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Frida Kahlo Essay

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Frida Kahlo Essay
Frida Kahlo was a strong revolutionary female artist that emerged out of Mexico during its time of turmoil and growth. By examining her unique upbringing as a child, to her outlook on Mexico’s quest to situate an national identity to their masses without any influences from European ideologies, I feel that Frida Kahlo was an early feminist that help pave the way for women in Mexico to achieve equal opportunities, not only in a cultural sense but also political. She was able to express her aesthetic views through portraits depicting social and cultural taboos that were still plaguing the Mexican women after the socialist and muralist movements. Kahlo’s unique art aesthetic demonstrates how she was heavily influenced by the personal tragedies …show more content…
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

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