art in detail: kahlo, frida, featured paintings

Art in Detail

KAHLO, Frida

Featured Paintings

"Feet, what do I need you for when I have wings to fly?“

“Pies, ¿para qué los quiero si tengo alas para volar?”

KAHLO, FridaMarxism Will Give, Health to the Sick1954 Oil on masonite, 60,0 x 76,0 cm Museo Frida Kahlo, The Blue House, Mexico City

KAHLO, FridaMarxism Will Give, Health to the Sick (detail)1954 Oil on masonite, 60,0 x 76,0 cm Museo Frida Kahlo, The Blue House, Mexico City

"I am my own muse, the subject I know best.“

"Yo soy mi propia musa, el tema que conozco mejor.”

KAHLO, FridaThe Broken Column1944 Oil on masonite, 30,5 x 39,0 cm Museo Dolores Olmedo, Mexico City

KAHLO, FridaThe Broken Column (detail)1944 Oil on masonite, 30,5 x 39,0 cm Museo Dolores Olmedo, Mexico City

"They thought I was a Surrealist, but I wasn't. I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality.“

“Creían que yo era surrealista, pero no lo era. Nunca pinté mis sueños. Pinté mi propia realidad”

KAHLO, FridaWithout Hope1945 Oil on canvas on masonite, 36,0 x 28,0 cm Museo Dolores Olmedo, Mexico City

KAHLO, FridaWithout Hope (detail)1945 Oil on canvas on masonite, 36,0 x 28,0 cm Museo Dolores Olmedo, Mexico City

"I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone, because I am the person I know best.“

“Me pinto a mi misma porque estoy a menudo sola, porque soy la persona que mejor conozco.”

KAHLO, FridaSelf-portrait with Small Monkey1945 Oil on masonite, 415 x 56,0 cm Museo Dolores Olmedo, Mexico City

KAHLO, FridaSelf-portrait with Small Monkey (detail)1945 Oil on masonite, 415 x 56,0 cm Museo Dolores Olmedo, Mexico City

“There have been two great accidents in my life. One was the trolley, and the other was Diego.

Diego was by far the worst”.

"Tuve dos grandes accidentes en mi vida. Uno fue el tranvía y el otro Diego.

Diego fue de lejos el peor de ellos".

KAHLO, FridaDiego and I1949Oil on canvas, mounted on masonite , 29,5 x 22,4 cm Collection of Mary Anne Martin Fine Arts, New York

KAHLO, FridaDiego and I (detail)1949Oil on canvas, mounted on masonite , 29,5 x 22,4 cm Collection of Mary Anne Martin Fine Arts, New York

"I love you more than my own skin.“

“Te amo más que a mi propia piel”.

KAHLO, FridaThe Two Fridas1939Oil on canvas, 173,5 x 173 cmMuseum of Modern Art, Mexico City

KAHLO, FridaThe Two Fridas (detail)1939Oil on canvas, 173,5 x 173 cmMuseum of Modern Art, Mexico City

“I am not sick. I am broken. But I am happy to be alive as long as I can paint.”

"No estoy enferma. Estoy rota. Pero estoy feliz de estar viva mientras pueda pintar. "

KAHLO, FridaSelf Portrait with a Portrait of Diego on the Breast and Maria Between the Eyebrows1954Oil on masonite, 61 x 41 cm Private collection

KAHLO, FridaSelf Portrait with a Portrait of Diego on the Breast and Maria Between the Eyebrows (detail)1954Oil on masonite, 61 x 41 cm Private collection

Art in Detail: KAHLO, Frida Featured Paintings

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KAHLO, FridaSelf Portrait with a Portrait of Diego on the Breast and Maria Between the Eyebrows

After 1951, Frida was in such severe pain that she was no longer able to work without taking painkillers....sometimes with alcohol. Her increasingly strong medication may be the reason for the looser, hastier, almost careless brushwork, thicker application of paint and less precise execution of detail which characterized her late work.

This was Frida's last self-portrait. In this self-portrait, Frida paints herself as a young woman, a portrait of Diego on her breast and a face that looks like Jesus Christ on the sun. As proof that she never lost her sense of humor, she painted a portrait of the actress Maria Felix on her forehead (Maria Felix was one of Diego's love interests). One of her pet dogs is also depicted with a protective and tender attitude.

KAHLO, FridaMarxism Will Give, Health to the Sick

There is a clear evidence of the mood of Frida Kahlo in those artworks that she painted and that still remain in the Blue House, in addition to her sincerity and her stance towards the world. In Marxism Will Give, Health to the Sick, Frida Kahlo refers to the trust in communism that was common during that age. In this portrait, the artist conjures the utopian conception of political belief that could release her from her pain. Supported in her ideology, she can go on without the crutches.

KAHLO, FridaThe Broken Column

The Broken Column was painted shortly after Frida had undergone surgery on her spinal column. The operation left her bedridden and “enclosed” in a metallic corset, which helped to alleviate the intense, and constant pain she was in.

In the painting she is depicted standing in the middle of a completely arid, cracked landscape. Her torso is encased in metal belts lined with fabric that provide pressure and support for her back. They help to prevent her body from collapsing, a possibility which is announced by the image running down the middle of her torso. There a completely fractured Ionic column on the point of collapse has replaced her spinal column.

Frida’s head rests on the capital. Although her face is bathed in tears, it doesn’t reflect a sign of pain. The attitude she presents is the one she always showed to life itself: strong and defiant to the viewer. The nails piercing her body are a symbol of the constant pain she faced. The largest ones, along the column, mark the damage caused by the accident in 1925, while those adhering to her left breast refer rather to an emotional pain, to her feeling of solitude. When asked once why she so often portrayed herself in her works,

Frida replied that it was because she was always alone and because she herself was what she knew best.

KAHLO, FridaWithout Hope

"Not the least hope remains to me . . . Everything moves in time with what the belly dictates . . ." This phrase was written by Frida on the back of the painting, in allusion to the dietary regimes she needed to follow in order to gain weight, since her lack of appetite had left her extremely thin.

Frida is lying naked in bed, weeping, and covered by a sheet on which microscopic organisms can be observed. Set up on the bed is an easel, holding a large funnel instead of a canvas, through which all of the foods both permitted and forbidden to her enter her mouth or issue from it. These include a candied skull with Frida’s name on the forehead, a gift from Diego during one of her many stays in the hospital.

A cracked desert landscape occupies the background again, beneath a sun and moon in the sky—elements at once complementary and opposed—.

KAHLO, FridaSelf-portrait with Small Monkey

In many of her self-portraits Frida is accompanied by her favorite animals, which substitute the children she never had. Sometimes they are spider monkeys, parrots, or dogs. Such is the case of this Self-Portrait with Small Monkey, which depicts Frida in three-quarter profile, with the attire and hairstyle of the indigenous women of southeastern Mexico.

She is intertwined with Señor Xolotl, as she called her Mexican hairless dog, while behind her, at the right, a spider monkey stares at the viewer. On the other side there is a pre-Hispanic idol.

One end of the ribbon that intertwines all of the figures surrounds Frida’s signature, while the other is wound around a nail piercing the beige clouds that form the background of the painting.

KAHLO, FridaDiego and I

Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo’s marriage was tumultuous at best. Frida created this painting during a particularly low point in their marriage. Rivera was having an affair with the movie star Maria Felix, and he was rumored to ask her to marry hum.

Although both of them had extramarital affairs, this one was particularly painful, as illustrated by this painting. Many times, Kahlo was able to laugh at Rivera’s indiscretions, but this painting shows real pain and suffering. She once referred to two accidents in her life; one of them being the streetcar accident, the other being Diego Rivera.

KAHLO, FridaThe Two Fridas

Created at the same time as her to divorce to Diego Rivera, The Two Fridas is Kahlo’s largest painting. It is believed to be a painting depicting her deep hurt at losing her husband.

One Frida sits on the left of the painting; this sis 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.

After her death, this small portrait of Rivera was found amongst Kahlo’s belongings, and is now on display at the Museo Frida Kahlo in Mexico.

Frida Kahlo was a Mexican painter best know for her surrealist self-portraits, depicting her intense emotional and physical pain. She was three years old at the onset of the Mexican Revolution, a fact which colored her from the very beginning of her life, including accounts of how her mother would rush her and her three sisters into the house because of outbreaks of gunfire in the streets outside her house. Sometimes her mother would even invite the hungry revolutionaries in for dinner.

Frida was not a stranger wither to pain or to physical disfigurement. She contracted polio at the age of six, which left her right leg thinner than her left, a fact which she disguised by wearing long skirts. When she was a student at the Preparatoria in 1922, she was in a terrible bus accident. A trolley collided with the bus that Kahlo was riding in, and she suffered sever injuries, including a broken spinal column, broken collarbone, broken ribs, broken pelvis, and her right leg was fractured in eleven different places. Her right foot was also crushed and dislocated, as was her shoulder. The bus’ iron handrail also pierced her abdomen and uterus, leaving her barren for the rest of her life.

As Kahlo was in a full body cast, she began painting to pass the time and ease her pain. She eventually recovered enough to walk again, but severe pain, keeping her in bed rest for months at a time, would plague her for the rest of her life. In her early painting career, she approached Diego Rivera, a renowned Mexican muralist, for advice on her paintings. He did more than gave her advice, and the couple was soon married. Kahlo and Rivera had a tumultuous relationship, both of them having hot tempers and extramarital affairs. They were once divorced in 1939, but remarried again in 1940. Rivera and Kahlo were both active communists, who befriended Leon Trotsky, with whom Kahlo also had an affair, and who came to live with them upon fleeing Stalinist Russia.

The year before her death, her right leg was amputated due to complications with gangrene, and she suffered complications from bronchopneumonia. Kahlo died one week after her 47th birthday. The official cause of death was a pulmonary embolism, although an autopsy was not performed, and some suspected it was a suicidal drug overdose. She was at first remembered only as Diego Rivera’s wife, but has since enjoyed a surge in popularity with the artistic movement of Neo-Mexicanismo. Her legacy now includes a number of books and feature films, and exhibitions of her works, which have been placed on United States postage stamps as well as Mexican currency.

art in detail: kahlo, frida, featured paintings

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