Essay On Frida Kahlo

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

At a very early age she was starting to show signs of all the troubles that her life was going to bring onto her. “In 1913 at age 6, Frida was struck with Polio which made it difficult for her to use her right leg properly and it was left damaged” (Griffiths, 2014). This accident was one of the reasons why Frida began wearing long colorful skirts because she used them as a cover up for her deformed leg. “In the year of 1925, the year that Frida had just turned 18, she was injured in a near fatal street accident in which a bus collided with a tram” (Rogers, 2009), this accident caused her to break her pelvic bone and spinal column. It was cause of this accident that the doctors that were looking after her at the time of the accident were starting to question if she was going to be able to survive. This accident caused her to continue having back surgeries throughout her lifetime. This accident was also the reason why she started painting. Frida Kahlo once stated “I don't paint dreams or nightmares, I paint my own reality.” This quote acknowledges how bizarre a lot of paintings that Frida Kahlo made were but to Frida Kahlo it was all reality, her life as well as accidents were real bizarre. “In the year of 1926 Frida Kahlo spends time at the hospital recovering from all her injuries at the time while at the Hospital she learns that she

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.

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)

It would be September 17, 1925, that Kahlo 's life would be changed forever. It was a normal day, and Kahlo had been out shopping with her boyfriend, Alex Gomez Arias. They decided to board a bus that would take them back home to Coyoacan. A streetcar collided with the bus that the couple were on, and Kahlo was

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.

Frida Kahlo was an amazing woman whose many tragedies influenced her to put her stories into her paintings. She was born in July 6th 1907 to a Mexican Roman Catholic mother who was of Indian and Spanish decent and a German photographer father. Frida had three sisters, Mitilde and Adriana, who were older and Christina who was younger. She learned about Mexican history, art and architecture by looking at her father’s photography. When Frida was six she got polio and it was a long time before she would heal completely. After surviving polio, Frida’s right leg became weak and thin, so her father encouraged her to play sports to help her.

"It is impossible to separate the life and work of this extraordinary person, her paintings are her biography." This was announces in 1953 by a local critic after her one and only solo exhibition in Mexico (www.fridakahlo.com). Frida Kahlo was not only a magnificent painter, but also a representation of her birth country Mexico, through her meaningful paintings. While in the midst of nobody but herself, Frida found great inspiration to paint during the early to mid 1900’s. Her passion for painting came from her traffic accident as a teenager, which left her paralyzed due to fractures in her spine and pelvis. Even before the traffic accident, she contracted polio at the age of six in the suburbs of Mexico City where she grew up. Her image

Art ran deep in her family as well. Her father, Guillermo Kahlo and her grandfather Antonio Calderon were both photographers (Tibol, 1983). Guillermo Kahlo was the

A childhood for most adults is a time of enjoyment and freedom. Unfortunately that enjoyable time was shortened for Kahlo, molding her into the passionate, spirited artist the world has come to know. Kahlo was born in 1907 in a Mexican town called Coyoacán to Matilde Calderón and Guillermo Kahlo, who was also an artist. At age six Kahlo endured her first health upset that set the tone for the rest of her life. She contracted polio which crippled her right leg causing it to become

Her father took her under his wing and told her to pursuit sports not made for women at the time.. He taught other skills as well and one of them being photography.. This was Kahlo's first look into

She expressed her physical and emotional pain, passion, and sorrow through her paintings. She painted her own reality rather than dreams and nightmares. Kahlo’s paintings are the story of her life. She was famous for painting surrealism, cubism, symbolism, modern art, and magical realism. According to the article Frida Kahlo and her paintings, “She has approximately 143 paintings and 55 of them consist of self-portraits” (FridaKahlo.org.).

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.

Later on, she took a job to lift the financial burdens of her family and was the paid apprentice of Fernando Fernandez who employed her to copy prints and drawings. He was surprised by her innate talent in art and praised Kahlo's work under him. Despite this, she felt no need to be a professional artist and saw art as a mere hobby (Souter 19). On September 17 1925, there was a collision between a bus and a streetcar. This accident left Frida Kahlo bed-ridden for several months because of her many fractures and dislocated legs. To end her boredom she started painting, borrowing oil paint from her father and asking for an easel from her mother (Kettenmann 17 and 18). Her paintings like Self-portrait in a Velvet Dress and Portait of My Sister Cristina were mainly influenced by European art unlike her later works (Kettenmann 21). This was because of the art books she studied mainly focused on the Italian Renaissance. Her friends even nicknamed her early works as her 'Boticelli' because of its similarities to Boticelli's females (Bauer

Frida Kahlo’s “The Two Fridas” is a manifestation of heartbreak, inner human pain, rejection of colonialism, and emotional journey. An oil on canvas made in 1939 in the midst of Frida Kahlo’s divorce from Diego Rivera, this painting embodied Frida Kahlo’s progression at this time in her life, dealing with what she is and what she wishes to be; as well as setting out how she wishes to do it. An ode to melancholy and overcoming adversity, “The Two Fridas” is a universal, eternal reminder of human capability.