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Who was Frida Kahlo?

By Annie Nicole Rojas Vaughan, Brayan Fernando Vargas Cely and Stephany Novoa
Urrego

Frida Kahlo was one of the most famous and influential Mexican personalities of all time. She
was born on July 6, 1907, in “la casa Azul” (the blue house), a tiny blue house where she lived
most of her life, located in Coyocan, Mexico. She was, above all, the greatest Mexico’s artist,
but, indeed, her contributions were very wide ranging.

Her father was a photographer German descendent who immigrate to Mexico where he met
and married Frida Kahlo’s mother; whereas her mother was half Amerindian and half Spanish.
Her family was shaped by two sisters who were older than her, and one younger sister.

By the time she hit age six, she contracted Polio which caused her to be bedridden for over
nine months, besides this Frida had poor health throughout her childhood and this is just a
proof of it. Due to this disease her right leg and food grew much slimmer than her left one,
after she get well from the Polio, she walked lamely and she has been wearing long skirts to
cover that for the rest of her life. With the purpose of get better, her dad, who was by far her
biggest champion in life, encourages her to paly soccer, swim, and even wrestle which was
very out of the ordinary in those days for a girl. Of course, it was very odd, for a girl, to play
sports at the time, let along wrestled. After this, she and his father kept a close relationship for
her whole life.

It was about this time, when she met Diego Rivera, who was painting a mural in their school.
Frida, who was a bit younger than him, like twenty years younger, told a friend, and claim, that
she will marry him.

Frida Kahlo attended the recognised National Preparatory School in Mexico City in year 1922
but there were only thirty-five female students enlisted in that school and before long she
increasingly grew into a famous charter in that school by her outspokenness and bravely. It
was then, when she met, for the first time, the famous Mexican muralist Diego Rivera and, as
we’ve said. Rivera at that time was working on a mural called “the creation” on the school
campus and often she watched it, and when she falls in admiration with that masterpiece, she
was out of this world by a moment and then she returned in a brief time at the same time she
told a friend what we have already said.

At the same year, Frida known a crowd of students whose political and intellectual views about
the world were very similar to Frida’s ones. At that time was when Frida fell in love with the
leader Alejandro Gomez Arias. On a September afternoon when she was traveling with
Gomez Arias in a bus Frida was riding in collided with a street car and she was seriously
injured. The lesions Frida got therefore were, principally, a handrail impaled on her hip, and
her spine and pelvis were fractured an it left her in a great pain (physically and phycological)
for long time. Due to that he had to satay in the Red Cross Hospital and returned home for
further recovery. The accident left her in a full body cast for there whole months and for kill the
time her parents brought her paints and built her an easel she could use in bed. While she
was in bed, she began painting by way of distraction in order to alleviate her pain and then it
arose her first self-portrait. As Frida said once, one year after that, “I paint myself because I
am often alone and I am the subject I know best”.

In 1928 that same man from years earlier, Diego Rivera, discovers Frida and her impressive
paintings. After she ask him to valuate her work both of them started a romantic relationship
in spite of the objections of Frida’s mother and, at last, they got married in the next year. Over
their early years as a couple, because of Diego’s work, Frida had to move a lot.

In 1932 Frida began to improve her paintings and she added a more realistic and surrealistic
components in her painting style as we can see in paintings like Henry Ford Hospital (1933),
a remarkable painting made by Frida Kahlo about 1932. Such painting was as personal as her
others self portraits she has created before.

Their marriage wasn’t exactly ordinary, in the first place by their weird separated homes and
studios for all those years and in second place by their differences because of they were often
referred to as the elephant and the dove, which seems pretty accurate. Diego had many affairs
and one of them was with Frida’s sister Cristina. Due to that, Frida was very sorrowful and
tore out her hair as a kid of desperation to the betrayal. She was eager for children but she
wasn’t capable of bear one because of the bus accident year ago. Her heard was broken when
she felt a second miscarriage in 1934. Although they two used to argue and they have been
separated a few times in the past, they usually went back together. In 1937 they helped Leon
Trotsky and his wife and Frida welcomed the couple and let them stay at her “Casa Azul”. In
that time Frida had a brief affair with the new man who dwelt her tiny house.

In 1938 Frida Known Andre Breton, who is one of the primary figures of surrealism movement.
Frida said that she never considered herself as a surrealist until she knew Andre in Mexico
and he told her “I was one”. The next year Andre invited her to Paris and her works were
exhibited there and she befriended with artists such as Marc Chagall, Piet Mondrian and Pablo
Picasso among others. This year she and Diego got divorced and because of this she painted
one of her most famous painting, called The Two Fridas (1939). Despite of that they remarried
in 1940 and their second marriage was about the same as the first one. She lost her beloved
father in 1941 and also, she suffered from chronic health which hampered her efforts to finish
the commission for five portraits of important Mexican women made by the Mexican
government. Despite her personal challenges, her work kept on to grow in popularity.

In year 1944, Frida painted one of her most famous portraits known as “the broken column”
which expressed her physical challenges as well as her pains in the health matter. Her health
condition had been worsening in 1950 and had been diagnosed with gangrene in her right
foot. She became bedridden for the next nine months but despite the multiples surgeries she
had to bear, and her inclination for suicide, she has been active with her political movement.
Th last time she has been seen in public was the time she showed up at the demonstration
against US backed overthrow of president Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala on July 2.

After her 47th birthday, Frida Kahlo she was publicly reported to die of a pulmonary embolism
in her blue house, but there are those who said she died of a possible suicide.

Her work has renewed due to feminist movement, in those days, since she was viewed as an
icon of female creativity. Frida gave the world a viciously uncompromised look at being a
Mexican woman, from her physical features to her multi-layered feelings about her world and
the world surrounding her. More importantly, she creates a multitude of questions regarding
gender, life, experience and what it truly means to plumb the depths of human emotions.
Bibliography

1. https://historia-biografia.com/frida-kahlo/
2. https://www.xamou-art.com/frida-kahlo-and-her-contribution-to-art/
3. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Frida-Kahlo
4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqYB_PmROnQ
5. https://theculturetrip.com/north-america/mexico/articles/fridamania-the-frida-kahlo-
effect/

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