Frida Kahlo Identity

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Everything has been written in the last half-century about Frida Kahlo and her paintings. Kahlo’s works have been thoroughly and deeply analysed.
Nonetheless, she is mostly remembered for her marriage to Diego Rivera, her accident, consequently her pain, and her bisexuality. Anyhow her work is much more than that: it has been forgotten her political role within Mexican post-revolution, and it is this side of her work that I want to analyse.
More specifically I want to consider the role that her national identity played in her life and consequently in her paintings.
As I mentioned before her self-portraits are often only connected with her personal life, her physical pain, and the theme of femininity.
They often reduced the imagery in Kahlo’s work with an urge to “paint away” her accident, all the suffering, and the pain; this does little justice to her work, reducing it to merely a visual cry of personal anguish. It diminishes a significant aspect that is an essential element that runs throughout her life and her work, which she did with a deep intelligence and socially committed point of view.
She made her art both political and cultural, through the use of Aztec art and symbols. She did not merely painted herself, but …show more content…

Her personal project manifested itself in her attire, through her choice of Tehuana costume, pre-Columbian jewellery and traditional hairstyles. Frida Kahlo began using Mexican indigenous dress when she married Diego Rivera. Kahlo’s adoption of native clothing has been frequently connected to her will to please her husband and above all to mask her physical defections . However, we must consider this dress also as a political statement: Kahlo’s sartorial endorsement of post-revolutionary

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