Biography of Frida Kahlo | Mexican painter.
(Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo; Coyoacan, Mexico, 1907 - ID, 1954) Mexican painter. Although moved in the environment of the great Mexican muralists of their time and shared their ideals, Frida Kahlo created a painting quite personal, naive and deeply metaphorical at the same time, derived his exalted sensitivity and several events that marked his life.
Frida Kahlo Eighteen Frida Kahlo suffered a serious accident that forced her to a long convalescence, during which he learned to paint, and in all likelihood that influenced the formation of the complex psychological world that is reflected in his works. In 1929 he married muralist Diego Rivera; three years later suffered a miscarriage which affected his delicate sensibilities in the deepest and inspired two of his most valued works: Henry Ford Hospital and Frida and abortion, whose complex symbology is known by the explanations of the own painter. Are also very much appreciated his self-portraits, also of complex interpretation: self-portrait with monkeys or the two Fridas.
When André Breton met the work of Frida Kahlo, he said that the Mexican was a spontaneous surrealist and invited her to exhibit in New York and Paris, city is last in which was not a great success. Frida never felt close to surrealism, and at the end of his days openly rejected that his artistic creation was framed in that trend.
Next to his picture the two Fridas In its search for the aesthetic roots of Mexico, Frida Kahlo made splendid portraits of children and works inspired by the Mexican iconography before the conquest, but they are fabrics that focus on herself and her eventful life which have become a leading figure of 20th century Mexican painting.
The work of Frida Kahlo
The Mexican artist's production is an example of this type of art which serves as a powerful instrument to exorcise the anguish of a hostile reality. The tragic sign of their existence, marked by the fight against the disease, had started when at the age of six he contracted a polio that left him with important consequences. In 1925 he suffered a serious traffic accident that fractured her spine and pelvis. In addition to preclude him having children, the accident was the cause of many future operations and an always-precarious health.
Through painting, which started practicing in the long months of immobility after the accident, Frida Kahlo would reflect of superb form the collision between their yearning for happiness and the persistent threat of its destruction, while it conjured the irreducible duality between dreams (of love, children) and reality (pain and impotence).
During the convalescence of the accident, without power or even merge, he began to paint taking herself as main model. They put a mirror under the canopy of his bed and a Carpenter made him a sort of easel that allowed him to paint while lying down. This was the beginning of a long series of self-portraits, subject which occupies the bulk of its production, mainly autobiographical. Once said: "portrait myself because I spend much time alone and I am the reason that I know best." In a short time, Frida developed a symbolic vocabulary; with it he accompanied his portraits to metaphorically represent their experiences and their thoughts.
Self-portrait with monkeys (1943) Influenced by the ideas of vindication of identity that propagated the revolutionary nationalism, Frida dressed in long skirts Mexican, monkeys braided with ribbons of colors and pre-Columbian necklaces and earrings. Thus we find it in self-portrait as a Tehuana (1943, Natasha Gelman collection, city of Mexico), represented as "authentic" Mexican and emphasizing his mestizo features (had blood Indian, German and Spanish). Product of that same nationalist ideology are the funds of some of his works as the self-portrait with monkeys (1943, Natasha Gelman collection, city of Mexico), in which the figure appears cropped on jungle plants and surrounded by animals, or those that takes images of pre-Columbian culture, like my nana and me (1937, Dolores Olmedo collection, city of Mexico).
Other times, as in the self-portrait - framework (1938, National Museum of modern art, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris), is inspired by the imagery popular and very specifically in the altarpieces loaded that so specifically Mexican naïve and colourful Baroque that combines vividly spectacular with the scatological.
One of the most common forms of Mexican folk art are ex-votos. Frida links to this tradition its pictures development narrative to representing the most significant elements of synthetic form and expressive burden. The small size of the pictures and the technique (oil on metal plate) also comes from them.
Henry Ford Hospital (1932) This fusion between the personal theme and the forms of popular imagery is expressed in symbolic form in the work of Henry Ford Hospital (1932, Dolores Olmedo collection, city of Mexico). Despite the accident, Frida hoped that her second pregnancy came to fruition, but its fractured pelvis could not benefit a child's development. The traumatic experience of a new abortion was the origin of the picture.
The adoption of the narrative forms of ex-votos has its best example in a singular piece entitled altarpiece (1943, private collection). Frida had found an ex-voto depicting the clash between a train and a bus; a wounded girl lay on the tracks and the image of the Virgen de los Dolores hovered over the scene. Adding to the girl her own eyebrows and a few labels to the train and bus, he turned it into the representation of his own accident. At the bottom he wrote: "Guillermo Kahlo and Matilde Kahlo C. husbands give thanks to the Virgin de los Dolores for saving her daughter Frida of the accident that took place in 1925 at the corner of Cuahutemozin and Calzada de Tlalpan."
Altarpiece (1943) After overcoming some serious crises of health, and identically to as believers do the saints of devotion, Frida showed appreciation physicians through paintings which rigorously follow conventions of the ex-voto. Samples of this are the works dedicated to Dr. Eloesser and doctor Farill.
But not only the disease was disorders cause and metaphor of his paintings; the setbacks of his emotional life were also themed in pictures which are refined symbolic synthesis. In the heart (1937, collection Michel Petitjean, Paris), the absence of hands expresses the helplessness and despair before the love tangle between Diego Rivera and his sister Cristina. Your heart, literally booted, lies at his feet and has a huge size that reflects the intensity of their pain. Next to it, a feminine dress, referring to her sister, hangs on a thread, while their sleeves is a single arm that connects and a stick through the hole that stopped his heart.
The heart (1937)Frida and Surrealism
The dreamlike appearance of his images promoted symbolism related to surrealism, something that Frida Kahlo would flatly deny: "I took for a surrealist. "This is not correct, I've never painted dreams, which I have represented was my reality."
Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera But Frida not only rejected the surreal nature of his painting, but he professed a deep aversion to the representatives of the movement. He had known to Breton in Mexico in 1938 and the following year he spent several months in Paris, where had the opportunity to come into contact with the other Surrealists. Opinion they deserved him the expressed unrestrained in a letter that he wrote from there to Nicolas Muray: "you can not imagine the joputas that are this people;" make me vomit. They are so damn intellectual and degenerate, that already I can not stand them more."
Dreamlike representations or psychic automatism of the surrealists, many symbols introduced in his paintings by Frida Kahlo have precise meanings and are the product of conscious activity. His work originates and comes from an ongoing investigation into itself, and expresses moods accurately and deliberate, materializing the oscillations between suffering and hope. The symbolic nature of his painting gives runway to vehement expression of a passionate personality that art is challenge and fights, violent struggle against disease, but also retract inward-looking toward his self inside and footprint of the painful recognition of their battered identity.
Frida Kahlo
When André Breton met the work of Frida Kahlo, he said that the Mexican was a spontaneous surrealist and invited her to exhibit in New York and Paris, city is last in which was not a great success. Frida never felt close to surrealism, and at the end of his days openly rejected that his artistic creation was framed in that trend.
Next to his picture the two Fridas
The work of Frida Kahlo
The Mexican artist's production is an example of this type of art which serves as a powerful instrument to exorcise the anguish of a hostile reality. The tragic sign of their existence, marked by the fight against the disease, had started when at the age of six he contracted a polio that left him with important consequences. In 1925 he suffered a serious traffic accident that fractured her spine and pelvis. In addition to preclude him having children, the accident was the cause of many future operations and an always-precarious health.
Through painting, which started practicing in the long months of immobility after the accident, Frida Kahlo would reflect of superb form the collision between their yearning for happiness and the persistent threat of its destruction, while it conjured the irreducible duality between dreams (of love, children) and reality (pain and impotence).
During the convalescence of the accident, without power or even merge, he began to paint taking herself as main model. They put a mirror under the canopy of his bed and a Carpenter made him a sort of easel that allowed him to paint while lying down. This was the beginning of a long series of self-portraits, subject which occupies the bulk of its production, mainly autobiographical. Once said: "portrait myself because I spend much time alone and I am the reason that I know best." In a short time, Frida developed a symbolic vocabulary; with it he accompanied his portraits to metaphorically represent their experiences and their thoughts.
Self-portrait with monkeys (1943)
Other times, as in the self-portrait - framework (1938, National Museum of modern art, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris), is inspired by the imagery popular and very specifically in the altarpieces loaded that so specifically Mexican naïve and colourful Baroque that combines vividly spectacular with the scatological.
One of the most common forms of Mexican folk art are ex-votos. Frida links to this tradition its pictures development narrative to representing the most significant elements of synthetic form and expressive burden. The small size of the pictures and the technique (oil on metal plate) also comes from them.
Henry Ford Hospital (1932)
The adoption of the narrative forms of ex-votos has its best example in a singular piece entitled altarpiece (1943, private collection). Frida had found an ex-voto depicting the clash between a train and a bus; a wounded girl lay on the tracks and the image of the Virgen de los Dolores hovered over the scene. Adding to the girl her own eyebrows and a few labels to the train and bus, he turned it into the representation of his own accident. At the bottom he wrote: "Guillermo Kahlo and Matilde Kahlo C. husbands give thanks to the Virgin de los Dolores for saving her daughter Frida of the accident that took place in 1925 at the corner of Cuahutemozin and Calzada de Tlalpan."
Altarpiece (1943)
But not only the disease was disorders cause and metaphor of his paintings; the setbacks of his emotional life were also themed in pictures which are refined symbolic synthesis. In the heart (1937, collection Michel Petitjean, Paris), the absence of hands expresses the helplessness and despair before the love tangle between Diego Rivera and his sister Cristina. Your heart, literally booted, lies at his feet and has a huge size that reflects the intensity of their pain. Next to it, a feminine dress, referring to her sister, hangs on a thread, while their sleeves is a single arm that connects and a stick through the hole that stopped his heart.
The heart (1937)
The dreamlike appearance of his images promoted symbolism related to surrealism, something that Frida Kahlo would flatly deny: "I took for a surrealist. "This is not correct, I've never painted dreams, which I have represented was my reality."
Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera
Dreamlike representations or psychic automatism of the surrealists, many symbols introduced in his paintings by Frida Kahlo have precise meanings and are the product of conscious activity. His work originates and comes from an ongoing investigation into itself, and expresses moods accurately and deliberate, materializing the oscillations between suffering and hope. The symbolic nature of his painting gives runway to vehement expression of a passionate personality that art is challenge and fights, violent struggle against disease, but also retract inward-looking toward his self inside and footprint of the painful recognition of their battered identity.
Extracted from the website: Biografías y Vidas