Using Art As A Platform For Emotional Release Of Traumatic Life Experiences

Frida Kahlo’s biography begins on July 6, 1907 when she was born in the city of Coyocoan, Mexico City. Kahlo has become famous for paintings that show the suffering of bodily injury, which were related to a busing accident that injured her hips and spine. After this debilitating incident, Kahlo met the famous muralist, Diego Rivera, and they were married. Kahlo’s fame as an artist was partially inspired by this marriage, which allowed her to paint images that related to her own experience as a disabled and psychologically depressed individual. In many cases, many of these images, such as the "Self Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird" (1940), began to show the various aspects of womanhood that she expressed through her own feminist ideals.

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.

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.

Painting was the artistic escape route for Kahlo’s mind and body. To occupy her mind after the more than 30 surgeries, she began to paint as part of her recovery process. Fifty-five of her one hundred and forty-three paintings were self-portraits. These paintings were purposely painted in a naïve way to show vulnerability (“A Tribute to Frida Kahlo”). A few of her most famous works include: “Self-Portrait Between Mexico and the United States, 1932”, “My Dress Hangs There, 1933”, and

The painting portrays Two Fridas self-portraits of two different personalities, this was painted after her divorce from her husband Diego Rivera as she deeply loved her him but was betrayed. The artwork is one of Kahlo’s biggest artwork, which is subjected with double self-portrait of Two Fridas, with the size of 173.5 x 173 cm. The main objects in the artwork that catches it’s viewers eyes are the double self-portrait of Frida with the Tehuana (Mexican) and the European dress. The self- portrait and the two hearts on each self-portrait of Kahlo are

The artwork Frida Kahlo completed during her lifetime was heavily influenced by the suffering triggered by the torment of her physical incapability’s and tumultuous marriage. From physical to romantic to family predicaments Frida Kahlo is the epitome of demonstrating “alegria [joy] in the face of suffering” (Herrera 6).

Before her life as an artist, Frida Kahlo would suffer traumatic experiences that will lead her to taking her first steps into the world of art. She would experience pain in her childhood that will lead into her early adulthood. As an adult, Frida would then suffer a fatal accident as well as the infidelity of her husband. In addition to the personal issues she endured, she also dealt with the questioning of her national identity. Kahlo’s artistic abilities later led her to create self-portraits which often showed herself suffering. Using her personal tragedies, Frida Kahlo was able to render paintings that resembled pain and suffering.

In Frida Kahlo’s artwork “The Broken Column 1944”, it exhibits an example of a private life experience painting. In this painting Frida articulates her grief and misery in the most honest and disturbing way. She has a series of nails entrenched within her skin. With Kahlo facing front, there is a missing piece leading from her neck down to her stomach. Behind the missing section there is an interpretation of her spinal cord. In this painting, Frida is positioned in the earth with dark valleys. The Broken Column in itself along with Kahlo’s background gives the audience a sense of what kind of pain she has experienced. The sophistication of this painting is very distinguishing. She arranged each stroke firmly to build a simple and clear image of what pain she was going

-Frida Kahlo, a painter whose life was wrought with both physical and emotional suffering. (Budrys, 2006) After surviving polio aged 6 (Courtney, O'Hearn and Franck, 2016), Kahlo was involved in a near-fatal trolley-car accident as a teenager. This accident left her with considerable damage to her pelvis and spinal cord (Darbyshire, 1994), the extent of these injuries left Kahlo infertile (Antelo, 2013). During her lifetime she produced a great body of work, much of which was used as a way of expressing the pain caused by her ailing health (Budrys, 2006). The psychological trauma Kahlo suffered is apparent in Kahlo’s piece “Henry Ford Hospital”. This is a particularly striking work, conveying the despair felt after one in a series of miscarriages (Antelo, 2013). As in many of her works, Kahlo’s body is contorted in an effort to display the physical pain which dominated her life (Antelo, 2013), (Budrys, 2006). The Red ribbons gripped in her hands

One great example, April 13, 1953 at the “Galería de Arte Contemporáneo”, Frida's doctor told her she was not well enough to attend the opening and she was not to leave her bed. Frida determined to attend the opening, loaded her bed into the back of a truck, driven to the exhibition opening as Frida followed in an ambulance. Upon arrival, Frida was carried into the gallery on a stretcher by four men who carry her inside to greet her friends and was placed in the middle of the gallery in her bed. Unfortunately a year later, she took her last breath at the Casa Azul just days after her birthday. Since her death, Kahlo’s fame as an artist has only grown. Her beloved Blue House was opened as a museum in 1958. The feminist movement of the 1970’s led to a renewed interest in her life and work becoming an icon to many. More recently, her life was the subject of a 2002 film in which was nominated for six Academy Awards ("Frida Kahlo Biography”). Despite Frida fearing that after her death she would be forgotten, aside from her fascinating masterpieces immortalizing her throughout the years, she keeps living within the hearts of many Mexicans that know her back story because of being the true embodiment of a very important lesson she left behind, despite all of the challenges life throws at you, keep pushing forward

Frida Kahlo was a Mexican artist that lived during the time period of the Mexican Revolution. Kahlo become a cultural icon and is especially revered in her home country for her focus on her Mexican identity. Using her personal tragedies, both physical and psychological, combined with a realistic painting style, Kahlo produced images that were emotionally raw and visually disturbing. Her artistic output was dominated by self-portraits that often show the artist suffering. Kahlo's interest in her own mixed German-Mexican ancestry in conjunction with the influence of her husband's strong nationalism in his own art meant that many of Kahlo's works dealt with combined issues of national identity, her husband's looming presence as an artist in his

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).

The film Frida Kahlo, commentary written by Hayden Herrera, accurately described famous Mexican artist Frida Kahlo’s biggest life struggles and proudest moments and it’s relationship to her artwork throughout her lifespan. The film successfully managed to emphasize her major paint works by tracing her life with the use of direct quotes from personal diaries to further explain the significance of her artwork by their good use of composition, perspective, and location.

4. Frida Kahlo essentially became an international cultural icon, honored by many people, especially in Mexico. Her artwork withholds visual symbolism of all kinds of emotional and physical pain and most importantly she incorporated indigenous culture and her depiction of the female experience. Including illustrating the feelings of death, loneliness, pain, including the pain of miscarriages, failed marriage, and the aftermath of tragic accidents. Through her imagery, she was able to portray her life experiences. She would include specific elements that symbolized something greater. Throughout the process of analyzing all different aspects of Frida Kahlo’s paintings, it provided a deeper understanding to each painting.

Frida Kahlo, born in 1907 and died by 1953, was a mexican painter and feminist icon known for her self portraits. Not only is she most known for her work of self portraits, but for painting her traumatic and psychologically painful events from her early childhood all the way to her death. The self taught artist took advantage of her raw talent and mixed it with her personal tragedy to create often disturbing yet intriguing images giving the audience insight to her personal life. Frida Kahlo said “I don’t paint dreams or nightmares, I paint my own reality.” Kahlo used art as an outlet and transcended her pain onto a canvas to create a visual autobiographical journal of her own life from the painful beginning to the tragic end.