Frida Kahlo Ancestry Bloodline Essay

Frida Kahlo: Ancestry Bloodline Frida Kahlo was a famous Mexican painter who transported her feelings to her audience through her art. One of her most famous painting is My grandparents, My parents, and I. In this wonderful art piece, she presents her family to her viewer in an authentic family tree. She, like many Mexicans, is a proud inheritor of the mestisaje bloodline. Since the colonization era, when the Europeans and Spanish came to the Americas in 1493, many new biological crossings occurred (Flyover History 26). In Kahlo’s painting, we can appreciate the impact that the Colombian exchange had on genealogical history.

Artist, Frida Kahlo enlights her audience with a unique painting of her family tree. In the center of this masterpiece, she carefully places herself as a child holding a red lace. This lace directs the viewers to focus their attention on both, maternal and paternal grandparents. Falling to the lower center of them, her parents are placed. As to signal the unity of two cultures. Below Kahlo’s parents, the view falls back to her child portrait, giving the audience the result of a unity, herself, a meztisaje.

In the center of the painting is her as a child. To the right is her father, a “German-born Jewish and a photographer” (moma.org p1 ). Above him are her grandparents drawn above the water. With this she symbolizes that her paternal origins are from overseas, European and Jewish heritage. Her mother Matilde at the left is “half Amerindian and half Spanish” (FK.org). Above Matilde are Kahlo’s grandparents which are located above land. Cactus and mountains symbolize that the origins of her maternal grandparents have inhabited Mexican land for generations. These cultural points are very important to Kahlo although an important part of her heritage is left out of this