Frida Kahlo

Frida Kahlo de Rivera (July 6, 1907 – July 13, 1954), born Magdalena Carmen Frieda Kahlo y Calderón, was a Mexican painter known especially for her self-portraits. Her work has been celebrated internationally as emblematic of Mexican national and indigenous traditions, and by feminists for its uncompromising depiction of the female experience and form. Kahlo's life began and ended in Mexico City, in the home she was born in, known as "La Casa Azul," or, the Blue House. Marked by physical affliction due largely to a serious bus accident when she was 18, Kahlo spent a great deal of time recovering from her injuries in an isolated space, and it is here that she completed many of her works. Kahlo said "I paint myself because I am so often alone and because I am the subject I know best.”

Frida Kahlo

Kahlo photographed by her father in 1926

Portrait of Frida Kahlo

Paintings

Frida Kahlo’s work has variously been described as surrealist art, folk art, and naive art, none of which were satisfactory to the artist herself. In 1938 André Breton, principal initiator of the surrealist movement, described Kahlo's art as a "ribbon around a bomb." Frida rejected the surrealist label imposed by Breton, and argued that her work reflected more of her reality than her dreams. Frida Kahlo is known to have created at least 140 paintings, along with dozens of drawings and studies. Of her paintings, 55 are self-portraits that often incorporate symbolic portrayals of physical and psychological wounds.

Kahlo's accident made it impossible for her to have her own children, resulting in several miscarriages throughout her life. Because of her experiences with infertility, many of her paintings reference reproductive failure. She painted Henry Ford Hospital right after her miscarriage in 1932. In this work, Frida depicts herself on a bed bleeding, with the cold and industrial feeling from being far from home in Detroit, shown behind her. She chose to paint on a sheet of metal.

Frida Kahlo, The Suicide of Dorothy Hale, 1939

Oil on masonite,  The Phoenix Museum of Art. The legend translated: "In the city of New York on the twenty-first day of the month in October, 1938, at six o'clock in the morning, Mrs. Dorothy Hale committed suicide by throwing herself out of a very high window of the Hampshire House building. In her memory Mrs. Clare Boothe Luce commissioned this retablo, executed by Frida Kahlo."

Influences

Frida Kahlo was influenced by indigenous Mexican culture which is apparent in her use of bright colors, dramatic symbolism and “primitive” style. She frequently included the monkey as a symbol in her work, which in Mexican mythology is a symbol of lust. She often combined elements of the classic religious Mexican tradition with iconography that appears to be from a surrealist tendency. Frida Kahlo had a notoriously volatile marriage with the famous Mexican artist Diego Rivera. The couple likely influenced each other’s work through the years.

Artistic Legacy

In 1938, Kahlo had her only solo gallery showing in the United States at the Julien Levy Gallery. The works were well received and several prominent artists attended the event. At the invitation of André Breton, she went to France during 1939 and was featured at an exhibition of her paintings in Paris. The Louvre bought one of her paintings on display, The Frame. It was the first work of a twentieth-century Mexican artist that the Louvre purchased. Kahlo made the acquaintance of Wolfgang Paalen and Alice Rahon, whom she invited to come to Mexico.

Aside from the 1939 acquisition by the Louvre and a 1946 $1,000 award from the Mexican Government for her painting, Kahlo's work was not widely acclaimed until decades after her death. Often she was remembered only as Diego Rivera's wife. It was not until the end of the 1970s and the early 1980s, with the beginning of Neomexicanismo, that she became well-known to the public.