Frida Kahlo
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Frida Kahlo (July 6, 1907 - July 13, 1954) was a Mexican painter] of the indigenous culture of her country in a style combining Realism, Symbolism and Surrealism, an active communist supporter, and wife of the Mexican muralist and cubist painter Diego Rivera.
Kahlo was noted for her unconventional appearance, declining to remove her facial hair (she had a small mustache and unibrow which she exaggerated in self portraits), and for her flamboyantly styled clothing, drawn largely from traditional Mexican dress.
Biography
Kahlo was born Magdalena Carmen Frieda Kahlo y Calderón in her parents' house in Coyoacán, which at the time was a small town on the outskirts of Mexico City. The young Frida suffered a bout of polio at age six, which left her right leg looking much thinner than the other. Still, with her father's encouragement and with the feisty and brash personality that she kept throughout her life, she overcame her disability.
In 1925, a trolley car collided with a bus in which Kahlo was riding; she suffered a broken spinal column, a broken collarbone, broken ribs, a broken pelvis, 11 fractures in her right leg, a crushed and dislocated right foot, and a dislocated shoulder. She survived her injuries and eventually regained her ability to walk, but she would have relapses of extreme pain which would plague her for life, often leaving her hospitalized and/or in bed for months at a time, agonized and miserable. Frida would undergo as many as thirty-five operations in her life as a result of the accident, mainly on her back and her right leg/foot.
Career as painter
After the accident, Kahlo turned her attention from a medical career to a full-time painting career. Drawing on her personal experiences (her troubled marriage, her painful miscarriages, her numerous operations), her works are often shocking in their stark portrayal of pain. Fifty-five of her 143 paintings are self-portraits, often incorporating symbolic portrayal of her physical and psychological wounds. She was deeply influenced by indigenous Mexican culture, which surfaced in her paintings' bright colors, dramatic symbolism, and unapologetic rendering of often harsh and gory content.
Although Kahlo's work is sometimes classified as surrealist, and she did exhibit several times with European surrealists, she never considered herself a surrealist. "I paint my own reality," she once said. Her preoccupation with female themes and the figurative candor with which she expressed them made her something of a feminist cult figure in the last decades of the 20th century.
Character
Despite her life of suffering and pain, Frida Kahlo was a vibrant, extroverted character whose everyday speech was filled with profanities. She had been a tomboy in her youth and carried her fervor throughout her life. She was a heavy smoker, drank liquor (especially tequila) in excess, was openly bisexual, sang off-color songs, and told equally ribald jokes to the guests of the wild parties that she hosted.
External links
Frida Kahlo
- The Life and Art of Frida Kahlo
- "The Frida Kahlo Museum", by Gale Randall
- Exhibition guide from Tate Modern
- Frida's House Yahoo! group
- "Frida Kahlo & contemporary thought"
- "Frida by Kahlo"
- "Frida Kahlo" at ArtCyclopedia
- Frida (2002 film) at the Internet Movie Database
- (Spanish) "Dolor y arte: Frida Kahlo" from Psikeba Magazine
- Ten Dreams Galleries
- Photos
Credits
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