Frida Kahlo, born July 6th 1907 is Mexico’s most famous woman artist. She is best known for her self-portraits that express the emotional effects of pain, loss and tragedy in her life. Upon viewing her work one can’t help to be engaged with the intensity of emotion and passion along with a lingering curiosity as to the meaning and representation of her surrealistic imagery.

From a traditional viewpoint, Frida’s work expresses the essence of her culture in the 1920’s. Many of her paintings include artifacts of Mexico and traditional Mexican costumes – long skirts and dresses. She rejected conventional Western standards of beauty such as groomed eye brows and groomed her unibrow and even mustache to make them darker.

Domestic elements of her work connect with ordinary life with her love for her pets which is evident in her self portraits with monkeys, birds, cats and more. Her bright colors express a celebratory feel of Mexican folk art and her direct unwavering stare insinuates brashness and boldness.

However, this boldness in her work scratches at the surface to reveal the deeper meaning of her work that reflect her tumultuous relationship with Rivera, as well as the anguish of her ever-deteriorating health. Frida’s art dramatizes the pain in her life while cultivating an image as a bold survivor.

Frida’s Most Compelling Paintings

Pain
The pain Frida expressed in her art continued past the physical pain in her life from disease and accident into emotional pain when she married Diego Rivera. As if her bodily injuries weren’t compelling enough, Frida’s drama – as well as her art – was enhanced by what she referred to as the second accident in her life: Diego Rivera, the famous Mexican muralist and notorious womanizer to whom she was married for 25 years and subsequently in his shadow for the better part of it. Her work didn’t attracted the attention and praise of Diego, which in the beginning of their relationship she longed for.

The Two Frida’s
Hailed as one of her most famous pieces, the intimate and personal painting is notable for it’s surrealism and symbolism. It is believed to be a painting depicting her deep hurt at losing Diego. One Frida sits on the left of the painting; this is the Frida that was rejected by Rivera, Her blouse is ripped open, exposing her broken and bleeding heart.

The Frida to the right, the one that Rivera still loves, has a heart that is still whole. She holds a small portrait of Rivera in her hand. The painting had a special significance for Frida, after her death, this small portrait of Rivera was found amongst Frida’s belongings, and is now on display at the Museo Frida Kahlo in Mexico.

My Birth – 1932
In 1932 Kahlo had a miscarriage, which prompted her to paint some of the most gruesome of the self-portraits that later sealed her reputation as one of the most original painters of her time. One of Frida most startling works, “My Birth,” painted in 1932 was in process when Kahlo found out that her mother was dying of cancer. The painting expresses a startling look at a partially covered woman’s body with Kahlo’s bloodied head bursting out of the vagina.

Currently the ‘My Birth’ painting is owned by Madonna whom is a avid collector of Frida’s art. It’s also thought that Madonna owns Kahlo’s 1943 work Roots purchased for $5.6 million at a Sotheby’s auction.

Me and My Doll – 1937
Many of Frida’s paintings express a fascination with procreation, and some directly reflect her despair at not having children due to her 1925 bus accident which left her unable to bear children. As substitutes for children she collected dolls and kept many pets on which she bestowed her affection.

One of the most moving paintings is a self-portrait of Frida sitting on a bed next to a lifeless looking child/doll. She is smoking a cigarette and looks bored, and is sitting some distance from the child on the bed–a reflection that is believed to be her real lack of maternal instincts.

Niña con Mascara de Muerte (Ella juega sola) – Girl with Death Mask (She Plays Alone)
In 1938 Frida painted this painting and it is thought to be a portrait of her when she was four years old. She is wearing a skull mask traditionally worn at the annual Mexican festival “Day of the Dead.” The girl is holding a yellow flower that looks like the tagete flower that Mexicans place on graves during the “Day of the Dead.” Frida gave this painting to the actress Dolores del Rio as a gift. Later it became a part of a private collection in Monterey, California. It’s now a part of the collection at the Museum of Art in Nagoya, Japan.

Frida’s Last Painting: Viva la Vida, 
Watermelons – 1954

Personal tragedy struck in 1953, when due to complications her right leg was amputated below the knee. Kahlo’s last painting, which she completed shortly before she died, was a still life with watermelons. The watermelon in Frida’s painting has much meaning and is a frequent subject in Mexican art. It is a popular symbol in the holiday Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) which commonly depicts watermelons being eaten by the dead or shown in close conjunction with the dead.

Eight days before she died, she wrote her name, the date and the place of execution on the melon’s red pulp, along with the title “VIVA LA VIDA – Coyoacán 1954 Mexico”, in large capital letters: Long Life Life!

Kahlo died in 1954, at the age of 47. She spent her life in pain, and wrote in her diary a few days before her death that she hoped ‘the exit is joyful, and I hope never to return’.

Fridamania

For almost 30 years Kahlo largely disappeared from the mainstream art world, until the 1938 book was published “Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo.”

When it was published, there wasn’t a single monograph of Kahlo’s work to show people what it looked like, but the biography sparked a Frida frenzy that continues today.

 During the month of July we have a Frida Contest on Art & Design Inspiration

If you would like to participate in our Fridamania celebration, create something inspired by Frida.
See the details here!

“I paint my own reality, the only thing I know is that I paint because I need to, and I paint always whatever passes through my head, without any other consideration.”

– Frida Kahlo

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Muralism – Timeless Resonances in Latin American Art

Mexican muralist art stretched back to pre-colonial times when indigenous people captured the grandeur of ancient civilization and its architecture. In an a twentieth-century context, the three pioneers of Muralism lamented the false consciousness of politics and its severing of traditional culture. Muralism was anti-ideology in the sense that its art served to highlight the vitriolic influence of politics upon common Mexican people.

Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, José Clemente Orozco used history as a template to undermine the repressive government and evoke a utopian past. Even though the muralist were often contracted by the Mexican government, the central aim of their art was to express the depravity and hardship of average civilian life during the revolution. Three important murals are explored by these artists to convey both failed utopian longings and timeless resonances in Latin American art.

Ghosts from a Historical Graveyard

Illiteracy was a prominent social ailment during the Mexican Revolution. The government thus employed Diego Rivera to broadcast classical elements of Mexican life to a majority who could not read or write. Rivera’s The Arrival of Cortés used colonial ideology to chart enduring class tensions in Mexico. The mural has a vibrant life energy instilled in the contrast between Hispanic colonizers and indigenous Latin American people. There is a lot of activity in The Arrival of Cortés, with an indigenous labor force building the backbone of primitive Hispanic society. Rivera alludes to the origins of Mexican society as a barbarous process likened to the ongoing civil war. The visage of slave labor and colonial rule is expansive in this mural, encompassing drastic changes to the social order and the natural environment. Rivera evokes longing to a distant past where communalism prospered, instead of class conflict and human life being a utility for war or the colonial elite. David Alfaro Siqueiros struck a topical vein like Rivera in his stark mural The Revolution.

A vast sea of discontent faces swell around the parameters of The Revolution mural. These are faces of men and women who are commoners and fighting to survive during a civil war that claimed close to two million lives. Siqueiros provides a voice for people who did not have the linguistic tools to broadcast their stories or message. Similar to the energy of slave labor in The Arrival of Cortés, Siqueiros uses art to expose facets of humanity that are typically smothered and repressed by government regimes. The faces of people in The Revolution are hard to distinguish, but there is nuance to the posture and body language of each individual person in the mural. Like ghosts from a historical graveyard, Siqueiros’ commoners haunt the imagination of the viewer—prompting questions of who these people were and what their stories entailed. José Clemente Orozco’s mural Prometheus re-imagines the Greek god from the context of the Mexican civil war, showcasing the wages of empire and development of modern culture.

Prometheus is a figure that seized the might of fire, emblematic of the creative spirit from the Gods, to advance human civilization. Orozco astutely portrays Prometheus in anguish while struggling to prevent the collapse of modern society. Humans with pallid skeleton-like personas crowd around a tortured Prometheus—symbolizing the cost of an industrializing Mexico. The color scheme contains harsh red and corpse-flesh tones that lacerate the bodies of the figures. Fire denotes war and carnage in Mexican culture, so there is no doubt a connection between the civil war and Prometheus’ agony in the worldly sphere. The faces of Prometheus’ prisoners resemble the facial structures of Indigenous Latin Americans. Prometheus in fact appears isolated from the unified suffering of his fellow prisoners. While the rest of the figures in the Prometheus mural are languishing, he attempts to draw-down fire onto the population. Orozco compliments the lurid theme of violence and social unrest in Latin American muralism. No doubt influenced by the philosophies of Karl Marx, these three central Muralist sought to humanize the oppressed and showcase a darker side to Mexican culture.

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Rivera was considered by many to be the greatest Mexican painter of the twentieth century.  Credited with reintroducing fresco painting (mural paintings on fresh plaster), his works became popular among the people, often on display in universities and other public places.  Passionate about politics, art, and women, Rivera possessed radical political views, joining the Mexican Communist Party in 1922 and participating in the founding of the Revolutionary Union of Technical Workers, painters, and Sculptors.  Rivera was a passionate, volatile man in many aspects of his life, including his relationship with and marriage to Frida Kahlo, perhaps the most loved of the many women in his life.

After marrying Frida (who was 15 years Rivera’s junior), the couple’s home in San Angel was actually two homes connected by a bridge.  The two passionate artists initially met in Mexico City in 1922 when Frida attended the National Preparatory School, and would not reconnect until six years later when they began dating.  During their two marriages, Diego and Frida endured a passionate, volatile, and tumultuous relationship, much of it due to Frida’s health issues and Diego’s lust for other women.

Diego had many affairs throughout the years, one of them with Frida’s sister Cristina in 1934; Diego wasn’t the only one with a wandering eye, however, as Frida had an affair in 1937 with Leon Trotsky.  Diego was married three times other than to Frida, although he did say, “If I ever loved a woman, the more I loved her, the more I wanted to hurt her.  Frida was only the most obvious victim of this disgusting trait.”  A doctor once diagnosed Diego as being “unfit” for monogamy, however upon her death in 1954 Diego wrote, “I realized that the most wonderful part of my life had been my love for Frida.”

While fidelity was always an issue in the marriages between Frida and Diego, there is no doubt that the two shared a passion not only for painting and art, but for each other.

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