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Frida Kahlo Essay

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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. These are important biographical aspects of Frida Kahlo’s life and painting …show more content…

Kahlo had endured over thirty operations to repair her body after the busing accident in which she was impaled through the hips by a metal rail. Kahlo is trying to communicate the loss of life and the continual pain that she endured throughout her life as a disabled woman. In the painting are various animals, such as hummingbird, cat, and monkey, which show her relationship to pain in the thorn necklace that she wear about her neck: “In this painting, Kahlo engages in a communication across human/animal/natural borders to convey her pain and loneliness” Smith and Watson, 2005, p.319). This aspect of Kahlo’s “communication:” of loneliness and suffering are a major part of the underlying meaning of this work, which reveals the long-term suffering a thorn necklace as part of this vision. In this manner, Kahlo intends to reveal her personal suffering through the surrealistic presentation of animals and natural objects in this

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