Frida
Kahlo
- Self Portrait
(oil on board, 1940))
Private Collection
Frida
Kahlo was born on July 6, 1907, in Coyoacan, a suburb
of Mexico City. When she was six years old she contracted
polio which left her with a deformed right foot and the
cruel nickname, “Peg-leg Frida”. Her original
ambition was to be a doctor but a streetcar accident in
1925 left her disabled and changed the path of her life.
It was after this accident that Kahlo began to paint in
order to relieve the boredom during her convalescence.
Frida
Kahlo and Diego Rivera
(wedding photograph, 1929)
Frida
Kahlo underwent more than thirty operations in the course
of her life, and most of her paintings relate to her experiences
with physical and psychological pain. They also chronicle
her turbulent relationship with Diego Rivera, Mexico’s
most famous painter, whom Kahlo met in 1928 and married
in 1929. Rivera was frequently unfaithful to her, even
starting an affair with her sister, Cristina. Kahlo retaliated
with her own affairs. Eventually they divorced in 1939
but remarried a year later, only to resume hostilities
where they left off. Kahlo is quoted as saying about the
relationship,"There have been two great accidents
in my life. One was the trolley, and the other was Diego.
Diego was by far the worst."
Frida
Kahlo - Self-Portrait in a Velvet Dress
(oil on canvas, 1926))
Private Collection
One
of Kahlo's early works, the ‘Self-Portrait in a
Velvet Dress’ suggests an influence and knowledge
of European art. The elongation of the hands and neck
recalls the Mannerist portraits of Bronzino, while the
turbulent waves in the background suggest the deep emotional
turmoil that can be found in the ice blue self portrait
by Van
Gogh in the Musée d'Orsay.
Kahlo began to deny quite obvious European influences
such as Surrealism, as she, along with Rivera, became
a driving force of the ‘Mexicanidad’ movement
which sought to increase the status of Mexican culture
and decrease the Spanish influence from Europe. She started
to wear traditional Mexican costumes and braided her hair
with ribbons, flowers and jewellery to identify with indigenous
Mexican culture. The imagery and colours in her paintings
were also changed to reflect this national pride.
Although
initially a self-taught painter from a humble background,
Frida Kahlo was, through her relationship with Diego Rivera,
moving in the most fashionable and influential social
circles. However, between 1930 and 1934, Kahlo and Rivera
moved to the USA to escape political persecution due to
their Communist sympathies. During that time Kahlo fell
pregnant twice and lost the child on both occasions, ultimately
due to complications resulting from her streetcar injuries.
The subjects of her paintings from this point onwards
deal increasingly with her feelings about loss, infertility,
pain and alienation.
Frida
Kahlo - Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird
(oil on canvas, 1940))
Harry
Ransom Humanities Research Center, Austin, Texas, USA
In her ‘Self-Portrait’ above, Kahlo portrays
herself as a Christ like victim - the crown of thorns
replaced by a necklace of thorns with a hummingbird 'medallion'.
This fusion of Christian and Aztec imagery is common in
Mexican culture: the Aztec god Huitzilopochtli is often
depicted as a hummingbird.
Frida
Kahlo - The Suicide of Dorothy Hale
(oil on board, 1939)
The
Phoenix Art Museum, Arizona, USA
‘The
Suicide of Dorothy Hale’ was commissioned by Clare
Booth Luce, the publisher of the fashion magazine ‘Vanity
Fair’ and a friend of both Dorothy Hale and Frida
Kahlo, as a memento for the deceased woman’s mother.
Dorothy’s husband, the artist Gardiner Hale, was
killed in a car crash and left her without support. Overwhelmed
by financial problems, Dorothy took her own life by jumping
from her apartment building. Kahlo paints the suicide
with three consecutive stages of the fall in one image:
first, a small figure of Dorothy leaps from a window high
in the building; then a larger figure is portrayed plummeting
through the clouds towards the ground; and finally the
largest figure, the bloodied and broken body of Dorothy,
lies prostrate on the sidewalk. At the bottom of the picture,
a trompe l’oeil inscription is written in ‘blood’,
"In the city of New York on the 21st day of the
month of October, 1938, at six o'clock in the morning,
Mrs. Dorothy Hale committed suicide by throwing herself
out of a very high window of the Hampshire House building.
This 'retablo,' (a painted wooden relief) was executed
by Frida Kahlo." To add to the horror of the
image, the frame is painted to look like it has been splattered
with bloodstains as a result of the fall. On receipt of
the painting Clare Booth Luce commented in her diary,
‘I could not have requested such a gory picture
of my worst enemy, much less of my unfortunate friend’.
Although she wanted to destroy the picture, she was persuaded
to keep it. Only someone like Kahlo, who had personally
endured and understood the effects of physical and psychological
suffering, could empathise with and respectfully address
this distressing subject without appearing insensitive
or sensational.
Frida
Kahlo - The Broken Column
(oil on board, 1944)
Dolores
Olmedo Foundation, Mexico City, Mexico
‘The
Broken Column’ (1944) is a metaphor for Kahlo’s
own pain. Her spine is represented by a shattered stone
column. This is visible through her broken body which
is only held together by a harness. She is naked and the
surface of her flesh is punctured by sharp nails, recalling
the painful effect of flogging on the body of Christ in
Matthias Grünewald’s Crucifixion Panel from
the Isenheim Altarpiece. Silent tears drop from her eyes
as she stands alone in a desolate wasteland without any
sign of hope on the horizon. This is a bleak self image
but Kahlo’s endurance heroically prevails in this
barren landscape of despair.
Frida
Kahlo - Self-Portrait with the Portrait of Doctor Farill
(oil on board, 1951)
Private Collection
In
the 1950’s, Kahlo’s health seriously declined
and the technical quality of her work suffered. Several
spinal operations left her crippled with pain and she
was confined to a wheelchair. 'Self-Portrait with the
Portrait of Dr. Farill' (1951) is typical of this final
period of her work. This double portrait, where Kahlo
sits in her wheelchair holding her brushes and palette
adjacent to her painting of her surgeon Dr. Farill, is
a statement about the nature of her art. "My
painting carries with it the message of pain ... Painting
completed my life." A section of her heart replaces
the palette on her lap, while her paintbrushes drip with
blood, leaving the viewer in no doubt about their importance
to her existence.
In
the summer of 1954, Frida Kahlo died from pneumonia in
the house where she was born. During her lifetime, she
did not enjoy the same level of recognition as her husband,
Diego Rivera, but today, her explicit, intensely autobiographical
work is as critically acclaimed as that of her male peers.
-
After two unsuccessful pregnancies, Kahlo's paintings
increasingly dealt with her feelings about loss, infertility,
pain and alienation.
-
During
her lifetime, she did not enjoy the same level of
recognition as her husband, Diego Rivera, but today
her intensely autobiographical work is as critically
acclaimed as that of her male peers.
