Art History Term Paper

Behind Frida’s Life

Many of the artists are known for their isolated lifestyles. Frida Kahlo lived and painted from different point of views. Frida portrayed her personal experience and feelings through her paintings. Kahlo was born July 6, 1907 in Mexico to multi ethnic parents. At the age of eighteen, Kahlo was a victim of a bus accident that led to severe damage. The result from the accident was a fractured arm, collarbone, leg, ribs, pelvis and being skewered by a metal rod. With Frida’s accident she wasn’t able to maneuver she was to stay in bed. The recovery from her accident is what motivated her to work as an artist. She expressed herself through her art as her only escape from reality into her own. Many of her art works show the pain and the sexuality, or the bisexuality of her life. According to, Feminists Studies, “The idea that something about unwanted sexual experience is being hidden in Kahlo’s paintings is supported by observations about What I Saw in the Water or What the Water Gave Me”(Beck 61). The bisexual relationships came into place during and while following her husband Diego Rivera, which as well was a famous, painter and muralist. Her husband Diego Rivera wasn’t a man of one woman. He had several of affairs with female artists, models, and even her sister. Several of the paintings she completed directly came from her feelings and her surrounding environment. As Kahlo’s marriage starts to come to an end she felt alone. Her painting “Self Portrait with Cropped Hair”, was inspired while she was going through her divorce with Diego Rivera. People labeled Frida Kahlo as a surrealist artist, although she disagreed with this title saying, “ I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality”. To what extent is this true? In my point of view this statement is true to an extent because her main topics of her paintings are based on love, lost, politics, and her surgery that reflect the events in her life. The painting known as “The Flying Bed” is one of my favorites. Frida Kahlo painted it in 1932 with oil. The painting significantly shows a body of Frida Kahlo lying naked, exposed and bleeding on a hospital bed after suffering a miscarriage. The painting shows a tear falling from her left eye, and six images surrounding her, all connected to her through blood red cords, which she may be holding. The six images surrounding her are a side view of a fetus, snail, pelvis, female anatomy, a machine, and an orchid. The sky in the background is painted cloudy with factories in the mid horizon. This portrait portrays her because after having her miscarriage she feels alone and the pain suffering she was going through. Each of the six images have a meaning the image of the female anatomy is a symbol of her femininity; the male fetus represents her baby. The snail is a symbol of the painful slowness of her miscarriage, the image of the machine represents her hospitalization, and the or orchid was a gift given by her husband and it’s a symbol of their love, and lastly the shattered pelvis which prevented her from having any children. Although this painting was painted with a lot of pain it tells a story. I admire Frida for being able to conquer such tragic events in her life. Kahlo has such beautiful paintings with such thoughtful meanings. A person can look into a painting and wonder about what the painting is signifying. What could that mean? What does that object portray? Why did she draw that certain thing? We may ask ourselves many questions but it all goes according to the imagination. Furthermore, another painting that caught my attention was “ The Broken Column”, this painting is one of the most surreal works of all paintings by Frida Kahlo. This self-portrait of her with other several paintings represent the pain she endured through her life both emotionally and physically. What the painting shows is naked Kahlo with her body torn open slightly to reveal a representation of her broken spine as a

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