Frida Kahlo: 15 unmissable works to understand its importance

Frida Kahlo was a Mexican painter of the first half of the 20th century, who has become a cultural symbol. Indeed, Hilda Trujillo, in a biography about the artist, comments: “Her personality has been adopted as one of the flags of feminism, disability, sexual freedom and culture Mexican ”.

Cataloged as surreal, she Kahlo preferred to think of herself as someone who represented her reality last of her, which made her feel very far from the concerns for the unconscious, typical of the surrealism.

Several elements would mark her work: on the one hand, the investigation of Mexican popular and indigenous art; on the other, the exploration of her own pain, both physical and emotional, derived from her serious health problems and from her stormy life with Diego Rivera, the Mexican muralist. To better understand her look, let's get to know some of her most emblematic works.

Self portrait, 1926

In 1926 Frida Kahlo painted her first self-portrait. She would then be 19 years old and she was suffering the consequences of the serious accident that left her bedridden for a long time. During that time, her Frida could not see more than the ceiling of her room. Her mother, moved by her, designed for her a special easel, which would allow her to paint lying down. On one side of the easel, she held up a mirror, so that she Frida could at least see herself. This is how Frida Kahlo began to portray herself. This would be the table that would start her personal inquiry.

Contrary to misinformed opinion, Frida did not pay tribute to herself. She rather she was perceived ugly and too thin, and she did not embellish any of her features, but rather she highlighted those elements considered "unsightly", such as her joined and arched eyebrows in heart. She never realized that in this "sincerity" she would find her distinctive sign and arouse the interest of the international community.

Frida and Diego Rivera, 1931

More than love, Frida was truly devoted to her husband, Diego Rivera. She always perceived Diego as a superior talent, while she perceived her own work as "absolutely ghastly."

With this mindset, she had no problem assuming the role of the wife who supports and serves her husband. Say Servando Ortoll and Annette B. Ramírez de Arellano in an essay titled Frida Kahlo Portrait of the artist as a businesswoman, that this woman assumed not only the care of her husband, but that she took care of her international career as a true art entrepreneur.

The idolatry that Rivera awakens in Frida is expressed in this 1931 portrait called Frida and Diego Rivera. Diego carries in his right hand the attributes of the painter: his palette and his brushes. Petite and barely dressed in a traditional Mexican dress, Frida rests her hand on Diego's, as if he were supporting her. Her face leans gracefully toward her husband.

Above them, a ribbon with an inscription or phylactery, is held by a bird. The phylactery says: “Here you see me, Frida Kahlo, together with my beloved husband Diego Rivera, I painted these portraits in the beautiful city of San Francisco, California, for our friend Mr. Albert Bender, and it was in the month of April of the year 1931”.

Frida and the cesarean section, 1931

In 1930, a year after she was married, Frida had to face the first of her three abortions. The one in 1930 required surgical intervention, since the development of the baby in the womb was absolutely impossible, due to the health complications of her mother.

Deeply sore, since Frida wanted with intensity to be a mother, she the following year she painted this tragedy in the painting called Frida and the cesarean section. Her subject must have represented a great difficulty for her, since the painting was left unfinished.

The two Fridas, 1931

In this painting, Frida seems to have been inspired by the memory of an imaginary friend that she had at 6 years of age, a kind of alter ego. In the painting, she represents her two cultural heritages: on the left, the European; on the right, the indigenous woman.

The two are connected by blood, by the arteries of the exposed heart. In the portrait on the left, the heart appears open as in a cross section, while in the other we see the outer surface of the heart. On the one hand, an image of the heart of Christ, on the other, a memory of the religious sacrifices of the pre-Columbian past.

Each of the “Fridas” carries different attributes: the European Frida carries in her right hand a scissors that has cut an artery that drips onto her lap, dressed in a white suit. The indigenous Frida carries in her left hand a small portrait of hers, her beloved Diego Rivera, connected to one of the arteries of her heart.

See also Analysis of the painting Las dos Fridas, by Frida Kahlo.

My birth, 1932

Encouraged by Diego Rivera to portray the most unique moments of her life, Frida wanted to represent her birth as if she had given birth to herself. In the scene the mother appears with her face covered by the sheets, alluding to her death.

Frida pokes her head between her mother's legs and under her a pool of blood appears, also recalling her most recent miscarriage. On the bed, hanging on the wall, a painting within the painting portrays the Virgen de las Angustias who observes the situation.

At the foot of the work, Frida represented an open parchment in which some words were to go, which she never wrote. The painting is, therefore, a votive offering that was left unfinished. Part of her style was, in fact, a revision of the art of popular votive offerings, which were based on an offering to God that told by means of the image and an allusive text, the miracle by which she appreciated.

You may also like Frida Kahlo: Biography, Paintings, Style and Phrases.

A few pickets, 1935

Diego Rivera's infidelities had reached the climax when he decided to take Frida's sister for his lover. News about a femicide at that time shocked Frida: a man had stabbed his wife to death. When caught by the authorities, she declared: "I only gave him a few pickets."

Frida represented this crime as an allegory of her emotional suffering in the face of double betrayal, as a spiritual death. Above the characters, a phylactery immortalizes the phrase of the criminal. An important feature of the painting is that the blood leaves the pictorial context and is dispersed throughout the frame, as if trying to reach the reality in which the viewer finds himself. Thus, Frida tries to break the separation between fiction and reality.

Self-portrait with necklace of thorns, 1940

By 1939 Frida had divorced Diego Rivera. It is the failure of her love experience that she portrays in the work Self-portrait with necklace of thorns. She will use natural symbols for this and will combine Christian and indigenous values.

The necklace of thorns, like the crown of Christ, represents the strangulation and the wounds caused by Rivera's betrayal. From these branches hangs the dead body of a hummingbird, symbol of "luck in love" according to Mexican tradition or symbol of Huitzilopochtli, god of war. The hummingbird is stalked at the same time by a black cat, a bad omen, which perches on Frida's left shoulder.

On her right shoulder, the domestic monkey that Diego Rivera would have given her. The monkey, playing, pulls the necklace, causing the thorns to sink into her chest. Around the main characters, a universe of butterflies and dragonflies represent the resurrection.

Still life, 1942

This still life was commissioned by the first lady of Mexico at that time, Soledad Orozco, wife of President Manuel Ávila Camacho. The painting is framed in a circumference that refers to her maternal uterus. Within this, plants and fruits with erotic connotations are included, which is why the piece was rejected.

Diego in my thought, 1943

Also called Self-portrait as a Tehuana, this painting by Frida Kahlo again evokes the love and adoration for Diego Rivera. Aware of the fascination that the painter felt for traditional Mexican clothing, Frida donned the Tehuana costume, typical of the Zapotec culture. On her forehead, just above her eyes, she prints a portrait of Diego Rivera, giving the image a certain literalness.

See also Fundamental works of Diego Rivera.

The broken Column, 1944

In this painting, Frida Kahlo represents the suffering derived from her accident, which despite the passing of the years, continues to make itself felt. With a desolate desert landscape in the background, an image of her life of her loneliness, Frida is represented open by her torso, revealing an Ionic column, associated with the feminine, but broken. A system of ties ties her spine, like a Christian martyr (Saint Sebastian), while she supports the puncture exerted on her by the nails that attack her entire body and her face. Although she cries, her expression remains undaunted.

Hopeless, 1945

During a period of her life, Frida Kahlo suffered from loss of appetite until she was extremely thin. For that reason, they had to feed her through a funnel. On a sterile landscape that contains the sun and the moon, day and night as an eternal and undifferentiated cycle for those who suffer, Frida represents this period.

The funnel gains fantastic dimensions, and instead of carrying processed food, it collects all kinds of red meat, poultry and fish. Above them, a sugar skull decorated with the motifs of the Day of the Dead. Does death appear sweet in the face of this food torture? On the skull, his name is written.

Behind the painting, Frida wrote: “There is not even the slightest hope in me... Everything moves in tune with what the stomach contains ”.

The wounded deer, 1946

Around 1949, Frida Kahlo performed one of her surgeries to improve her spine problem. Nothing was achieved. Disappointed with the results, she depicted herself as a wounded deer on the hunt. Her own head with the body of a deer carries an antler. The body is pierced by hurtful dates. The deer, in the middle of the arid forest, in which the light of the horizon can be distinguished in the background, is unable to save itself.

The embrace of the love of the Universe, 1949

Mother Earth welcomes Frida into her womb, who at the same time lulls Diego Rivera as if she were a child. Rivera reaches a third eye on her forehead that observes the entire scene. The universe that surrounds them expresses the duality of day and night. Heaven and earth have faces, and the milk it nourishes drips from the breasts of the mother's earth.

The roots spread looking for the ground. Mexican symbols participate in the scene, such as Frida's traditional dress. A vegetation typical of those intense Mexican landscapes makes its appearance: nopales, cacti and magueys. At the feet of that loving and enveloping universe, lies a dog of the xoloitzcuintle breed, which according to the Mexican mentality, is a symbol of death, in that case, it is death asleep.

My family, 1949

In an effort to construct her identity, Frida paints her family as a kind of family tree. The one from 1949 will not be the only one, but it will be the one that includes more characters from her family group.

In the center, her father and her mother, Guillermo Kahlo and Matilde Calderón. In the upper band, the paternal grandparents, Jacob Heinrich Kahlo and Henriette Kaufmann Kahlo, and the maternal grandparents, Antonio Calderón and Isabel González and González. In the lower part of it, her sisters Matilde, Adriana, Frida herself, Cristina.

Some children also appear, although it is not known exactly who they are, since they were incomplete. Some think that it is about Cristina's children; others, that the children of the previous marriage of the father of her and a brother who died shortly after birth. In the center of this strip, a baby. It is probably an allusion to her children that she lost in her abortions.

Live life, 1954

This was the last painting that Frida signed before she died, although it is not known for sure if it was the last one that she painted. since other paintings from that period, after the amputation of his leg, look rough and crude compared to this.

The painting is a celebration of life. Watermelon, known in some countries as patilla, is a fruit associated with the skeletons of the days of the dead. Thus, once again, life and death dance in a painting by Frida Khalo. The tone, however, will be optimistic, vibrant, despite all the shocks she suffered in life. Frida says goodbye saying "Long live life."

About Frida Kahlo

Her full name was Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo Calderón. She was born on July 6, 1907 in Mexico City in the famous Blue House of her parents, which was always her residence, despite the fact that at throughout her life she would have other alternative stays such as Diego Rivera's studio in San Ángel and other locations inside and outside the country. Frida was the daughter of Wilhelm (Guillermo) kahlo, of Hungarian German descent, and of Matilde Calderón, a native of Oaxaca.

Throughout her life, Frida experienced various health problems that were decisive in the development of her pictorial career. The first of them was the polio that she suffered when she was 6 years old, and that made her have one leg shorter than the other.

In 1925, when she was 18 years old, a tram hit the bus in which Frida was riding, causing her to various fractures and injuries to the spine that caused him immobility at different times during his lifetime. It was during these periods that Frida began to paint.

Frida Kahlo married the Mexican muralist Diego Rivera in 1929 and she would soon become pregnant, but she suffered an abortion in 1930. Added to this pain were Rivera's constant infidelities, which led her to divorce her in 1939, although a year later they remarried.

Frida Kahlo's commitment to the communist party is well known, which is why she gave Leon Trotsky and his wife asylum in the Blue House, where the Russian leader would be assassinated in 1940.

Due to health complications, Frida was admitted to the English Hospital from 1950 to 1951. In 1953 her right leg was amputated.

On July 13, 1954, Frida Kahlo died of pulmonary embolism in the Blue House, the same place where she was born.