The Work of Frida Kahlo Essay

Frida Kahlo was a very talented Mexican artist that revolutionized art at a very young age. Her work is still idolized and celebrated today and is studied by many artists, institutes of higher education, museums, and fans. Kahlo was born in the town of Coyoacan, Mexico on July the sixth in the year of 1907 (Kettenmann 3). She made around 143 paintings, and out of those 143 paintings, 55 were self-portraits that included symbolism of her physical and emotion pain. Furthermore, in her portraits she used symbolism to express her wounds and sexuality. She use to say: “I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality” (Fuentes 41). Her paintings style include of vibrant colors and was heavily influenced

Throughout her career, Frida had shown many different themes of her life through her paintings. It seems clear, through analyzation of her paintings, that Frida lived something of a double life. Frida paints herself in distinctly different ways at times, sometimes she is a beautiful woman with strength like iron, and sometimes she is a frail damsel who has been broken already and will be broken again. Contrasting paintings include Self Portrait with Monkeys (Kahlo, 1) and Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace, Diego and I (Kahlo, 1) and The Love Embrace of the Universe, the Earth (Mexico), Me, Diego, and Mr. Xolotl (Kahlo, 1). All of these paintings show that not only is there a contrast in her personality, in fact, Frida’s is actually two different people, as she paints it.

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

Frida was against the feminine ideals that were imposed on her by society as a result she became an important feminist icon. Kahlo was often, and still is, criticized by her facial hair, what is admirable about her is that despite how much negative opinions she experienced, she kept her head held high, she was proud of her unibrow

Frida's artwork has always interested me in many ways. Her paintings are so much more than self-portraits and surrealism. She illustrates her life and the struggles she goes through, even if most would like to ignore the darker aspects of life. The theme of suffering permeates Frida’s self-portraits and often explicitly comprises their subject matter. She visually depicts physical and psychological struggles through the distortions of her body, which is fragmented, doubled, turned inside-out, and merged with non-human elements. She shows me that I can be strong through life even when I'm hurting physically and emotionally. Frida challenged herself and her

Frida Kahlo was married to the famous Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. While married to Rivera, Frida gave up painting. She loved Diego Rivera very much and wanted to be important to him. Frida knew that his murals were the number one in his life. Once she saw the reality that she would always come after Diego’s art, she became obsessed with trying to be number one, and devoted her life to being with him.

Frida Kahlo, she never intended to become a painter. Kahlo was aspired to become a doctor as a young woman, but after a horrible accident at the age of 18, it left her mentally, as well as physically scared for life. This event had totally changed her life forever. The theme in almost all of Frida’s painting was her own life. Her paintings were based on events took place during her lifetime. As we can see in many of Frida’s paintings, especially in her self-portraits, it expresses her own personal emotions along with feelings about an event that happened in her life, such as her physical condition, her lack of ability to conceive children of her own, her ideology of life and nature, and most important of all, it was her unstable relationship with her husband Diego. Somewhere between the movement of surrealism, realism and symbolism in the art of Frida Kahlo, she was able to bring out tenderness, femininity, reality, cruelty and suffering within her paintings.

This ideology would be prevalent in her paintings by the usage of native imagery, vivid colors and her sense of self. She herself wore traditional costumes and elaborately braided her hair with ribbons, bows, and fresh flowers to express her identification with Mexico?s indigenous culture. Frida was already a strikingly beautiful woman with long dark hair, striking features, and her signature connecting eyebrows. She was the face of the women

Frida Kahlo's influence still lingers around the world. Even with Frida dead for almost two decades, she is still celebrated and thought of as an idol. Frida Kahlo was an artist in many different ways. Besides Frida's incredible talent to paint surrealist thoughts and emotions on canvas, she also was and artist in her mind and body. Frida's attire of traditional Mexican clothing, which consisted of long, colorful dresses and exotic jewelry, and her thick connection eyebrows, became her trademark. To the public, Frida Kahlo appeared to be full of spirit and joy. She walked through life happily, with a smile glued to her face. However, her feelings of anguish, anger, unhappiness of her painful miscarriages, and

Frida was best known for her self-portraits. All she painted were self portraits because she said that she often felt alone. Her mom decided to have an easel made so Frida can paint in bed, while her father lends her a box of oil paints and brushes. The first painting she painted was in the year 1926 and was entitled Self Portrait in a Velvet Dress. This self portrait of her shows that she has a long narrowed face, long neck, and elongation of her hands recalls the Mannerist portraits of Bronzino. The turbulent waves in background give this painting a deep emotional turmoil. In this painting, some of the line work is bold, thick, and some that are flowing. The tone in this painting can be subtle. I think this is the tone because it is very hard to describe and figure out what Frida was feeling while she painted this. Most likely, she was feeling alone and depressed. Many of her paintings were a reference of her reproduction failure. The painting Henry Ford Hospital also known as The Flying Bed, was based on her first miscarriage in 1932.This painting is the most painful portrait she has painted. It is very descriptive because it shows herself laying on the bed bleeding. There were six images surrounding her body. On her lower abdomen by the umbilical cord looking red lines is the fetus of Dieguito. The snail on the upper right represents the horror of losing a baby slowly. Next, is the machine on the lower left, this symbolizes medical impersonality. The orchid is real and was actually a gift from Diego

Frida Kahlo is a world-renowned Mexican painter known for her shocking self-portaits filled with painful imagery. Her artwork was seen by many as surrealist and socialist, but she refused the labels put on herself. Until today, her works have been able to exude the same playful and wild feel as before (Fisher n.p). Her legacy as a painter has attracted prominent people like Madonna who has confessed her admiration for the painter. Not only that but fashion designers are frequently inspired by her iconic Tijuana dresses while her paintings have been priced at more than three million dollars (Bauer 115).

Frida Kahlo’s life was one marked by extreme suffering, extreme heroism, and extreme genius. Nothing ever stopped her. She was a crying heart, however always standing out with her colorful dresses.no matter whether she was in Paris, New York or Coyoacan she clothed herself elaborately in the Theuana costumers of Indian maidens. As much as Frida’s

During the 1930’s and 1940’s, women of the world held virtually one role and one role only…homemaker. This was no different for the women of Mexico, except for one woman in particular, Frida Kahlo. Frida refused to accept the current ideals of society and the accepted social norms by engaging in things that few women in history ever had. Frida was involved in politics, she was promiscuous with men and women, she painted pictures of herself in ways that had never been done before, and she wore the clothes of her indigenous people as opposed to the current fashions of the world. The movie Frida showcases all of these qualities. The director, Julie Taymor, uses the symbolism of these things to show how Frida

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

”Diego is the beginning, the constructor, my baby, boyfriend, painter, my lover, “my husband” my friend, my mother, myself and the universe”. This quote very much reinforces her state of mind throughout their whole marriage. “my husband”…this shows that frida never really considered Diego as much of a husband because of the affairs that Diego ha had and his backing out of their fidelity. This quote on fridas though of her marriage is very much shown in the artwork “The loving embrace of the universe, the earth, Diego, myself & Senor. Xolotl”. This artwork, very much depicts fridas state of mind