On the occasion of Women’s Day we are telling you stories of women who have embraced freedom as their only creed, like Frida Kahlo . The famous Mexican painter has left a tangible mark on history, becoming a symbol of modern feminism. Frida Kahlo had a difficult life, marked by the disease that led her to die before she turned fifty. Her intense relationship with suffering – and her passionate love for Diego Rivera – translated into works of art capable of moving. Her thick, masculine eyebrows have become the emblem of body positivity : not to bow to the norms imposed by society, to avoid referring to recognized patterns. Frida Kahlo, the beginnings
Frida Kahlo, born Magdalena Carmen Frieda Kahlo y Calderon was born in Coyoacan, a delegation from Mexico City, on July 6, 1907. Her parents were Matilde Calderon y Gonzalez and Guillermo Kahlo, a successful photographer precise and meticulous in performing with care lights and shadows. From her father perhaps she takes that precision in describing in detail every detail of her. At the birth of her Frida of her and her suffering from spina bifida, which her parents and the people around her mistake for polio, since her younger sister is also affected. Since adolescence she has shown artistic talent and an independent and passionate spirit, reluctant towards any social convention . From this context the theme of the self-portrait was born. The first one she paints is for her teenage love, Alejandro.10 curiosities about Frida Kahlo
Icon of style, undisputed feminist, internationally renowned artist has always exerted a magnetic fascination on art lovers and not Frida Kahlo, the accident
In her portraits very often depicts the dramatic aspects of her life, the greatest of which is the serious accident of which he is the victim in 1925 while traveling on a bus and due to which he sustains the fracture of the pelvis. The aftermath of that accident will affect her health throughout her life, but not her moral strain. Frida is passionately dedicated to painting and despite the physical and mental pain of the aftermath of the accident, she continues to be the rebellious, nonconformist and very lively girl that she had been before her.Frida Kahlo’s pain leads to art.
Frida discharged from the hospital is forced to rest for months in her bed at home with her bust in a plaster cast. This forced circumstance pushes her to read many books, many of them on the communist movement, and to paint. To support this passion of her, her parents give her a four-poster bed with a mirror on the ceiling , so that she can see herself, and some colors to paint; this is where she begins the series of self-portraits of her. Her obsessive relationship with her tortured body characterizes one of the fundamental aspects of her art : she creates visions of the female body no longer distorted by a male gaze. The meeting with Diego Rivera
Frida Kahlo brings her paintings to Diego Rivera, an illustrious mural painter of the time, to have his critique. Rivera was very impressed by Frida’s modern style, so much so that he took her under his wing and included her in the Mexican political and cultural scene. She became an activist of the Mexican Communist Party which she joined in 1928. she I participate in numerous demonstrations and in the meantime she falls in love with Diego Rivera. In 1929 the husband , despite knowing of the constant betrayals she would face . As a result of her sentimental sufferings, she too had numerous extramarital affairs, including various homosexual experiences. Frida and surrealism
Starting from 1938 his pictorial activity intensified: his paintings were no longer limited to the simple description of the incidents in his life. They talk about her inner state and her way of perceiving the relationship with the world and almost all of them include a child, personification of her, among the subjects. For a short time in his works the elements of the classical Mexican tradition are combined with those of the surrealist production.
In 1938 the surrealist poet and essayist Andre Breton saw her work for the first time: he was so impressed by it that he offered her an exhibition in Paris and proclaimed that Frida was ” a surrealist created with her own hands“. In 1939, at the invitation of Andre Breton, he went to Paris, where her works were presented in an exhibition dedicated to her. She knew that the surrealist label would bring her critical approval, but at the same time she liked the idea of ​​being considered an original artist. Frida Kahlo’s vision
In any case, despite the emphasis placed on pain, repressed eroticism and the use of hybrid figures, Frida’s vision was far from the surrealist one: her imagination was not a way out of logic and immerse yourself in the subconscious, but rather the product of her life that she was trying to make accessible through a symbolism. His idea of ​​surrealism was playful, he said it “and the magical surprise of finding a lion in the closet, where you were sure to find the shirts”. Years later, Frida, she violently denies having taken part in the movement, perhaps because in the 1940s it ceased to be in fashion. The last years and her success
The life and works of the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo exert a great artistic charm and a strong emotional impact. For some, this courageous artist will be remembered over time as the greatest painter of the twentieth century. Three important exhibitions are dedicated to her in 1938 in New York, in 1939 in Paris and in 1953 in Mexico City. The year following this last exhibition, on July 13, 1954,
Frida Kahlo dies in her hometown. Her Her home in Coyoacan, the ‘Blue House’, the destination of thousands and thousands of visitors, has remained intact, just as Diego Rivera wanted him to leave it to Mexico. It is a wonderful house, simple and beautiful, with colored walls, light and sun, full of life and inner strength as was the owner of her.
