A Journey through the Eyes of Frida Kahlo

Frida Kahlo, born in Coyoacán in 1907, was, and is deemed to this day, one particular of Mexico’s most notable painters. Her artwork can only be described as potent and expressive. She lived a life complete of pain and identified herself becoming reborn by means of art, which became each her escape and her reality. A declared Marxist and Stalin supporter, her political views are reflected in several of her paintings. To look at Frida Kahlo’s art is to immerse oneself in a tumultuous yet strangely gorgeous inebriation of emotions to appear at her art is to place oneself in the artist’s footwear and expertise her life, her struggles, and her ideas.

Born to a German father and a Mexican mother, Frida Kahlo grew up in the “Blue House” with her parents and sisters. When she was six, she contracted polio, causing her to be unable to attend school for numerous months. Due to her illness, her correct leg was deformed, which made her a target for bullies at school. Her father encouraged her to play sports to support her overcome this disability, and Frida began wrestling, boxing, and swimming, amongst other activities. These had been all extremely uncommon activities for girls at the time, which shows how she was raised differently from the starting, which would contribute to several of her feminist traits as she grew up. She attended the National Preparatory College, where she was one particular of the very 1st female students. This is also where she saw for the 1st time who would be her future husband, muralist Diego Rivera.

In 1925 she was in an accident that would alter her life forever. Impaled by a steel handrail following the collision of the bus she was in and a streetcar, she suffered a number of injuries, which includes a broken pelvis, ribs and collarbone. She had to commit a number of weeks in the hospital, and then stay in bed at property for several months to recover from her nearly fatal injuries. This is the time when she started painting, producing her very first self-portrait. After recovering, she rejoined her group of friends, who had turn into politically active, and then joined the Mexican Communist Party herself. Frida’s political affiliation and her health concerns shaped a excellent part of her art, which is why her life can not be ignored when 1 looks at her paintings. Her essence is in every single single 1 of her paintings her character, beliefs, and feelings shining by way of.

In 1929 she married artist Diego Rivera, whom she traveled with to different components of the United States, exactly where her husband was commissioned. Later on, exiled communist and one particular of the leaders of the Russian Revolution, Leon Trotsky discovered asylum in The Blue Home. Frida and Diego sided with him on his anti-Stalinist campaigns. In 1 of her letters, Frida states that she’s “more and far more convinced it’s only by way of communism that we can turn out to be human.” Getting such an independent person, it can be tough to realize why she would be such a powerful supporter of communism, given that communism can appear to rob people of their individuality, creating every person live the identical way. Even so, Frida criticized capitalism simply because of its impersonal way of shaping society, its cold grey buildings and factories, and how unfairly the reduced class folks had been treated. In the 1930s a wave of anti-communism led to a hate campaign against intellectuals and artists, forcing many of them to leave Mexico. Frida and Diego took off to the United States, where they lived for a handful of years, associating primarily with other artists.

Soon after Globe War II ended, a lot of intellectuals were under the impression that the creation of socialist states in Eastern Europe created Stalin’s crimes an situation of the past. Soon after Trotsky’s assassination, Frida joined what at the time individuals referred to as “peace movements”, but had been genuinely Stalin supporters’ events. Not only was she interested in the revolution, Frida was also quite patriotic and took pride in her Mexican style of clothing and painting. She was really concerned with Mexican political issues, and designed many paintings depicting this. On her painting “Self-Portrait on the Border Line In between Mexico and the United States,” Frida stands in between the industrialized United States and a preindustrial Mexico. This is an obvious critique to capitalism and the new use of machines replacing nature. On the Mexican side one can also see a skull and a temple, with a bleeding sun on the sky, representing the challenging function of the native men and women to construct and preserve their culture. Several argue that the painting “My Dress Hangs There” really blatantly attacks American capitalism by portraying Manhattan as a gray and dark spot, with her dress hanging from a toilet and a sports trophy. On the bottom left of the painting flames can be observed emerging from a developing, and a congregation of people in front of it. This most probably represents her Marxist ideals, and her concern about fair treatment of workers. In her last years she painted “Marxism Will Give Overall health to The Sick”, where she stands with a red book of Marxism, the background split into the good and the evil. When asked about this painting she mentioned “for the very first time, I am not crying anymore”, hinting at the energy of her political views on her emotional wellness. The symbols on her paintings give us a glimpse of the society she lived in, and how it was to live in her globe and her reality.

Frida Kahlo is regarded a feminist symbol, progressive and ahead of her time. She fearlessly painted herself and her struggles as a woman, displaying with no shame her sexual side, but also desexualizing herself in paintings of pain exactly where she appears naked. Her naked body is not the centerpiece of these paintings, but the symbols around her, and oftentimes her pain, are what actually give meaning to them. On her painting “What the Water Gave Me” Frida is portrayed taking a bath, with only her feet visible, one particular of them deformed. There are a lot of symbols representing her struggles at the time her naked dead body is sinking next to her parents. Two women, a single white, one tan, float on a sponge on the proper, showing her mixed heritage. All the distinct elements of this painting point to a pessimistic outlook on each Mexico’s and The United States’ society. A burning creating, and a drowning Frida serve as a metaphor for the effect of colonization and foreign domination. Colonialism hurt the Mexican folks, and now centuries later, the U.S. took practically half of the Mexican territory, leaving their people impoverished.

Frida Kahlo’s life was complete of illness, pain, and despair. This can be noticed quite clearly in her artwork. Not only was her foot deformed and her whole physique in continual discomfort, she also had many miscarriages and numerous heartbreaks due to her husband’s infidelities. After a separation with Diego Rivera, she painted “The Two Fridas”, exactly where she is split into two versions of herself, connected by heart vessels. In her hands rests a medallion with a picture of Diego, depicting her suffering and sadness, and representing the portion of herself that belonged to him. However she is holding her own hand, displaying strength. There is anything surreal about seeing oneself as two distinct folks. At times as a individual it is hard to separate oneself from the physique and see factors from a different perspective. Frida seems to have dealt with identity troubles, which lead her to try to acquire a diverse philosophical perspective. Perhaps she felt that the individual she showed the planet was not the same individual she saw when she looked in the mirror. “The Flying Bed” symbolizes a single of her miscarriages, portraying Frida laying helpless and alone in a bed, bleeding out. A fetus is connected to her belly by a cord a child she would in no way have. A pelvis is also connected to her body. Her broken pelvis by no means fully recovered from the accident she had as a teenager, contributing to her discomfort all through her life, and impeding her from getting young children. The painting is raw and vivid, full of emotion and pain.

Yet another consequence of her accident was that she had to wear a corset created out of steel. In “The Broken Spine” both her physical and emotional discomfort can be noticed, her body complete of nails and a metal spine, while her eyes appear deeply saddened and full of tears. Once again, she is alone and hopeless, left in a lifeless desert to suffer. When hunting at this specific painting, the first factor that comes to thoughts is her “expressive gaze”. All that emotion being kept inside her is released by means of her gaze on the painting, creating the discomfort real to the observer. It creates a connection in between the artist and the observer, inviting the latter to experience issues from her perspective. Her only way of letting all her negative feelings out of herself and into the planet was by way of a paintbrush.

In spite of the suffering she faced, she did not quit producing art or attempting to discover her own artistic identity. She carried herself with grace and determination throughout her life, trailing her own path as an artist and an person. She claimed not to paint dreams, but her own reality. She explored this space of reality by way of her paintings, fighting depression, substance abuse, and her deteriorating health. She was usually in search of a larger understanding of herself and the planet she lived in. Even so, she seemed to always discover herself to be incomplete, as can be observed in several of her artworks. She frequently painted herself being split open, or as an entity dissociated from herself. Her struggle in no way ended, and she died in discomfort, but she remained herself till the very end, in no way letting her personality be shadowed.