Frida Kahlo is probably the most well-known female artist in history. She strayed from the conventional depiction of female beauty in art to represent real-life situations and her own raw experiences.
Frida spent her entire life in excruciating pain after a near-fatal bus accident when she was 18 years old. But she was able to turn tragedy into a strength by creating astoundingly innovative art out of her suffering.
She was a Mexican, female artist living in a patriarchal society in post-revolutionary Mexico. A feminist icon who broke all social conventions, and produced some of the most haunting and visionary images of the 20th century.
Frida invented a brave new kind of self-portraiture. The founder of the Surrealist movement, Andre Breton, once famously said her art was surreal, and Kahlo replied: ‘’They (the paintings) are only autobiographical, I paint life.’’
Her artworks gained great success and forced the famed “boys only club” of the art industry to take notice of how marginalized the female experience had become in our society. She had to fight for her place in the male-dominated art world.
Although her paintings expressed the notion that The Personal Is Political long before the phrase was coined, her work was not explicitly political.
Nothing, not even her disability, could stop her. She had built her own identity around politics, ethnicity, and disability, and she would go on to inspire generations of female artists who face discrimination today.
Notable works:
- The Two Fridas
- Henry Ford Hospital (The Flying Bed)
- Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird
- The Broken Column
- The Wounded Deer
- My Grandparents My Parents and Me
Frida Kahlo 1907-1954
