Frida Kahlo Essay

The fact that Kahlo is in the center of the painting does not suggest any common ground, but rather speaks, it would seem, of some internal struggle within Kahlo as she sees her nation influenced and perhaps destroyed by the United States. She is clearly

According to The Life and Times of Frida Kahlo, “horrific trolley car accident left her debilitated… husband cheated on her with younger sister Cristina.” Kahlo was lugging around an enemy her whole life. Her husband tested her in many ways and mentally and physically brought her self-esteem down. She constantly had to deal with the comparison. What was even worse was that he had cheated on her with her own sister.

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

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

Kahlo was an important figure of her time; she opened barriers for women in the art world, as well as with women who felt like they had to conform to society’s gender roles. It is amazing how Frida continues to impact generations, and will continue to do

Cultural identity is event in both poem and picture , Frida Kahlo is torn same as the person in Pat Mora's poem . They both are similar go back to tone , Pat Mora tone to the poem is She cheerful but really trynna be happy , just so people won't pity her because she doesn't fit into two of her heritage groups . In the poem “Legal Alien,”Pat Mora states “An American to Mexicans / A Mexican to Americans”( 14-15) . This textual evidence shows , her two heritage not accepting her for her bi-cultural background she exotic to both groups . In the image by Frida kahlo “Self-portrait on the Borderline Between Mexico and the United States” the tone is similar because you can tell that Frida is of course happy for her husband , who's the reason she had been in the U.S.A for 3 years , but now it comes to the point where she ready to go home back to Mexico , it's to the point where she can't even be happy for him no more . The image shows mexico in a less industrial place than the U.S.A , the mexico side has a moon and the sun with a lightbolt coming from the clouds , I feel this represent her trying to be happy but she simply ready to explode she's homesick from the pressure . In the same way they are similar to conflict Pat Mora conflict in the poem is , she tries to belong , but no matter what she does the way she has the advantages in speaking both languages , she still a out cast . Frida Khalo is homesick , her husband rich white friend were okay ,but maybe since Diego had a lot of affairs she feels outta place knowing , her disabled problem to , Frida Kahlo the person that doesn't hold her tongue so Diego knowing this and not trying to get her back to Mexico maybe made the case worst.

Frida's artwork has always interested me in many ways. Her paintings are so much more than self-portraits and surrealism. She illustrates her life and the struggles she goes through, even if most would like to ignore the darker aspects of life. The theme of suffering permeates Frida’s self-portraits and often explicitly comprises their subject matter. She visually depicts physical and psychological struggles through the distortions of her body, which is fragmented, doubled, turned inside-out, and merged with non-human elements. She shows me that I can be strong through life even when I'm hurting physically and emotionally. Frida challenged herself and her

Kahlo carefully considers all elements of her work, including the colours used. This is evident in her choice of symbols to convey a very intricate meaning. In this particular painting the natural elements are heavily integrated into the composition; surrounding Kahlo are vines linking her to nature itself. Kahlo was unable to bear children and her link here to nature, especially with the presence of so many monkeys (a traditional symbol of fertility), may represent her desire to be a part of this aspect of nature. Fertility has a huge presence in this painting as the flower, the white of her shirt, and the lush green vines all symbolise health, fertility and purity, none of which Kahlo herself possessed. Through her symbolism Kahlo created meaning and added emphasis on particular aspects of her life. Critics have likened her tendency to do this to a method of self-creation rather than self-expression. She places herself within a scenario she wishes to be in or a person she recreates herself as, in this painting for example, she would be using her engulfment in fertility symbols as a way of showing herself as fertile. Either way, the painting speaks very strongly of Kahlo's link to motherhood, through the local, Mexican symbols.

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.

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.

To have to change and adapt to new lifestyles is a very difficult task which is why many immigrants would favor their own cultures. This can be shown in Frida Kahlo’s Self Portrait Along the Boarder Line Between Mexico and the United States. In this painting, it shows the United States as dark and vacant of life while Mexico is filled with flowers and sunlight. Within the painting is Frida Kahlo holding a Mexican flag representing her loyalty to her native country. The painting also shows Frida standing on the border of Mexico and America.

In Frida, a Biography of Frida Kahlo by Hayden Herrera, Frida Kahlo is a famous Mexican artist who didn’t find fame until near the end of her life. Herrera even says “The artist, dressed in her favorite Mexican costume, was carried on a hospital stretcher to her four-post bed, which had been installed in the gallery that afternoon”(33). The quote it self shows how much Frida valued her art that she would go see it in a gallery even on near death. She implemented her views into her horrific and dramatic art. Herrera the goes on to say “What passed through Frida Kahlo’s head and into her art was some of the most original and dramatic imagery of the twentieth century”(34).

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