name, Frida, which means peace in German, was given by her father when she was born in Mexico. By giving the name Frida, his father probably hoped that she would live peacefully in a happy moment. At first glance, she lived a happy life for some moments. She could marry man who she loves a lot, and she was also able to spend her life painting lots of pictures with her husband’s support. Sadly, however, taking a close look at her life, she lived a very hard life that is full of hardships and suffering so that she could not live in peace. Her life was full of sadness and anguish because of the two main incidents, which are the car accident and her husband’s constant promiscuous behavior.

According to Fran Lebowitz,“Very few people possess true artistic ability. It is therefore both unseemly and unproductive to irritate the situation by making an effort. If you have a burning, restless urge to write or paint, simply eat something sweet and the feeling will pass”(Lebowitz ). Truly there are people who do not have any “artistic ability” and they will struggle to draw or even paints. They may even think that trying to attempt to draw is just “unproductive” but in reality if one can write their name they can do art (Lebowitz). Therefore, art can be relatable to anything in this world, either it is through the media, applied or even in careers.