Frida Kahlo

Mariah Cruz

Mrs. Thompson

HSE:2 Period 2

17 May 2018

My Minority Hero

One of Frida Kahlo's self portrait http://athenaposters.ca/product/self-portrait-thorn-necklace-hummingbird-frida-kahlo/Adulter, Jewish European Mexican Feminist, Communist, and painter. This is Frida Kahlo a legendary painter who learned how to walk twice and painted while on her back. Frida my hero, because she overcame polio and a terrible car accident but she still pursued to do her passion.  Frida was born in Coyoacán, a suburb of Mexico City, in 1907, the daughter of a German-Jewish photographer and an Indian-Spanish mother. She was struck with polio at the young age of 6 and overcame it a year later and learned to walk again. She lived a good life until at 13 years old she joined the communist party and later met Diego Rivera, the love of her life. Frida possessed determination and confidence. Frida showed determination of overcoming many challenges that led her to realize she can do anything. She was confident and expressed herself in many odd ways and her many self portraits. Frida Kahlo a feminist, Mexican, Jewish painter is motivating and boosts confidence for females everywhere because of all the hardships she has faced and she continues to inspire around the world.

Frida's self portrait explaining her being broken."The Broken Column" http://paintingandframe.com/prints/frida_kahlo_the_broken_column_1944-13575.htmlFrida was born to fight for her life, with her polio and getting injured enough to not be able to carry children. She faced many struggles mentally and physically. Most of the 47 years of her life was spent in pain, mentally and physically, with her accidents and society. She needed a distraction, it was painting, throughout her life battling through the pain she never stopped painting. “During all these years, though in almost constant physical distress and mental anguish, Kahlo continued to produce her self-portraits, an often unrelenting array of psychic pain. One artwork, The Broken Column, refers to the spinal injury. "In the painting, the artist stares through her tears out at the viewer, her naked body strapped with bands and pierced by nails, her torso split in half, her spine a shattered Greek column,"("FridaKahlo." UXL Biographies.)This describes how Frida had to go through the hardships mentally and physically due to her rough life starting off with polio late to getting into an accident which late caused her to amputate her leg. She continued to still strive in her art and beliefs for communism. Her ability to continue to thrive as an artist even though she was in constant pain is highly motivating and inspirational to other people who are also struggling to persevere through their own hardships. As Frida says in a quote, she explains how one accident in her life was her trolley crash and the other was her husband, David Rivera. He also, a striving artist, whose career was expanding which led to Frida’s art career to expand. ”Like her husband, the muralist Diego Rivera, Kahlo maintained a lifelong commitment to leftist politics, and in the 1930s she accompanied him on several trips to the United States where he was commissioned to do murals in New York, Detroit, and San Francisco”("FridaKahlo." Encyclopedia of World Biography) This is motivating because even though she faces struggles and was persecuted because of her socialist views she didn't change her views. Even though she wasn't making money off the paintings due to boycotting she still continued to try. This shows how Frida is a strong woman who isn't the traditional wife in the 1930s, most women would stay at home. ”One of six daughters, Kahlo was an essentially happy and free-spirited child until she suffered a mild case of polio when she was six or seven. The polio left her with a withered right leg and her foot turned outward. The resulting limp caused her pelvis and spine to become twisted as Kahlo grew and also inspired taunts from her schoolmates. Kahlo's father helped to nurse her back to health and later encouraged her to play sports--not a typical activity for young girls at the time--in order to overcome her disability”("FridaKahlo." Authors and Artists for Young Adults) This motivates people who have also have tried giving up after being severely sick at such young age and not knowing what to do. At this young age she fought through polio while others might give up on getting back to strength. As she overcame it she survived getting bullied. Frida constantly powered through with her distractions. “During the tedious months in bed following her recovery, Kahlo began to paint. Painting would become her salvation, providing an outlet for the tremendous physical suffering she would endure for the rest of her life.”(Furlong-Bolliger, Susan. "FridaKahlo.") Frida found her creativity outlet in painting, a place where found refuge from her enduring suffering. Frida is a motivating historical figure because of her ability to channel her long term suffering into amazing works of art. Frida continued to motivate children and Mexican feminists.

Frida's painting,"The Wounded Deer"https://www.fridakahlo.org/the-wounded-deer.jspFrida has always been open and confident with her lifestyle and her style and way of art.  Frida learned to be confident with herself at a young age since she was different then the others. Frida had never been closed off with her life and she took some time to explore and not be afraid since death to try overcome her she was extremely confident with her open relationship. "Frida's many self-portraits pierce into the deepest layers of her being and express what she found there in a manner so direct and so physical that their message seems universal," Herrera, author of the Kahlo biography, remarked in the New York Times. He added that the paintings' "intensity prompted a London critic to warn that her exhibition walls should be covered with asbestos. The Surrealist poet and essayist Andre Breton called her art a 'ribbon around a bomb.' There is a peculiar urgency that radiates from Kahlo's self-portraits. Each painting is a bid for survival, perhaps a way to exorcise pain and to confirm the artist's hold on life." ("FridaKahlo." UXL Biographies) Never one to go mainstream, Kahlo often pictured herself in colorful native Mexican dress, to advertise her heritage and hide her crippled leg. She defied other conventions, too---she made no secret of her bisexuality and expressed her feminist sensibility in her work. "When Kahlo painted herself," Herrera wrote, "she did not see a passive repository of a man's gaze; she saw an active perceiver, the female painter scrutinizing her own being, and that included her sexual being." Herrera quoted a modern feminist artist, Miriam Schapiro, who cited Kahlo's influence: "Frida is a real feminist artist in the sense that during a period in history when the accepted modes of truth were truth seen through men's eyes, she gave us truth seen through the eyes of a woman. She painted the kinds of agonies women in particular suffer, and she had the capacity both to be feminine and to function with an iron will that we associate with masculinity."("FridaKahlo." UXL Biographies)This shows how Frida is very confident and okay with her body and sexuality, even though being a homosexual was frowned upon and extremely rare. Frida is precise open to the human body and making all her artwork surrealism, which is basically all of any imagination.Since Frida was open about her life all her artwork was personal to her and tells a story about a part in her life but is hidden by surrealism “Kahlo's work was intimate, personal, and in the tradition of easel painting. Usually autobiographical, she painted the events of her life with symbolic elements and situations, creating a dreamlike reality, frighteningly real but fantastic and magical. One painting, Broken Column (1944), shows the artist against a bleak desert landscape with her flesh cut away to reveal a cracked classical column in place of her spine, a painful record of her life-long struggle with the psychological and physical aftermath of her accident. Another, The Wounded Deer (1946), shows Kahlo as a deer with her own human head, shot full of arrows in a mysteriously forlorn forest with a body of water in the background. She painted many self-portraits”("FridaKahlo." Encyclopedia of World Biography) This shows confidence by explaining how she sees herself as the wounded deer that can overcome anything and how ever piece of her artwork meant something to her. Frida showed in very self portrait was symbolic and was surrealism art, she took her imagination and her life and tragedies through the art. Frida was determined to prove people wrong about her. “However, by the time of the exhibition, Kahlo was once again bed-ridden and her many fans feared she would miss her own opening. But at the last minute she arrived by ambulance and was set up in a four-poster bed at the gallery to receive the will wishes of visitors.”("FridaKahlo." Authors and Artists for Young Adults)This shows how passionate she was about her artwork for the fans and how she is confident with showing her body and self portraits. Frida lived a confident life while people judged her for everything and including her being a communist.While people tried to bring her down and boycott purchasing her art she still strived.“Despite the pain and hurt in her life, Kahlo’s spirit remained indomitable. She was known for her love of tequila, her use of profanity, and her ability to tell dirty jokes. Kahlo’s work was admired throughout the world, and her charisma and charm endeared her to all. She socialized with famous artists and was a frequent guest of Pablo Picasso.”(.Furlong-Bolliger, Susan. "FridaKahlo.") Pablo Picasso a painting genius and friend of hers helped her build her confidence with her art. It meant a lot to have her art criticized by him. Many people who go through problems in their life tend to give up and lose self esteem but Frida remained confident and powered through.

Frida Kahlo, a woman who strived and stayed happy and had strength through the difficult times in her life which occurred often. She inspires all women around the world. While Frida struggled and faced many problems mentally and physically she still continued to pursue her passion, painting and showing her feelings and imagination through art. Her artwork is just a beautiful meaning in each one about each struggle she had problems with her body.

Works Cited

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656d0. Accessed 9 May 2018.

Burrus, Christina. Frida Kahlo: Painting Her Own Reality. Abrams, 2008.

"Frida Kahlo." Dictionary of Hispanic Biography, Gale, 1996. Biography In Context,      

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Frida Kahlo." Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2nd ed., vol. 8, Gale, 2004, pp. 406-407. Gale

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Jones, Jane Anderson. "The Diary of Frida Kahlo." Magill’s Literary Annual 1996, June 1996, pp. 1-3. EBSCOhost,

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"Rivera, Kahlo, Trotsky and Him." Irish Times, 05 Dec. 2009. EBSCOhost,

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Souter, Gerry. Frida Kahlo. Parkstone International, 2011. EBSCOhost.id=db77e533. Accessed 3

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"Frida Kahlo." UXL Biographies, UXL, 2011. Student Resources In Context,

https://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/EJ2108101224/SUIC?u=powa9245&sid=SUIC&xid=d7a8b015. Accessed 3 May 2018.