Frida Kahlo's Influence Essay

Frida Kahlo was a very talented Mexican artist that revolutionized art at a very young age. Her work is still idolized and celebrated today and is studied by many artists, institutes of higher education, museums, and fans. Kahlo was born in the town of Coyoacan, Mexico on July the sixth in the year of 1907 (Kettenmann 3). She made around 143 paintings, and out of those 143 paintings, 55 were self-portraits that included symbolism of her physical and emotion pain. Furthermore, in her portraits she used symbolism to express her wounds and sexuality. She use to say: “I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality” (Fuentes 41). Her paintings style include of vibrant colors and was heavily influenced

1. Frida Kahlo is one not only Mexico's most iconic artists, but one of the world's most iconic artists as well. She was born on July 6, 1907 in Coyocoan Mexico City, Mexico. Her father was of German descent and migrated to Mexico where he met her mother, who was half Spanish and half AmerIndian. She also had three sisters. Frida was always very close to her father, and was very proud of her Mexican heritage. During her childhood, she contracted a disease called Polio. She was very ill and had to stay in bed for a whole 9 months. The disease caused her right leg to become much skinnier and weaker than the left one. She had a permanent limp because of it and always wore long skirts to hide it. She met her future husband, Diego Rivera, when she was in preparatory school. One day in 1922, she was on a Bus and got in a horrific accident. She was severely injured, as a steel rail impaled her through the hip. During her period of recovery is when she began to paint her famous self-portraits. Frida and Diego reconnected in 1928 and them married in 1929. Their marriage, however, wasn't a healthy one. Diego cheated on Frida many times and they lived in separate houses. Frida, given her condition was always very depressed. She sadly passed away in 1954. Her death was reported to be caused by a pulmonary embolism, but many suspect her death may not have been accidental.

Throughout her career, Frida had shown many different themes of her life through her paintings. It seems clear, through analyzation of her paintings, that Frida lived something of a double life. Frida paints herself in distinctly different ways at times, sometimes she is a beautiful woman with strength like iron, and sometimes she is a frail damsel who has been broken already and will be broken again. Contrasting paintings include Self Portrait with Monkeys (Kahlo, 1) and Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace, Diego and I (Kahlo, 1) and The Love Embrace of the Universe, the Earth (Mexico), Me, Diego, and Mr. Xolotl (Kahlo, 1). All of these paintings show that not only is there a contrast in her personality, in fact, Frida’s is actually two different people, as she paints it.

Frida Kahlo was one of the most fascinating visual artists of the nineteenth century. Her art and life were filled with pain that was both emotional and physical which she expressed through her paintings. Frida was her art. Frida did not conform to most cultural norms or gender roles in her life time, she was a free spirit trapped in an invalid body. While she did not assume very much acclaim during her lifetime she did manage to be very well traveled even though she was born and died in the same home. She eventually developed a cult-like following in the nineteen-eighties and nineties. She has become a poster girl for modern feminism and a political force of her own time, through all of her physical pain and heartache she was able to

Frida Kahlo´s image has been exploited for several years, now a days it is quite easy to find: rings, phone cases, t-shirts, among several other products, all with images of Frida´s art. As a result, this got me wondering on, what made this Mexican artist worthy of such success? What did she do that was considered so important? There are many answers to those questions because Frida Kahlo made a significant impact in the world not only because of her artistic style but also, with her way of living.

In “The Broken Column” Frida expresses anguish and suffering in a straightforward manner as we see metal nails piercing Frida’s face, arms, breasts, torso, and what we can assume is her upper thigh underneath a white sheet. Frida has duplicated herself bound and constrained in what appears to be a body brace. At Frida’s torso is a fissure like split allowing us to view an exposed broken column in place of her spine. The column itself seems to be weak and on the verge of collapsing to ruble. The landscape behind Frida seems to be barren with areas of dark ravines. The tears on her face almost seem out of place in the sense that her facial expression remains calm, reserved and strong. Her whole body seems to be supported only by the brace wrapped around body and yet she shows spiritual triumph. We see this in how we can see she's in physical anguish, and yet she looks straight ahead and challenges both herself and the audience to face her situation.

Frida Kahlo was a half-mexican, half-hungarian painter of the 20th century born Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón in Coyoacán, Mexico City on July 6, 1907. During her short lived life, she had many accomplishments. She was a surrealist artist whos paintings reflected her thoughts and feelings. Her creative style was always amazing but confusing. Unfortunately, she lived most of her artistic life in the shadow of her husband, Diego Rivera, and her work was not truly recognized until after her death.

Frida Kahlo was best known for her reflective self-portraits that defined the tragedies she'd endured. Explaining her affection for the style, Kahlo said, "I paint myself because I am so often alone, because I am the subject I know best.” Kahlo contracted Polio at the age of six which left her with a deformed foot, she was also Bed-bound while recovering from a grisly streetcar accident. Kahlo under went over 30 operations throughout her life; and over the years she painted a portrait of herself whenever she was troubled.

During their travel the street car they were riding in was hit by a bus and a steel handrail went straight through her hip, fracturing her pelvis and spine. She endured a long painful recovery and coped by painting. Frida said “I paint myself because I am often alone and I am the subject I know best.” After painting a few pieces she met back up with Diego to view her work. They clicked immediately and go married only a year later. They had a very rough relationship. They would travel around everywhere and Diego would have affairs which left Frida heartbroken, but she always stayed. Due to her fractured pelvis she was unable to have children and encountered 2 miscarriages which killed her emotionally. (Frida Kahlo Biography 2)

Frida Kahlo, she never intended to become a painter. Kahlo was aspired to become a doctor as a young woman, but after a horrible accident at the age of 18, it left her mentally, as well as physically scared for life. This event had totally changed her life forever. The theme in almost all of Frida’s painting was her own life. Her paintings were based on events took place during her lifetime. As we can see in many of Frida’s paintings, especially in her self-portraits, it expresses her own personal emotions along with feelings about an event that happened in her life, such as her physical condition, her lack of ability to conceive children of her own, her ideology of life and nature, and most important of all, it was her unstable relationship with her husband Diego. Somewhere between the movement of surrealism, realism and symbolism in the art of Frida Kahlo, she was able to bring out tenderness, femininity, reality, cruelty and suffering within her paintings.

Frida Kahlo was an amazing woman whose many tragedies influenced her to put her stories into her paintings. She was born in July 6th 1907 to a Mexican Roman Catholic mother who was of Indian and Spanish decent and a German photographer father. Frida had three sisters, Mitilde and Adriana, who were older and Christina who was younger. She learned about Mexican history, art and architecture by looking at her father’s photography. When Frida was six she got polio and it was a long time before she would heal completely. After surviving polio, Frida’s right leg became weak and thin, so her father encouraged her to play sports to help her.

Sadly what ended her career was a blood clot in her lungs. Before her death she has reached many success in her years. Such as, herself portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird’ because it showcased over 25 museums in the United States and also in countries like Australia, Canada, France, and Spain. In her early life she has had suffered terrible accidents (in the year 1925) that dealt with serious life ending tragedy. Frida has spent her whole life suffering with health problems.However was turned out to be lucky and live to continue her Art journey. After her accident, Kahlo abandoned the study of medicine and began to paint, to occupy herself during her three-month

Frida suffered immensely, died young, and spoke directly through her paintings. All the physical and spiritual sufferings Frida experienced is mirrored in her art. Most of Frida’s paintings are collages of pain. Obsessed with her health and grief, she created portraits that were intense and emotional.

Later on, she took a job to lift the financial burdens of her family and was the paid apprentice of Fernando Fernandez who employed her to copy prints and drawings. He was surprised by her innate talent in art and praised Kahlo's work under him. Despite this, she felt no need to be a professional artist and saw art as a mere hobby (Souter 19). On September 17 1925, there was a collision between a bus and a streetcar. This accident left Frida Kahlo bed-ridden for several months because of her many fractures and dislocated legs. To end her boredom she started painting, borrowing oil paint from her father and asking for an easel from her mother (Kettenmann 17 and 18). Her paintings like Self-portrait in a Velvet Dress and Portait of My Sister Cristina were mainly influenced by European art unlike her later works (Kettenmann 21). This was because of the art books she studied mainly focused on the Italian Renaissance. Her friends even nicknamed her early works as her 'Boticelli' because of its similarities to Boticelli's females (Bauer

4. Frida Kahlo essentially became an international cultural icon, honored by many people, especially in Mexico. Her artwork withholds visual symbolism of all kinds of emotional and physical pain and most importantly she incorporated indigenous culture and her depiction of the female experience. Including illustrating the feelings of death, loneliness, pain, including the pain of miscarriages, failed marriage, and the aftermath of tragic accidents. Through her imagery, she was able to portray her life experiences. She would include specific elements that symbolized something greater. Throughout the process of analyzing all different aspects of Frida Kahlo’s paintings, it provided a deeper understanding to each painting.