Frida Kahlo was a Mexican American artist whose art has influenced many. Frida Kahlo’s life was full of struggle and strife. She used her life of difficulty as inspiration for her art. Kahlo’s art was different than most and was a raw interpretation of how she saw herself and what she went through. Some things that influences her art included her early life, her marriage. and her inspirations. Kahlo used these things as inspiration for her work.
Kahlo was born on July 6, 1907 in Coyoacán, Mexico. Her father was a Jewish German immigrant who sailed to Mexico when he was nineteen. Soon he met her mother who was of Spanish decent and raised Catholic. Even though the marriage was not a happy one, they had four daughters together. Frida was the third of their four daughters. When Kahlo was three years old the Mexican Revolution had begun and helped influence Frida. In her later writings, she told a story from her childhood which involved her mother bringing the girls into the house as gunfire rang through there poor village. When she was six, Kahlo caught polio and she suffered from having a thinner right leg, which she hid her disability with long patterned skirts.
Kahlo originally thought she was going to study medicine, but do to a bus accident when she was eighteen, she became an artist. The accident was caused when a car slammed into the bus she was riding in. This caused a metal railing to go through her hip and exit the other side of her body, on top of being impaled she had other injuries to her hip and spine which left her in a full body cast. While in recovery, Kahlo learned to paint to fill her time and express herself. She placed a mirror above her bed, which influenced her self-portraits. Frida suffered from depression during this time and painting was a way of expressing herself. Another influence on Kahlo’s artwork was her marriage and love life. Frida married Diego Rivera, a fellow communist painter. Kahlo and Rivera racked up a large number of affairs in the marriage and were generally unfaithful. This lead to a divorce in 1939, but they didn’t stay apart for long, due to getting remarried in 1940. Both individual’s infidelities greatly influenced Kahlo’s art.
Frida Kahlo mainly painted self-portraits depicting herself with traditional Mexican styled hair and a unibrow. Self-portraits were not the only thing Kahlo painted, she also had her hands in a large array of surrealism, sometimes even within self-portraits. In 1938, Kahlo had a rather large art exhibit at a New York City Gallery. This lead to her meeting an influential artist named Andre Brenton. Later, in 1939 she moved to Paris and was further influenced by fellow artists and friends. Some of the artists she befriended included Pablo Picasso and Marcel Duchamp. Frida Kahlo used her life of pain and disabilities to form her own significant artwork. After her death, her art became a part of a feminist movement. Her death was supposedly caused by pulmonary embolism and gangrene, while some suspected suicide by overdose. She died July 13, 1954.
Frida Kahlo’s art was extremely influential and caused people to take notice. She used her thoughts and life experiences to form an art style for herself. She has impacted many other artists and people. Her art was a raw interpretation of her feelings and life. In conclusion, Frida Kahlo was an extraordinary artist who used the difficulty and pain life caused her as inspiration for art.
