Frida Kahlo's Painting 'The Two Fridas'

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

Rivera encouraged Kahlo to develop her paintings and herself as a work of art (“The Life”). Although Kahlo and Rivera had faced infidelities and affairs Kahlo expressed her pain through her paintings. “Even though their marriage suffered great pain, the desire to be together never died out” (“The Life”). “Being the wife of Rivera is the most marvelous thing in the world… I let him play matrimony with other women.

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.

People may refer to Frida Kahlo as the lady with the unibrow, but others refer to her as one the greatest Mexican painters. She was born on July 6, 1907 in Coyocoan Mexico. When she was about 6 she was diagnosed with polio which is a highly contagious viral infection that can lead to paralysis, breathing problems, or even death. (Crosta 1) Due to polio she was bedridden for 9 months. Frida attended the National Preparatory School where she first noticed Diego Rivera who is a famous muralist. At this time she fell in love with another man Alejandro Gomez Arias. She and Alejandro were on a trip when a monumental moment happened which will change her life forever…. (Frida Kahlo Biography 1)

Frida Kahlo once said“At the end of the day, we can endure much more than we think we can.” There is no better person to say this than Kahlo, whose life was filled with pain and sadness. She was one of the most influential artists of her time, especially in the Mexican community.. The most important aspects of her life were her multicultural background, her tragic accident she survived as a teen, her relationship with Diego Rivera, her death, and her face as a product.

In the painting of “The Two Fridas” you automatically notice two women sitting down in a bench, holding hands with hearts connected with each other. The background looks as if she was outside since it looks like clouds and the floor is light brown. The first Kahlo has her hair up, has light makeup on, (she is whiter than than second woman, her mustache is shaved, and she put some lipstick.), the dress is white and has two different designs on top (her chest is more vintage while the arms are layer of laces). The middle portion of her dress has blood stains dripping downwards. Then at the very bottom there seems to be flowers like roses and little birds, and the heart she has seems to be damaged with white and black inside. The second Kahlo also has her hair up, now she doesn’t seem to have any type of makeup (she is a bit tanner than the first woman and she actually has mustache) she has a more natural look, the dress she is wearing has color to it, the top of the dress is blue with some yellow around the neck, arms, and in the lower stomach area then on the bottom of the dress it is brown but the very bottom is simple with no flowers, it is white with frills, and the heart she has looks more of a realistic. For the first Kahlo the blood vessels are going around her arm, up her shoulder, and around her neck going towards the second Frida heart. Once the blood vessels reaches

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 One of the greatest painters in Mexico, known for her meaningful and tragic paintings about her life, was Frida Kahlo. Frida Kahlo was a well known painter that was recognized by Picasso and along with many other famous painters. Kahlo loved the freaky and unique paintings she would paint. She lived a life that affected her until her last breath.

Rivera remained a dominant force in the development of a National Art in Mexico throughout his life and left an impact on America’s concept of public art. He painted spectacular murals of Mexican history throughout the cities, towns, and villages (Fuentes, 1995). Rivera is also well known to the public for his stormy and turbulent romance with his wife Frieda Kahlo, who was also in the eyes of the public for her paintings and a sad and tragic life story. Rivera was twenty years older than Kahlo. They married when Kahlo was 22 and Rivera was 42. They met 1928 at the Office of the Secretariat of Public Education where Rivera was painting a mural and Frida Kahlo attended school. This is where Frida made him climb down his scaffold to give her his opinion and advice on one of her paintings. She told him she needed to be sure her work would be marketable because that was the only way she could support herself (Tibol, 1983, p. 3). Rivera never placed Frida among the surrealists (Tibol, 1983, p. 7). The Encarta Dictionary defines this as an artist that tries to represent the subconscious mind by creating imagery and ideas that seem to contradict each other. However some critics believe she definitely fell in this category.

Because of her experiences with infertility, many of her paintings reference reproductive failure and never being able to be a mother. Kahlo created at least one hundred paintings along with lots of drawings and studies. Fifty five are self-portraits which often incorporate symbolic portrayals of physical and psychological wounds she had sustained previously. Kahlo wasn’t a dream painter it was just her own reality she faced. Frida was taken her artistic skills to her m’exicano culture. Drawing herself with a horrific, broken and damaged life for people to see her meaning of her art. Frida presented anguish and distinct visuals of herself by wearing peasant clothing and red eyes. As a young artist she met another artist, this older mans name was Diego Rivera. Diego had a great influence on Kahlo's painting style and wanted to see more of her artistic skills. Kahlo had always admired Rivera in a lust way and enjoyed him as an artist. She showed him four of her paintings, and his opinion on rather he thought they were good or not. The encouraging and outstanding comments made by older Rivera strengthened Kahlo's wish to pursue a career as an

Frida Kahlo is a world-renowned Mexican painter known for her shocking self-portaits filled with painful imagery. Her artwork was seen by many as surrealist and socialist, but she refused the labels put on herself. Until today, her works have been able to exude the same playful and wild feel as before (Fisher n.p). Her legacy as a painter has attracted prominent people like Madonna who has confessed her admiration for the painter. Not only that but fashion designers are frequently inspired by her iconic Tijuana dresses while her paintings have been priced at more than three million dollars (Bauer 115).

During the 1930’s and 1940’s, women of the world held virtually one role and one role only…homemaker. This was no different for the women of Mexico, except for one woman in particular, Frida Kahlo. Frida refused to accept the current ideals of society and the accepted social norms by engaging in things that few women in history ever had. Frida was involved in politics, she was promiscuous with men and women, she painted pictures of herself in ways that had never been done before, and she wore the clothes of her indigenous people as opposed to the current fashions of the world. The movie Frida showcases all of these qualities. The director, Julie Taymor, uses the symbolism of these things to show how Frida

Since Frida spent most of her time in hospital beds, she used that time to create paintings that documented the major events in her life. In 1937, Kahlo created My Nurse and I, in this painting, a nurse with a mask covering her face has in arms a baby with an adult face of Frida. The backstory of this painting is that Frida’s mother due to complications couldn’t breastfeed her. Her family hired a nurse to breastfeed her. This eventually affected their relationship because she never felt a bond with her mother. There are no connections between her and the wet nurse, you can tell the distance between them, there is no love in this painting. It implies Frida’s feelings of loss and separation form her own mother. In 1940, Frida painted Self Portrait with Thorn

The painting is of two versions of Frida Kahlo, closely gripping hands and sharing one heart between them. They are dressed in contrary clothing, with the Frida on the left dressed in modern European garb, while the other to the right is in traditional Mexican clothing. When viewing the painting, we are immediately attracted to the left Frida, who has nearly all of the light in the painting shining down on her. Her European clothing, popular in Mexico at the time, feels very constricting for both the subject and the viewer,specifically the collar grasping her neck so very tightly. Her upright and fragile stance and her almost limp grasp of the second Frida’s is understandable as we see the gaping hole where her heart should be. The pulsating anatomy of her wound bleeds into the room, while her face is completely indifferent. A single vein connects the hole in left Frida to the heart of right Frida. In left Frida’s unclenched hand, a delicate pair of scissors, indicating that she had wretched the heart out of her own bosom. It is this connection that guides us to the Frida to the right, but not before we notice the background behind them. A gray and cloudy backdrop that seems to embody Kahlo’s emotional state at the time, it is hard to distinguish the right Frida from its murky depths. A shadow presiding all around her, the right Frida is dressed in a traditional Mexican dress, with a posture and facial expression completely identical to the other Frida’s. The most eye-catching feature of hers, however, is the pulsating heart that the left Frida is lacking beating out of her chest. This gruesome and oblivious picture is made only more extraordinary when we make out the object right Frida is