The Makings of Frida Kahlo

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"It is impossible to separate the life and work of this extraordinary person, her paintings are her biography." This was announces in 1953 by a local critic after her one and only solo exhibition in Mexico (www.fridakahlo.com). Frida Kahlo was not only a magnificent painter, but also a representation of her birth country Mexico, through her meaningful paintings. While in the midst of nobody but herself, Frida found great inspiration to paint during the early to mid 1900’s. Her passion for painting came from her traffic accident as a teenager, which left her paralyzed due to fractures in her spine and pelvis. Even before the traffic accident, she contracted polio at the age of six in the suburbs of Mexico City where she grew up. Her image depicts fearlessness, which is a factor of why self-portraits play a prominent role in her work. More than half of her 200 pieces of art are self-portraits because, “…I am so often alone…I am the subject I know best.”
Frida grew up in Mexico City, Mexico, and it was not much of a luxury. Despite this, she loved her country. Proof of this comes from the fact that even though she was born in 1907, she likes to say she was born in 1910 because that was the start of the Mexican Revolution (“Myths of Latin America”). Frida Kahlo lived among a rather diverse family. Her father was Hungarian-Jewish, and her mother was a native born Mexican with Spanish and Indian descent. She was one of four daughters in the family. Her two older sisters were named Matilde and Adriana, and the youngest sister was named Christina, but only trailed Frida by one year. Her father was commonly known by the name of Guillermo, and was a rather successful German photographer. Many of her paintings reflect the well knit home she...

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