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| Painter, Communist, Activist and survivor |
Frieda Kahlo is a... difficult woman to parse in many ways, especially looking backwards through the lens of history. Born in 1907 she was the daughter of a German man who came to Mexico at the age of 19 and a Mexican woman of mostly native and Spanish descent. She was the 3rd of 4 daughters and would choose to embrace her German ancestry as a rebuke against Naziism during the 1930's by spelling her name Frieda and even shaved 3 years off her age (telling people she was born in 1910 rather than 1907) to link herself with the Mexican Revolution which began when she was 3.
However it wasn't vanity that impacted this decision. At least, I wouldn't imagine it so. Especially since her self-portrait work, the art for which she's best known, tends to be so unflinching in its honest portrayals. Where some women might be tempted to fudge things a bit in a painting or hide things that society told them might be undesireable Kahlo instead boldly put those things onto her canvas. Remember, Kahlo is painting in the 30's and 40's. A woman painting herself with a prominent unibrow and faint mustache was revolutionary at the time (and likely more than a little challenging to gender norms even today). There's an argument to be made I think that this boldness is one of the things that still makes more than a few feminists quite enamored with her AND why she wanted to link herself with the Mexican Revolution of 1910. It's been argued that she felt her beloved homeland and herself had been shaped profoundly by revolution and on some level her life and very existence, had revolutionary tones to it.
A lot of biographical information about Frieda Kahlo focuses on her relationships and sexual affairs. She was married to another amazing painter in Diego Rivera who was monumentaly unfaithful. Their relationship was stormy and Kahlo engaged in more than a few affairs herself but there are times that I feel too much attention gets paid to this and it can sometimes be a distraction for Ms. Kahlo's art and life (because patriarchy loves to police and demonize women's sexual appetites and habits but I do encourage examination of this because on some level, I think understanding Kahlo's sexuality, which could be as bold as her paintings, helps to understand them).
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| Oh I am going to get SOOOOOOOO much use out of this meme |
Equally important however I think is to understand that this is a woman who was in a great deal of pain! This is woman who contracted polio at the age of 6 and started painting at around 15 because she was in accident that left her impaled and forced her into a hospital bed for months in a full body cast. She'd recover from both but the Polio left her with a weakened right leg and a limp and who knows how much pain the impalement through her side caused her for the rest of her life.
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| DEFINITELY NOT how it went down! |
I point this out strongly because Frieda herself did. Many of her paintings dealt with emotional and physical pain. She refused the mantle of a surrealist but she drew heavily upon symbology to depict her real experiences including the accident and multiple miscarriages with that unflinching honesty and boldness I spoke about earlier.
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| Title: Recuerdo |
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| Title: The Column |
Both of these images are related to Frieda's deeply personal experiences and pain. They also both connect in one way or another to the accident she suffered as a girl, implying to me that she carried the pain of that incident for much of the reast of her life. The images of course have deeper symbolism than that but why would I deprive you of getting the chance to study and learn it for yourself.
Kahlo's work could be symbolic and graphic, keenly personal and unflinchingly candid about the things she went through and her work reflects that in numerous ways dealing with everything from broken hearts and meditating on the nature and effects of love to the pain and emotional disquiet of her miscarriages.
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| Title: My Birth-1932 |
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| Title: Self-Portrait with Monkeys-1940 |
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| Title: The Two Fridas |
In the end, rapidly failing health eventually got the better of her. Death comes for us all. A fact that I'm quite sure she was all too keenly aware of. Her popularity however, lives on and there's probably more than a few art history students out there right now at the exact moment you're reading this gushing over her rather extensively. I can understand why.
And that, as they say, is that for today. It felt good to add another artist to the tally but tomorrow I think we're going to try the Wayback machine again. Join me next time when we take a look at a musician born into a talented family who, nevertheless seems to have been overshadowed by a prodigious male family member.
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