Frida Kahlo was a talanted and strong woman who expressed her life situations through her works of art. She was born on July 6th, 1907 in the town of Coyoacán. Her life was challenging and the only choice she had was being strong to continue living. For instance, "when Frida was six, she contracted polio and was laid up for nearly a year" and as a matter of consequence "she was left with one leg shorter than the other" (Lowe 17). This deformity was the first but far from being the last problem Frida has ever faced throughout her lifetime. When she was eighteen, "she suffered an extremely serious accident that left her with a profound impairment of the backbone, pelvis and uterus" (Tibol 2). She had her several ribs cracked; "her right leg was broken in eleven places, ans her right foot was crashed" (Lowe 18). Despite all these consequences she tried to lead normal life and a year after the accident, she started drawing (Lowe 18). From that moment on, she drew a plethora of artworks that represent moments of her life using herself being the main model. As she says, "I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone», «because I am the person I know best" - Frida once said (Herrera The paitnings 3). Frida’s works were her representation of reality or the way she perceived it. Her striking ability to show her inner world through the works of art is amazing. In this research paper, my focus is mostly concerned on her particular painting - "The Two Fridas", and the way she expresses her feelings using canvas and paint. What stories are hidden in this painting and how does she mirror her emotions in her work? The answers lie behind the layers of paint and are only to be proposed and guessed.
Frida Kahlo "painted [her] own reality" an...
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Garber, Elizabeth. Art Critics on Frida Kahlo: A Comparison of Feminist and Non-Feminist Voices. Art Education, Vol. 45, No. 2 (Mar., 1992), pp. 42-48. Web. 23 Sept. 2013
Herrera, Hayden. Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo. Toronto: Fitzhenry & Whiteside Limited, 1983. Print
Herrera, Hayden. Frida Kahlo: The Paintings. Japan: Dai Nippon, 1991. Print
Kettenmann, Andrea. Frida Kahlo: Pain and Passion. Germany: Benedikt Taschen Verlag GmbH, 2000. Print
Lowe, Sarah M.. Frida Kahlo. New York: Universe Publishing, 1991. Print
Poniatowska, Elena, and Carla Stellweg. Frida Kahlo: The Camera Seduced by Frida Kahlo. Review by: Marcia Deihl. Harvard Review: No. 3 (Winter, 1993), pp. 231-232. Web. 23 Sept. 2013.
Richmond, Robin. Frida Kahlo in Mexico. California: Pomegranate Artbooks, 1994. Print
Tibol, Raquel. Frida Kahlo. An Open Life. Mexico: Editorial Oasis, 1983. Print
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.
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.
In 1922 she entered the Preparatoria, the most prestigious educational institution in Mexico, which had only just begun to admit girls. She was one of the only thirty-five girls out of the two thousand students. It was there that she met Diego Rivera, the man that she would eventually marry. In 1925, Frida was involved in a horrific bus accident that would alter the way she would live her life from that point on. She seriously injured her spine, abdomen, pelvis, and right foot. Frida was forced to stay flat on her back, encased in a plaster cast and enclosed in a box like structure for months. Though she survived the accident, the wounds that she suffered led to a lifelong physical battle with pain. Frida eventually regained her ability to walk, but she had many relapses, which caused her to be hospitalized for long periods of time, and also caused her to undergo numerous operations (32 throughout her life). It was her accident that led her to the path of becoming an artist. Frida initially started painting out of boredom. She would go on to paint many of her masterpieces while being confined to...
Whitney Chadwick, Women, Art, and Society 3rd ed. (NY: Thames & Hudson world of art, 2002), 153-160.
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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
Fuentes, C. (1995). The Diary of Frida Kahlo An Intimate Self-Portrait. New York: A Times Mirror Company.
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
These specific ploys that are performed by the Guerrilla Girls are in the way they dress, the masks they wear, pseudonymous names of dead women artists and the witty factual evidence in their works. These are all examples to evoke audiences in challenging not only the art society which dictates the value and worth of women in art, but also to confront yourself and your own beliefs in a way that makes audiences rethink these growing issues. Over the last twenty years, the Guerrilla Girls have established a strong following due to the fact that they challenged and consistently exhibited a strong supportive subject matter that defies societal expectations. In an interview “We reclaimed the word girl because it was so often used to belittle grown women. We also wanted to make older feminists sit up and notice us since being anti- “girl” was one of their issues....
Tyson, Lois. "Feminist Criticism." Critical Theory Today: a User-friendly Guide. New York: Routledge, 2006. Print.
The camera is presented as a living eye in her work, capable of bending and twisting, contorting reality in its own light. It is at the same time a sensuous device, one that exp...
Art is a very important part of humanity’s history, and it can be found anywhere from the walls of caves to the halls of museums. The artists that created these works of art were influenced by a multitude of factors including personal issues, politics, and other art movements. Frida Kahlo and Vincent van Gogh, two wildly popular artists, have left behind artwork, that to this day, influences and fascinates people around the world. Their painting styles and personal lives are vastly different, but both artists managed to capture the emotions that they were feeling and used them to create artwork.
Feminist criticism is a study of works written by female writers, describing women's life or representing women's consciousness. Arlyn Diamond and Lee R Edwards, in the foreword to The Authority o Experience: Essays in Feminist Criticism, point out that "feminist critics, obviously, are distinguished by virtue of their particular concern with society's beliefs about the nature and function of women in the world, with the transformation of these beliefs into literary plots, with the ways in which artistic and critical strategies adjust and control attitudes toward women. Compared with the long tradition of...
Through Frida Kahlo’s extensive self-portrait pieces, audiences are able to view her life in an almost biographical way. Each portrait conveys deep emotion and meaning, and carry a story which Kahlo has experienced. Her self-portraits are very personal, and overall show just how tragic her life had been.
Peterson, Linda H. "What Is Feminist Criticism?" Wuthering Heights. Ed. Linda H. Peterson. Boston: Bedford Books, 1992. 330-337.