Frida Kahlo (1907-1954)
Kahlo’s confronting self portraits represent the extent of her suffering but they are more complex than a simple visual biography. Kahlo’s images are rich with symbols - monkeys like the attribute of a saint are a personal symbol indicating promiscuity – symbols of Mexico abound – her hair plaited and decorated with ribbons and traditional costume, butterflies a symbol of Aztec warriors – the lush foliage and animals record her connection to land and pantheist beliefs. The graphic representations of her miscarriages and numerous operations reflect the influence of Mexican retablo (graphic images inviting the intercession of the Virgin Mary) There are also symbols from European art in her iconic Broken Column Portrait – her injured spine is represented by a crumbling Greek column.
Background
- Born in Mexico 1907
- Contracted polio at the age of seven
Artist
Material Practice
- Painter
- Uses a slim sable brush
- Kahlo’s images are rich with symbols
- Her images incorporate symbols that reveal her intimate connection to traditional Mexican culture, the influence of Catholicism and the formal portrait photographs taken by her father Guillermo Kahlo.
Conceptual Practice
- Adult artist
- Extensive output of autobiographical self-portraits
- Works are an exploration of identity and self-expression
- Surrealist quality to her work
- Works are strongly linked with her life experiences as well as relating to world events, politics and the wider art world
- Paints on a personal level and uses it as a therapy for her life
- Erotic imagery
- Clothing plays a significant role in her self-presentation
- Reveals the biological truth of her feelings
- Sexual quality to her work
Artwork
‘Self Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird’ (1940)
THE FRAMES
Structural
- Oil on canvas, 62.5 x 48 cm
- Unsmiling and sternly disturbing self-portrait
- Unflinchingly staring directly at the audience from under the lintel of her graphic identikit like eyebrows
- Monkey peering over left shoulder and black cat glaring over the right
- Thorn necklace draped over chest in lower third of image
- Fringed with tropical plants
Cultural
- Painted in 1940
- Surrealist quality to her work
- Expressive of her multicultural background
- Mexican and Hungarian/German origins
- Both Native symbols and Catholic symbols converge in this painting
- Draws from her Mexican heritage, referring to Aztec traditions of divinatory rituals involving self-mortification with thorns
- Draws symbolism from her Catholic upbringing
- Never represented as a single self but always a multicultural one
Subjective
- Necklace of thorns alludes to Christ’s passion
- Dead hummingbirds around her neck and butterflies in her hair are Aztec symbols that signify the souls of dead warriors
- The monkey functions as a religious attribute and further accentuates the iconic quality of the image
- The cat appears to be a more generalised symbol of death, imparting an ominous sense of doom
- Physical proximity of both cat and monkey is disturbing
- ‘This image is not a self-analysis but a self-invention’ – Sarah Lowe
Postmodern
- Reproductions of artworks found on mouse pads, furniture and clocks
- Image placed on a 34 cent post stamp for the US postal service in 2001
‘The Two Fridas’
Structural
- Life-sized double self-portrait, 173.5 x 173 cm
- Oil on canvas
- Executed simply and realistically
- ‘European’ Frida is seen on the left wearing a high-necked, white lacy dress
- Alter ego is the Frida of darker skin on the right who wears the traditional dress of the Tehuana
- Two Fridas joined by an artery attached at each heart
- Heart of the ‘European’ Frida is severed while the heart of the alter ego is whole
- An artery of the left Frida has been severed and blood drips through the surgical clamp and onto her white dress
Cultural
- Completed in 1939 just after her divorce with Rivera
- Surrealist quality to her work
- Expressive of her multicultural background
Subjective
- ‘They thought I was a Surrealist but I wasn’t. I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality’ – Frida Kahlo
World
- The details of Kahlo’s traumatic life often colour the interpretation of her artworks.
- She contracted polio when she was six leaving her right foot permanently deformed.
- Kahlo suffered horrific injuries in a car accident when she was eighteen sustaining extensive injuries to her spine, collarbone, ribs, leg, foot and pelvis.
- A handrail also smashed into her back and came out through her vagina and as a consequence was deemed unable to bare children
- Due to these injuries Kahlo underwent over 35 surgeries
- Married Diego Rivera in 1929 at age 22
- Rivera had an affair with Frida’s sister, Christina, putting their marriage to an end in 1939
- Couldn’t draw during throughout the duration of the affair
- Remarried in 1940
- In 1941 her father died causing her to suffer depression and deterioration to her health
- Forced to wear eight orthopaedic corsets to support her damaged spinal column from 1944 onwards
- In 1951 she was confined to a wheelchair
- Leg amputated in 1953 due to gangrene
- Died in 1954 from pulmonary embolism
- Passionate about support and for radical social and political change, the Communist Party as its agent
- Mexican Revolution of 1910 was a cultural success
- 3 pregnancies – 2 miscarriages, 1 therapeutic abortion
-
Audience
- Works displayed in Museo Frida Kahlo
- First works sold in 1938
- Showed 25 works at the Julian Levy Gallery in New York
- International Exhibition of Surrealism
- Museum of Modern Art in New York
Kahlo’s confronting self portraits represent the extent of her suffering but they are more complex than a simple visual biography. Kahlo’s images are rich with symbols - monkeys like the attribute of a saint are a personal symbol indicating promiscuity – symbols of Mexico abound – her hair plaited and decorated with ribbons and traditional costume, butterflies a symbol of Aztec warriors – the lush foliage and animals record her connection to land and pantheist beliefs. The graphic representations of her miscarriages and numerous operations reflect the influence of Mexican retablo (graphic images inviting the intercession of the Virgin Mary) There are also symbols from European art in her iconic Broken Column Portrait – her injured spine is represented by a crumbling Greek column.
Background
- Born in Mexico 1907
- Contracted polio at the age of seven
Artist
Material Practice
- Painter
- Uses a slim sable brush
- Kahlo’s images are rich with symbols
- Her images incorporate symbols that reveal her intimate connection to traditional Mexican culture, the influence of Catholicism and the formal portrait photographs taken by her father Guillermo Kahlo.
Conceptual Practice
- Adult artist
- Extensive output of autobiographical self-portraits
- Works are an exploration of identity and self-expression
- Surrealist quality to her work
- Works are strongly linked with her life experiences as well as relating to world events, politics and the wider art world
- Paints on a personal level and uses it as a therapy for her life
- Erotic imagery
- Clothing plays a significant role in her self-presentation
- Reveals the biological truth of her feelings
- Sexual quality to her work
Artwork
‘Self Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird’ (1940)
THE FRAMES
Structural
- Oil on canvas, 62.5 x 48 cm
- Unsmiling and sternly disturbing self-portrait
- Unflinchingly staring directly at the audience from under the lintel of her graphic identikit like eyebrows
- Monkey peering over left shoulder and black cat glaring over the right
- Thorn necklace draped over chest in lower third of image
- Fringed with tropical plants
Cultural
- Painted in 1940
- Surrealist quality to her work
- Expressive of her multicultural background
- Mexican and Hungarian/German origins
- Both Native symbols and Catholic symbols converge in this painting
- Draws from her Mexican heritage, referring to Aztec traditions of divinatory rituals involving self-mortification with thorns
- Draws symbolism from her Catholic upbringing
- Never represented as a single self but always a multicultural one
Subjective
- Necklace of thorns alludes to Christ’s passion
- Dead hummingbirds around her neck and butterflies in her hair are Aztec symbols that signify the souls of dead warriors
- The monkey functions as a religious attribute and further accentuates the iconic quality of the image
- The cat appears to be a more generalised symbol of death, imparting an ominous sense of doom
- Physical proximity of both cat and monkey is disturbing
- ‘This image is not a self-analysis but a self-invention’ – Sarah Lowe
Postmodern
- Reproductions of artworks found on mouse pads, furniture and clocks
- Image placed on a 34 cent post stamp for the US postal service in 2001
‘The Two Fridas’
Structural
- Life-sized double self-portrait, 173.5 x 173 cm
- Oil on canvas
- Executed simply and realistically
- ‘European’ Frida is seen on the left wearing a high-necked, white lacy dress
- Alter ego is the Frida of darker skin on the right who wears the traditional dress of the Tehuana
- Two Fridas joined by an artery attached at each heart
- Heart of the ‘European’ Frida is severed while the heart of the alter ego is whole
- An artery of the left Frida has been severed and blood drips through the surgical clamp and onto her white dress
Cultural
- Completed in 1939 just after her divorce with Rivera
- Surrealist quality to her work
- Expressive of her multicultural background
Subjective
- ‘They thought I was a Surrealist but I wasn’t. I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality’ – Frida Kahlo
World
- The details of Kahlo’s traumatic life often colour the interpretation of her artworks.
- She contracted polio when she was six leaving her right foot permanently deformed.
- Kahlo suffered horrific injuries in a car accident when she was eighteen sustaining extensive injuries to her spine, collarbone, ribs, leg, foot and pelvis.
- A handrail also smashed into her back and came out through her vagina and as a consequence was deemed unable to bare children
- Due to these injuries Kahlo underwent over 35 surgeries
- Married Diego Rivera in 1929 at age 22
- Rivera had an affair with Frida’s sister, Christina, putting their marriage to an end in 1939
- Couldn’t draw during throughout the duration of the affair
- Remarried in 1940
- In 1941 her father died causing her to suffer depression and deterioration to her health
- Forced to wear eight orthopaedic corsets to support her damaged spinal column from 1944 onwards
- In 1951 she was confined to a wheelchair
- Leg amputated in 1953 due to gangrene
- Died in 1954 from pulmonary embolism
- Passionate about support and for radical social and political change, the Communist Party as its agent
- Mexican Revolution of 1910 was a cultural success
- 3 pregnancies – 2 miscarriages, 1 therapeutic abortion
-
Audience
- Works displayed in Museo Frida Kahlo
- First works sold in 1938
- Showed 25 works at the Julian Levy Gallery in New York
- International Exhibition of Surrealism
- Museum of Modern Art in New York
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