Mexikanische malerin, Frida Kahlo, born July 6, 1907 in Coyoacan (Mexico), a village near Mexico City. 18 years later, she started painting after being nearly killed in a bus accident. She died in 1954, at the age of 47, due to her fragile health. She stood at 5 feet 3 inches tall. But, more than 50 years later, she stands tall in the worlds of art and beyond.
Kahlo is a Mexican painter best known for her many self-portraits and portraits. Kahlo used a simple folk-art style to address questions about identity, postcolonialism gender, race, and class in Mexican society. Her paintings often featured strong autobiographical elements. Although Frida Kahlo is a great actress, her love life lends itself well to dramatization on stage. But the most significant relationship in Frida Kahlo’s art was that she had with herself.
Kahlo best illustrates this in Roots (1943), her painting. Kahlo lies on a jagged, dirt-covered terrain in the self-portrait. With her head up, and her thick dark hair flowing around her, she reclines on a small pillow. The ground is covered in thick, leafy vines that grow out of a large gap in her torso. She is feeding the earth with the same fervent expression as a mother who cares for her child. Kahlo gave her body as a way to face, understand, and heal from the pain.
She lived with both physical and emotional pain all her life. After being diagnosed with polio in childhood, her body was permanently injured by a bus accident during her teenage years. Her pelvis was shattered and her spine was fractured. Many of her paintings reveal that she spent much of her adult life in a wheelchair and with support braces. She was a victim of more than 30 different surgeries, and she suffered many long-lasting complications. Kahlo was not a stranger to death and pain.
Kahlo, in her 1944 self-portrait The Broken Column, places herself again in the middle a barren and uneven landscape. She is nude from the waist upwards and appears to be strapped into a support brace that will keep her whole body together. She has a huge chasm that runs vertically up her torso. The broken column inside acts as her spinal cord. Kahlo’s pain-related paintings were created after corrective spinal surgery. Her naked body is covered by thin nails and fat tears fall from her eyes. Her strong gaze radiates vulnerability and strength.
Out of the 200 drawings, sketches, paintings and paintings she has, 55 are self portraits. Many of her paintings blend magic and reality, which is known as magical surrealism. Many of her paintings are dreamlike and alternate between fantasy, autobiography, and dream. Mexican-American woman, proud supporter of the 1910-20 Mexican Revolution, she included elements of Mexicanidad, which is a movement of visual nationalism that honors indigenous cultures. In her artwork, you will often see images of blood, skulls and monkeys. These depict the Aztec gods Quetzalcoatl, Coatlicue, and Xolotl. Her paintings explored themes of post-colonialism, gender, class, and race in Mexican society.
Kahlo’s legacy seems stronger each year. Interestingly, Las Margaritas restaurant in Cheshire Bridge Road has Kahlo murals covering its walls. Frida Kallo: Appearances Could Be Deceiving is a major Brooklyn Museum exhibit that featured her work along with her belongings and clothing.
Kahlo’s deeply personal, guttural style of self-portraiture is a precursor of the radical self portraiture we see today from artists of color. Politically charged self-portraits reflect the way artists deal with current political conditions. Kahlo saw it as the formation of Mexico into a new nation. Contemporary American artists see it as the shaping of the 21st Century United States.
Frida is a story about a disabled, queer woman who revolutionized the world. Despite all the hardship, she persevered in her beliefs and made a significant impact on the world. She reminds us of the strength that comes from vulnerability and that spirit can transcend our physical bodies.
