Preview

Frida Kahlo

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
707 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Frida Kahlo
"They thought I was a surrealist, but I wasn't, I never painted my dreams, I painted my reality." Frida Kahlo
Surrealism is an artistic movement that explored the territory of dreams and the unconscious mind through the creation of visual art. It was officially launched in Paris, France, in 1924, when French writer André Breton wrote the first surrealist manifesto. The movement soon spread to other parts of Europe and to North and South America. One of the most important artists within this movement was a woman called Frida Kahlo.
Frida Kahlo is an artist in many ways. Besides her talent to paint surrealist thoughts on canvas, she also was an artist in her mind and body. She was artistic in the way she portrayed herself and with her dressing. She appeared full of spirit, however, she often covered her real with her work, only letting everyone see the imaginary Frida. The world was unaware of her agony, and of what she felt. Many people are fascinated with Frida Kahlo's artwork because of emotional background. She kept all her emotions in her, eventually expressing it out on her artwork. She painted her rage, her unhappiness, and physical sufferings.
Kahlo was born in 1907 in Coyoacán, in the outskirts of Mexico City. Her father Wilhelm Kahlo was a Hungarian Jewish immigrant who arrived in Mexico in he changed his first name to Guillermo and worked as a photographer specializing in architectural monuments of the pre-Hispanic and colonial eras. Soon after his first wife died in childbirth, Kahlo's father married the woman who was to become Frida's mother.
Frida was a bright young woman who had no intentions of being the famous artist that she would become. At first, her dream was to attend medical school and become a doctor. However, on September 17, 1925 on her way home from school, she was involved in a tragic bus accident that had a serious impact on her life.
Frida was found with a section on the hand rail pierced deeply in her body. Doctors believed that



Bibliography: 1) Michelow, Astrid, Frida Kahlo URl: http://www.showcook.co.za/frida_kahlo.htm 2) _____, The Original Frida Kahlo Homepage, URL: http://www.dbai.tuwiert.ac.at/~chcchi/Frida/biblio.html, 3) _____, Women in Art: Frida Kahlo, URL: http://www.mystudios.com/women/klmno/kahlo.html

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    IWT1 Task 1

    • 816 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Although Realism and Surrealism seem to be polar opposites in style they share some of the same…

    • 816 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    IWT1

    • 836 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Surrealists believed in the innocent eye, that art was created in the unconscious mind (Mak 1). Surrealists based their work on emotions, imagination and dreams. They used methods such as hallucinogens, hypnotism, and sleep-inducing drugs to slip into their unconscious minds for inspiration. Images found in dreams were seen as pure art (Mak 2). Surrealists believed they were discovering a new avenue of knowledge by delving into the dream world.…

    • 836 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Frida Kahlo Analysis

    • 514 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Frida Kahlo was a Mexican surrealist artist born on July 6th 1907, in Coyoacán, Mexico. Kahlo is best known for her self-portraits that were usually created with the purpose of depicting her physical and mental struggles. Kahlo is also known as one of the first feminist icons. Her unconventional characteristic and behaviour, that would have been seen as rebellious in the early 1900’s, inspired countless other female artists and influenced feminist movements around the world.…

    • 514 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Frida Kahlo Essay

    • 1402 Words
    • 6 Pages

    She never self-proclaimed herself as a feminist, though I believed her paintings and her political stance in Mexico help inspire other powerful women after her death. Another quality that I felt she was able to encompass in her art was the liberty and freedom she had to experiment with her sexuality. The Mexican revolution was Frida Kahlo’s chance to completely enter the men’s art circle. Her art and behaviors were seen as being rebellious and unethical for a woman in the early 1900s, though she didn’t see herself as being a feminist, I believe that she showed women in her society and time that even having Diego Rivera as her husband and his art work overshadowing her, it never stopped her from continuing her goals of being a successful painter and getting her emotions on to a canvas. As Frida Kahlo tried to break in to the heavily dominated male art society, by engaging in political movements and freely expressing her thoughts on social reform and smoking; her art work still contained a feminine element to them. Art for Frieda Kahlo was her form of therapy, from the physical pain of her illness and accident to the mental pain of her miscarriages and husbands infidelity. Frida Kahlo’s works always take something intensely personal and transforms it into something universal on canvas for all of us to try and…

    • 1402 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    Frida Kahlo was born in Mexico 1907. Frida lived with her parents and three sisters, but she was favored the most by her father. At 18 years old, Frida was in a tragic accident which kept her in bed for two years. The time Frida spent in bed dealing with illnesses was the time she began her hobby as a self-portrait artist. Frida’s mother placed glass mirror in the canopy above the bed and she gave her paint and brushes, so Frida would look up at her face and began herself portrait. Over the two years Frida spent in the bed, she paints herself, her sisters, and her friends. When Frida got better, she went to see Diego Rivera, who was known as a wall painter or murals, for his opinion about her painting. Diego said the painting was original, which means did not copy another artist’s way of painting, then told her to go home and paint more self portrait. Two years later, Frida and Diego became husband and wife. While Diego traveled doing his work,…

    • 1382 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    Essay On Frida Kahlo

    • 1261 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Frida Kahlo was a very passionate Mexican self portrait artist who believed in the impossible for women in the early 20th century. She was often seen as a feminist and a rebel during her time because of the way she expressed herself in public. Not only was she known for her fascinating artwork but was also known as the wife of the famous muralist Diego Rivera. In a way Frida Kahlo was destined to suffer. According to the book, Frida Kahlo: The Brush of Anguish, Martha Zamora states that, at the age of six Kahlo was diagnosed with polio and her father was the only one who got her through that (18). As Kahlo got older she had the life she had always wanted up until September 1925. Kahlo was on her way home when the bus she was on got into a huge accident. The accident impacted her whole life which caused her to suffer some serious injuries. Some of the wounds included “fracture of the third and fourth lumbar vertebrae; pelvic fractures; fracture of the right foot; dislocation of the left elbow; deep abdominal wound produced by a metal rod entering through the left hip and exiting…

    • 1261 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Art is a curse that will grab you once you're hooked and hold on to you for the rest of your life. Art doesn't hold people’s hands through the rough patches, of course; she makes them work for it. If someone thinks that art is easy then they have another thing coming, because art doesn't kiss on the first date. Art had forced me to confront the emotions that I was not ready to confront. I have met jealousy through other artists’ artworks and I know frustration through mine. I become frustrated and blinded by my work when I am unable complete it because I can’t translate the image in my head to the paper on my easel, and there is so much that I wanted to say through my art, but my hands can’t seem to work right.…

    • 348 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Frida Kahlo's Life

    • 688 Words
    • 3 Pages

    At an early age, Frida had many rough patches in her life. From the time Frida was born until she was six, her life was the easiest it could be at that age. She grew up in “La Casa Azul” or “The Blue House.” At age six, Frida contracted polio which left her right leg thinner and more fragile than the left leg. It was discovered later in her life that Frida had been born with spina bifida; it had not come up until she was six. Despite the fact that Frida had polio, her father Guillermo encouraged her to play a numerous amount of sports: roller skating, soccer,…

    • 688 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In Frida’s art you can see the negativity and misfortune that is portrayed in this particular art piece. Although she is the main focus and looks rigid and has all these symbolisms of negativity and being trapped, and the color scheme all make this the perfect representation of what she’s trying to convey, her true self what she’s feeling when she paints herself, her sort of escapism she’s trying to reach in her…

    • 593 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Frida Khalo Biography

    • 717 Words
    • 3 Pages

    When looking back at the film we see that Julie Taymor did a fantastic job while compressing Frida’s life into a two-hour film. I say this because Taymor does use all of the important events of Frida’s life and puts them all together in a way that flows. What is meant by this is that she put about 40 years of a woman’s life in two hours but doesn’t make it feel dragged on or confusing. Another compelling tool Taymor uses in her film is when she lets us see into the mind of Frida at specific time. One example of this is after Frida’s bus accident, while she is in the hospital. While in the hospital we see into Frida’s head and we see the ideas she gets that will later be turned into paintings. These insights into Frida’s mind, were for me one of the most important parts of the movie. This being because you got to see where Frida got the ideas of her paintings before they were on canvas.…

    • 717 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Frida Kahlo Life

    • 349 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The documentary, The Life and Times of Frida Kahlo described Frida Kahlo’s life in the early twentieth century. Well-known around the world as a painter, Frida is also known for her exquisite sense of style. Crippled at a young age, her paintings reflected the pain she felt during her life.…

    • 349 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Maybe that's the reason why Khalo was understood by many not just by woman but by man as well. All the negativity and betrayal she had been bottling up finally comes out in art like blood gushing out of a deep flesh wound. I think Frida best depicts her physical pain through a piece called “The Broken Columns” this surrealistic painting shows a partially nude Frida wearing a steel corset because the column that makes up her spine is broken and weak. She is also covered in nails, all different shapes and size showing us the areas that bothered her the most or also symbolizing all the invasive surgeries.…

    • 1150 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Frida Kahlo

    • 604 Words
    • 3 Pages

    In the background of the painting Frida included the Ford family’s factories because they dominated the skyline from the hospitals view. In Henry Ford Hospital Frida lies naked in her bed. Frida has a large tear falls from her left eye. The sheet beneath her is bloody, because she is had a miscarriage. Her stomach is still swollen from pregnancy. The bed frame bears the inscription "Henry Ford Hospital Detroit," but the bed and Frida floats or flies in an abstract space circled by a series of six floating objects around her bed that are symbolic of her emotions at the time of her miscarriage. They are attached with festive bows; the ends of red ribbons I suggest are veins or…

    • 604 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The infamous Frida Kahlo was born on July 6th, 1907 at her parents home (known as La Casa Azul or ‘The Blue House’) in Coyoacan, a town around the outskirts of Mexico City. She was incredibly proud of her heritage often dressing in bright, unique Tehuana costume. She later became famous for her facial hair that she embraced, not caring for social norms. Frida would have a difficult life ahead of her, and the obstacles started early. When she was just six years old she contracted polio and was bedridden for nine months, giving her her first look at life in a hospital bed. She was encouraged to practise traditional male activities such as swimming, soccer, and wrestling to help her…

    • 941 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Frida Kahlo Analysis

    • 816 Words
    • 4 Pages

    The painting was completed after her divorce to Diego Rivera, another Mexican artist that had a great influence in her life. In the painting, two representations of Kahlo sit side by side with their hands joined in a stiff clasped with open hearts displayed outside of their bodies. The Frida on the right, the loved Frida wears Mexican clothes. Her skin is dark and her heart is complete and whole. In her hands she holds a miniature portrait of Diego Rivera from which a cord resembling a vein flows towards her heart. The Frida on the left, the unloved Frida wears a Western styled Victorian dress with paler skin. At the chest her dress is torn and displays a heart that has been cut out. Her hand holds a pair of scissors that appears to cut off blood to portrait of…

    • 816 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays