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A lot of us will recognize her face and know her as the artist who remained bedridden after a bus crash, but the story of her post-bus-crash life and the meaning behind her art is equally interesting.
Frida Kahlo - a thread
Frida Kahlo - a thread
The bus crash happened when she was 18 years old, returning home from school. When the bus was hit by a car, a handrail entered her pelvis, breaking it into 3 pieces, also breaking her back, collarbone and both legs.
In hope of recovery, she remained bedridden for two years, with limited hope for survival. To pass time, she started to paint.
One doctor contracted the other, and the result was that hospitals, body casts and chronic pains remained a theme throughout her life.
One doctor contracted the other, and the result was that hospitals, body casts and chronic pains remained a theme throughout her life.
Frida met Diego Rivera at a friend’s party around 2 years after her hospitalization. At the time, he was a well-known artist, 20 years her senior, with 2 ex-wives and 3 daughters. To her family’s dismay, the two married in 1929.
Their marriage was not entirely happy, with infidelity from both sides. Diego also enjoyed a relationship with Frida’s sister, and Frida explored relationships with both men and women.
She never fully recovered from the accident, and interestingly never painted it either (apart from one rough sketch). The chronic pain remained, and her leg was amputated as a result of low blood circulation.
When she died at age 47, she was only known as “Diego’s eccentric wife.” It wasn’t until the Feminist movement in the 1970s that she rose to the fame she has today as an independent artist of her own.
On some of her art:
The Wounded Deer
A reflection of her physical and emotional pains. Despite the arrows and the blood, the face remains stern.
Note the broken branches and the distant light.
The Wounded Deer
A reflection of her physical and emotional pains. Despite the arrows and the blood, the face remains stern.
Note the broken branches and the distant light.
Self Portrait with Thorn Necklace & Hummingbird
Reflecting a combination of feeling, the leaves in the background symbolize fertility & hope, the cat & the monkey in the forefront symbolize death & evil respectively, while the thorns reflect a feeling of being trapped.
Reflecting a combination of feeling, the leaves in the background symbolize fertility & hope, the cat & the monkey in the forefront symbolize death & evil respectively, while the thorns reflect a feeling of being trapped.
Other artworks, immensely symbolic:
“I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone. Because I am the person I know best.”
