Frida Kahlo Research Paper

Nichole Richard

Art

September 25, 2014

Frida Kahlo

Frida Kahlo was an outstanding female artist in the early 1900’s. She painted many self portraits portraying her and others life lessons. Frida Kahlo was born on July 6th 1907 in Coyocoan, Mexico City, Mexico. Kahlo was known for being one of the first feminist icon. In the 1900’s women began rebelling. Frida looked up to many of those women and began to idol them. This led to social awareness and her own rebellion. While she was in school, Frida was friends with the intelligent people. She had a love for traditional colorful clothing. Frida Kahlo joined a political group which led her to later become an active communist

. Kahlo ended up being one of the most famous artist from Mexico. She contracted Polio at the very young age of 6. She was forced to be bedridden for almost 9 months. The disease caused her to limp

because it had affected her right leg and foot. Suffering with recuperating, her father pushed her to her limits. He encouraged her to do leg straining activities such as playing soccer, running, and even swimming. While in the National Preparatory School, Kahlo was always the butt of others jokes. She was regularly called “Peg Leg”. However, most people adored that she never let her inadequate leg get in the way of athletic activities. Kahlo was a strong minded and strong willed woman. In 1925 at the age of 18, Kahlo encountered yet another deadly accident. She was traveling on a bus with her friend Gomez Arias. The best suddenly collided with another vehicle, causing a steel handrail to impale her through her hip and out the other side. She suffered many injuries, but the worst was the fractures in her pelvis and spine. The accident drove Kahlo to teach herself to paint. A year later she finished her first painting “Self Portrait in a Velvet Dress.”
Frida Kahlo first met her husband Diego Rivera when he was painting a mural at her school.

She snidely told her friends “She would someday have Rivera’s baby.”(CITE THIS BIO.COM) Kahlo relinked with Rivera about 3 years later. They would encourage each other’s work and dreams. Rivera and Kahlo moved to the states for Rivera to proceed his works. Frida would then follow Rivera wherever his work would take him. Frida then painted a self-portrait of her and Rivera “Frieda and Diego Rivera”. She later presented the painting at the San Francisco Society of Women Artists. Kahlo began to add more graphic and realistic traits to her work. Kahlo and Rivera were never a traditional married couple. She and her husband had their own separate home, and slept in separate beds. Frieda’s husband Diego cheated on her many times, causing the couple to separate. She was so distraught from the infidelities, she cut off her signature hair. She then began to bring realism into her work in 1932. Frida was constantly painting pictures of her difficulties, one of which was her first and second miscarriage in

1934.
Kahlo painted the story of her mutual friend’s suicide, Dorothy Hale. She wanted to give the painting “Suicide of Dorothy Hale” (1939) to Dorothy’s mother as a remembrance gift. However, Dorothy’s mother refused the gift because she was horrified of the realistic painting. Frida divorced Rivera after she moved to Paris in 1939. Indeed Frida Kahlo was an amazing women. She had her own free-spirited personality mixed with a strong will to work. Despite all the challenges she faced, health, love, loss, she was still able to come up on top every single time.
She was constantly depicting her battles through her art beautifully. Kahlo experienced many hardships. One including the divorce of her cheating husband. Frieda and Rivera got remarried a year after she divorced him eventually Kahlo became involved with other men as her husband did with other women. When Frida said “There have been two great accidents in my life; one was the trolley, the other was Diego.” (CITE THIS SHIT) she truly depicted their relationship. She was well aware of their situation but continued to stick around. That quote shows Frida’s personality in just one sentence. She was a women of humor and originality that never faded away, even in death. I believe that Frida painted mostly self-portraits because she often felt alone in the world. With her husband cheating, and her father’s death, she might not have felt like she really knew anyone for a fact. So she painting something she knew best; herself. Painting was a way for Frida to escape. She put all her emotions and tragedies into all of her work, each piece a different emotion, a different experience. Kahlo inspired many female artists.
Frida was born 3 years before the Mexican revolution, even though in some of her works, she claims to be born in 1910, the beginning of the revolt. Porfirio Diaz was the current leader of mexico during that time period. He ruled mexico like no other, with an iron fist. He took drastic measures to punish the citizens of mexico. Eventually, Fransico Madero thought it was time for someone to take place of his dictatorship. Diaz later rigged the election and sent Madero to prison. After Madero was released, he started a revolt. After a while, the rebellion started to really develop. Small farmers, cowboys, and Railroaders began to get involved. 1915 brought many blood-spattered battles. The Revolution’s violence continued into the 1930’s and WWI. The revolution eventually ended dictatorship of mexico.
The revolution itself influenced Kahlo’s Rebellion and personality. She was a woman of her own virtures. Kahlo never followed the crowd, and always took her own hard path. One sign of her rebellion was that Kahlo was bisexual, and even though it was frowed upon in that day and age, she did not feel as though she must hide it from anyone. Frida was a very colorful person, who ended up feeling very secluded and alone in the end.