Tragedy and Triumph: Frida Kahlo's Life Journey

1035 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Frida kahlo work of art essay

Frida Kahlo was a Mexican artist best known for her self portraits. She was born in Coyoacán, Mexico City, Mexico. She was born to parents Matilde Calderon y Gonzalez and Guillermo Kahlo. She lived from 1907 to 1954. She was part of the Mexican Communist Party. Kahlo had several tragic incidents occur during her lifetime. At around the age of 6, she contracted polio. The disease left her with a damaged right leg and foot. She went to school at the National Preparatory school, where she met Alejandro Gomez Arias. While traveling together on a bus, it collided with a street car. The incident left her with serious injuries, including getting impaled with a steel handrail, and suffered fractures to her spine and pelvis, and had to undergo several …show more content…

In 1928, Kahlo began her relationship with Diego Rivera, who encouraged her artwork. She had incorporated graphic elements of surrealism into her artwork. They led generally separately different lives. During their marriage Diego had cheated on Kahlo several times, including with her sister Cristina. She then experienced more heartbreak when she miscarried in 1934. They had divorced in 1939. but later remarried the next year and were married until her death. In 1938, Kahlo befriended one of the primary figures in surrealistic art, Andre Breton. The next year, she also befriended such artists as Marcel Duchamp and Pablo Picasso. It was during this time that she had divorced Rivera.
Because of her divorce, she painted one of her most famous artworks, “The Two Fridas”. The painting displays two versions of herself, with her hearts exposed. It is believed that this painting is meant to represent both the “loved” and “unloved” versions of herself. It can also be interpreted as the person she was, and the person she then became.

One of Kahlo’s deeper paintings, “Henry Ford Hospital”, tells the story of her tragic second miscarriage. The painting displays her laying in a hospital bed with several items floating around her. It is representative of her longing to have a

Show More
Related

  • Ester Hernandez's Frida Y Yo

    366 Words  | 1 Pages

    Ester Hernandez is a Chicana artist, best known for her works of Chicana women. Ester’s goal is to recreate women’s lives to produce positive images of women’s lifestyle and to create icons. Her piece, Frida y Yo, contains the iconic painter Frida Kahlo. Frida, after being in multiple accidents causing long-term pain and suffering, began painting, mostly self-portraits, to portray her reality and glorify the pain. Similar to how Hernandez's goals are a juxtaposition to Frida’s artwork, the art piece Frida y Yo creates a juxtaposition between life and suffering and death and fortune.

    Read More

  • Frida Kahlo Thesis

    711 Words  | 2 Pages

    Attention Material: There is ongoing speculation that Frida Kahlo would have never came to be as well known if it wasn’t for the marriage to another Famous Mexican painter under the name of Diego Rivera. Although both had different styles of painting, Frida Kahlo was being rediscovered by many particular women because a lot of herself inflicting paintings connected to a big audience of feminists. After living under the shadow of her husband she was becoming even more famous than Diego Rivera.

    Read More

  • Frida Kahlo

    615 Words  | 2 Pages

    Frida Kahlo nació el 6 de Julio 1907 en la ciudad de México. Ella les dijo a muchas personas que nació el 7 de Julio 1910 porque quiso parecer más joven a los otros. Aunque sus padres fueron judíos, Frida nació en México. Frida fue una artista surrealista y sus obras vió de sus emociones de la tristexa y la cólera de su vida. Ella le encantó decir los chistes, reír, y sonreír. Frida Kahlo llevó las ropas de la cultura tradicional de México porque pensó que las ropas fueran una forma del arte. Todo el mundo admiró mucho a Frida, a causa de sus obras y su actitud.

    Read More

  • Comparison Of Frida Kahlo And Pablo Picasso

    875 Words  | 2 Pages

    Born July 6, 1097, in Coyocoan, Mexico City, Mexico. Considered one of Mexico’s greatest artists, Frida Kahlo began painting after she was severely injured in a bus accident.

    Read More

  • Cassatt Vs Kahlo

    1695 Words  | 4 Pages

    It is undeniable the Kahlo’s culture played an eminent role in her work as an artist and world-renown icon. While Kahlo’s work was more representative of her culture and her feminist representations, Cassatt’s work leaned more towards depictions of herself and children. Theartstory.org states, “Cassatt’s art typically depicted domestic settings, the world to which she herself (as a respectable woman) was restricted…” Cassatt used her art to express her daily life as a woman; A woman who abided my the societal constructs of her time. The two purposes the artist used their talent for were essentially the antithesis of each other. Kahlo, who very proud of her heritage, proclaiming her strength in my womanhood where Cassatt was complacent and pleased with her frailty and

    Read More

  • How Frida Kahlo's Experiences Influences Her Artwork

    1376 Words  | 3 Pages

    Frida Kahlo was an amazing woman whose many tragedies influenced her to put her stories into her paintings. She was born in July 6th 1907 to a Mexican Roman Catholic mother who was of Indian and Spanish decent and a German photographer father. Frida had three sisters, Mitilde and Adriana, who were older and Christina who was younger. She learned about Mexican history, art and architecture by looking at her father’s photography. When Frida was six she got polio and it was a long time before she would heal completely. After surviving polio, Frida’s right leg became weak and thin, so her father encouraged her to play sports to help her.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Frida Kahlo

    999 Words  | 2 Pages

    Among the many famous Mexican artists, one name stands out due to her tragic life and surreal self-portraits, and that is Frida Kahlo. One of Frida’s more renowned portraits is: Self-portrait on the borderline between Mexico and the United States, hereafter called: Kahlo’s self-portrait. Frida created this small oil painting in the United States in 1932. Kahlo was in the United States at the time accompanying her husband, Diego Rivera, who had been commissioned to paint several murals. Kahlo’s self-portrait is a representation of her interpretations of the two countries and how she was feeling at the time. Through symbolic interpretation, Frida Kahlo’s self-portrait is representing her homesickness of Mexico and her disposition towards the two countries.

    Read More

  • Frida Kahlo's Influence

    1062 Words  | 3 Pages

    Frida Kahlo's influence still lingers around the world. Even with Frida dead for almost two decades, she is still celebrated and thought of as an idol. Frida Kahlo was an artist in many different ways. Besides Frida's incredible talent to paint surrealist thoughts and emotions on canvas, she also was and artist in her mind and body. Frida's attire of traditional Mexican clothing, which consisted of long, colorful dresses and exotic jewelry, and her thick connection eyebrows, became her trademark. To the public, Frida Kahlo appeared to be full of spirit and joy. She walked through life happily, with a smile glued to her face. However, her feelings of anguish, anger, unhappiness of her painful miscarriages, and physical and mental sufferings were expressed through her artwork. Her paintings were full of personal content. They expressed her internal feelings. The world was unaware of the agony of the "real" Frida Kahlo. The world has been fascinated with Kahlo's artwork because of her emotional background. Her creative style was always breathtaking yet bewildering. Frida was probably the most idolized woman artist of her time and today, she is a figure of legendary power whose work inspires excitement and awe throughout the world. (Daniels 88) Many of Frida Kahlo's artwork was inspired by her own personal experiences; in "The Broken Spine", she paints of her sufferings caused by a tram crash, also in "Diego and I", Kahlo expresses her chaotic marriage with Mexican muralist, Diego Rivera and in "Self-Portrait with Monkeys", Kahlo paints the only children she could have (85).

    Read More

  • Compare And Contrast Frida Kahlo And Barbara Kruger

    1090 Words  | 3 Pages

    Frida Kahlo is known for the most influential Latin American female artist. She is also known as a rebellious feminist. Kahlo was inspired to paint after her near-death bus incident when she was 17. After this horrendous incident that scarred her for life, she went under 35 different operations. These operations caused her extreme pain and she was no longer able to have kids. Kahlo’s art includes self portraits of her emotions, pain, and representations of her life. Frida Kahlo was an original individual, not only in her artwork but also in her

    Read More

  • The Legacy Frida Kahlo

    1030 Words  | 3 Pages

    Diego Rivera and his wife Frida Kahlo are an important aspect of the Hispanic World and well-known names in Latino art. Rivera and Kahlo knew many famous painters such as Duchamp, Siqueiros, Orozco and Picasso. Picasso became a great friend of the family. Kahlo has influenced many places in Mexico. There are many land marks not only in Mexico but around the world. The Frida Kahlo Museum is located in Coyoacan Mexico in her Casa Azul home (blue house), this is the same place Kahlo was born, grew up, lived with her husband Rivera and died (Gale, 1996). The museum holds collections and embraces the personal effects of both artists shining light on the way of life for affluent Mexican writers and artist during the first half of the century. The Dolores Olmedo Museum at Hacienda La Noria is another museum-house from the 16th century monastery, includes many of Kahlo’s famous paintings such as “The Broken Column,” “Luther Burbank,” and holds a large amount of Rivera’s works of art (Gale, 1996). Rivera’s murals of his wife Frida, himself, and various members of their family and friends can be found at the Secretariat of Public Education (where he met his wife), the Mexico City’s National Palace, the Museo de la Alameda, and the Palace of Fine Arts (Gale, 1996).

    Read More

  • Compare And Contrast Frida And Artemisia

    869 Words  | 2 Pages

    Born in 1910, Frida was a woman that was not about preserving young beauty. She loved to acquaint herself with Mexico, where she was born. Being a great painter, she loved to paint pictures of herself. A quote by her is as follows “I paint myself because I am so often alone and because I am the subject I know best”. In other words, she can paint and feel free, because she knows herself well and can paint the

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Cassatt's The Child And Mother Nursing Her Child

    1035 Words  | 3 Pages

    Aristotle once claimed that, “The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.” Artists, such as Louise-Elizabeth Vigée Le Brun and Mary Cassatt, captured not only the way things physically appeared on the outside, but also the emotions that were transpiring on the inside. A part no always visible to the viewer. While both artists, Le Brun and Cassatt, worked within the perimeters of their artistic cultures --the 18th century in which female artists were excluded and the 19th century, in which women were artistically limited-- they were able to capture the loving relationship between mother and child, but in works such as Marie Antoinette and Her Children and Mother Nursing her Child 1898,

    Read More

  • Frida Kahlo: A Life In Pain

    1171 Words  | 3 Pages

    It was at the Preparatoria where she had met her future husband, Diego Rivera a famous Mexican muralist; it was love at first sight (Stephen 2008). Kahlo would reunite...

    Read More

  • Essay On Frida Kahlo

    2239 Words  | 5 Pages

    Frida Kahlo was a Mexican painter, born on the July the 6th, 1907. She was born in small town on the outskirts of Mexico, called Couyocan. Her family lived in a house they built themselves, La Casa Azul, or “The Blue House”. It’s name comes from the structures bright blue walls, and now stands as the Frida Kahlo Museum. At the age of fifteen, Kahlo was enrolled in the National Prepatory School of Mexico, where she was one of only a thirty-five female students. With the dream of becoming a medical doctor, Kahlo studied sciences at the school. But, on Septemer 17th, 1925, Kahlo experienced the fateful accident which changed her life forever. She had been riding on a bus with her boyfriend, Alejandro Gomez Arias, when the vehicle collided with a tram. The accident had left several people dead, and Kahlo with many injuries. Some of which were broken collar bone, fractures in her right leg, a crushed foot and a broken spinal column. The injuries left her in a full-body cast for months on end and was confined to her bed for this time. Kahlo also was left with fertility complications after handrail had pierced her uterus. The tragic event left Kahlo in a world of unbearable pain and also boredom. It was during her bed-ridden recovery where she took up the practice of painting, with herself as the subject. Her mother had made her an easel to paint in bed, where she developed her skills of painting. Her first self portrait, “Self Portrait in a Velvet Dress”, was her first serious piece which she painted in 1926. She painted it as a present to her boyfriend, Alejandro Gomez Arias. The artwork was fairly muted in colour and was quite a traditional European-style artwork. But, as Kahlo continued painting her works transitioned from the acade...

    Read More

  • Wounded Deer Frida Kahlo

    696 Words  | 2 Pages

    Frida Kahlo is an empowering female who used her artwork to express her feelings. One of her most noticeable paintings, is “The Wounded Deer” which is an oil painting where she draws herself as a wounded deer in a depressive forest. As an artist, she uses symbolism to illustrate how she truly feels and all she has suffered throughout her life. Simultaneously, she also demonstrates her cultural identity and personal life aspects in her paintings.

    Read More

More about Tragedy and Triumph: Frida Kahlo's Life Journey

Open Document