Wounded Deer Frida Kahlo

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.

In this oil painting, Kahlo portrays herself as a deer who has been shot with nine arrows and is helplessly wounded while it’s still in action. Although the deer is wounded she still drew her face with an expression of motivation rather than of hopelessness or sadness, showing her main personal attribute.

This can be interpreted as a symbol of how she sees herself as part male and part female due to her infertility. Kahlo always finds a way to demonstrate how her infertility has had a great impact on her life, mostly due to the pressure that is put on females in Latin American societies to produce offspring by men. It can somehow be interpreted that Kahlo sees herself as less of a woman because she can’t have children or that perhaps she sees it as a barrier between her and her husband: Diego Rivera. The fact that she drew a deer, demonstrates how she used animal as surrogates for children. Overall, she tries to illustrate her infertility and how she copes with it as a

Besides this, in the left corner of the painting the word “Carma” is written which means “destiny” or “fate” this demonstrates how Frida would like to choose her own destiny and have avoided everything dreadful that she has lived yet, she can’t do so. In other words, Kahlo is trying to show everything going on below the surface. Overall, she tries to demonstrate that after a storm there’s always some type of calmness and that one should always remain determined and