Frida Kahlo: The woman behind the legend - Iseult Gillespie
In 1925,
Frida Kahlo was on her way home
from school in Mexico City
when the bus she was riding
collided with a streetcar.
She suffered near-fatal injuries
to her spine, pelvis and hips,
and was bedridden for months afterward.
During her recovery,
she had a special easel
attached to her bed
so she could practice
painting techniques.
When she set to work,
she began to paint the world according
to her own singular vision.
Over the course of her life,
she would establish herself as the creator
and muse behind extraordinary art.
Though you may have met
Kahlo's gaze before,
her work provides an opportunity
to see the world through her eyes.
She painted friends and family,
still lives and spiritual scenes;
but it was her mesmerizing self-portraits
which first caught the world’s attention.
In an early work,
"Self Portrait with Velvet Dress,"
the focus is on her strong brows, facial
hair, long neck and formidable stare.
Such features remained,
but Kahlo soon began to present herself
in more unusual ways.
For example,
"The Broken Column" uses symbolism,
religious imagery and a ruptured landscape
to reveal her physical and mental state.
In 1928, Kahlo started dating
fellow painter Diego Rivera.
They became lifelong partners and
cultivated an eccentric celebrity.
Together, they traveled the world and
dedicated themselves to art,
Communist politics and
Mexican nationalism.
Kahlo and Rivera shared a
deep affinity with Mexicanidad,
a movement which celebrated indigenous
culture after the Revolution.
In her daily life, Kahlo wore
traditional Tehuana dress
and immersed herself
in native spirituality.
And in her work,
she constantly referenced
Mexican folk painting,
incorporating its bright colors
and references to death,
religion and nature.
With her imagery of giant
floating flowers,
undulating landscapes, transplanted body
parts and billowing clouds of demons,
Kahlo has often been associated
with Surrealism.
But while surrealists used dreamlike
images to explore the unconscious mind,
Kahlo used them to represent her
physical body and life experiences.
Two of her most-explored experiences
were her physical disabilities
and her marriage.
As a result of the bus accident,
she experienced life-long health
complications
and endured many hospitalizations.
She often contemplated the physical and
psychological effects
of disability in her work;
painting herself in agony,
recuperating from operations,
or including objects such as her back
brace and wheelchair.
Meanwhile, her relationship with Rivera
was tempestuous,
marked by infidelity on both sides.
At one point they even divorced,
then remarried a year later.
During this period,
she painted the double self-portrait
"The Two Fridas,"
which speaks to the anguish of loss
and a splintered sense of self.
The Frida to the left has a broken heart,
which drips blood onto her
old-fashioned Victorian dress.
She symbolizes a version of the artist
who is wounded by the past–
but is also connected by an
artery to a second self.
This Frida is dressed in Tehuana attire–
and although she remembers Diego
with the tiny portrait in her hand,
her heart remains intact.
Together, the two suggest a position
caught between past and present,
individuality and dependency.
Kahlo died in 1954 at the age of 47.
In the years after her death,
she experienced a surge in popularity
that has lasted to this day.
And although her image has proliferated,
Kahlo’s body of work
reminds us that there are no simple truths
about the life, work and legacy of the
woman behind the icon.
Rather, she put multiple versions of
her reality on display–
and provided us with a few entry-ways
into the contents of her soul.
