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Frida Kahlo was born in 1097 in Coyoacán, Mexico, and had seven siblings. She was extremely close with her father and grew up during the Mexican revolution, also contracting polio at the young age of six. After sustaining severe injuries at age 18 when the wooden bus Kahlo was traveling on collided with a streetcar, impaling her through her pelvis, Kahlo started creating art. At age twenty, she married Diego Rivera, often describing him as her soulmate, and had a tumultuous relationship with him throughout the course of her life, often being seen in her artworks. Kahlo was a big believer in the Mexican revolution and changed her birthdate to 1910 to say that she was a true ‘child of the revolution’. Born in the midst of the revolution, Kahlo represents the ideals of greatness, collectivity, and unification throughout Mexico in her art. These artworks were an outlet for her suffering and showed her experiences throughout life. These injuries continued to cause her pain throughout her life shown through the symbolism of pain and suffering in many of her paintings. The blue house, her main settlement after the divorce and remarriage with Rivera, influenced her paintings, with tributes in her artwork to its studio and garden. Frida’s inability to have a child was one of the biggest factors in her life, each miscarriage creating deeper pain and suffering for Kahlo which can be seen throughout her paintings through her symbolism and use of colors. She painted self-portraits because she was often alone and felt the person, she knew the best was herself.
80 percent of Kahlo’s 200 paintings were self-portraits, while also painted still lifes of fruit and flowers, showcasing her love of life, occasionally doing portraits of others, including Diego Rivera. Kahlo wanted to showcase her pain in some way throughout her existence and painting was her outlet. It allowed her to express how much pain she was in, that she couldn’t express with words. While Rivera painted large-scale, artworks concerned with national identity within Mexico, Kahlo did quite the opposite and tried to represent Mexico through the exploration of her identity. She created works of art as a way of analyzing and coping with the traumatic events that happened in her life. Her intense interest in nature was very present in her drawings and paintings. Kahlo’s use of nature reflected the importance of Mexican indigenous and nature was her approach and hers alone. In her paintings, she used plants and animals as spiritual, personal, and cultural meanings in unexpected ways.
Kahlo’s artwork, “Time Flies” painted in 1929, was her second self-portrait depicting herself. Kahlo uses oil on Masonite to create intricately detailed paintings that used fine, detailed brushstrokes that portray of variety of meanings. This work depicts Kahlo staring at the viewer from the middle of a room, wearing a Mexican peasant blouse and jewelry. There is a clock on what appears to be a column, with drapery in the background and a large plane flying overhead. This work was made after the accident the year Kahlo married Rivera and shows how she viewed herself before the new future that awaited her when everything was going right. In this painting, Frida has a visionary look, like someone committed to achieving their goals. Her jade necklace and earrings symbolize her pre-Columbian and Creole roots and her love of Mexico and its culture. Another symbol of this is the heavy green curtains in the background. The colors of red green and white incorporated throughout the painting, are the colors of the Mexican flag showing her deep love of Mexico. Behind her she placed two symbols of modernity, an airplane crossing the sky and an alarm clock set around ten minutes to three. Both objects can be considered symbols of time: the past and the future. The clock is alluding to the bus accident when she suffered severe physical pain and trauma and, in the end, will close the metaphorical cycle of death and resurrection. But at the same time, the airplane in the backdrop is connected to her dreams of a promising future, like a phoenix that is reborn from ashes, awakening to a new day. These symbols show how Frida, after the accident that caused her so much pain in her lifetime, had hope for a good future with Diego.
The style of Kahlo’s work has been described as surrealist. Use art language to explain how this is evident in her work.
Surrealism is spread throughout Kahlo’s work through her use of symbolism and fantastical drawings that have to be interpreted differently to find deeper meanings. Kahlo's use of monkeys always represents the child she was unable to have. In 1938-39, Kahlo’s still life works were breaming with complex symbolic inferences. In 1938 poet and surrealist Andre Brenton described Kahlo’s work as surrealist. Where others saw painted images, Brenton saw beyond that the surrealistic images a masquerade of her own emotions and pain. Saying “They thought I was a surrealist… but I wasn’t. I never painted dreams… I painted my own reality.”
Kahlo’s use of color has always been to create impact, through contrast and harmony of color. Frida chose to create an impact in her work to show her health struggles and the pain she went through. Frida also used color as symbolism often to represent her emotions such as yellow for sickness, fear, and madness as well as red to represent blood and life. She also uses the reds, greens, and whites in “Time Flies” to represent the Mexican flag and her love of her home and culture.
As the painting is a similar size to a mirror, 77.5cm x 61cm, Kahlo has situated herself staring at the audience with her eyes level to the viewer’s, appearing as your reflection in the mirror. This is trying to show and reflect Kahlo’s life and allow you to understand and feel like you are there with Kahlo like you are some sort of person she can confide in.
Considering line, tone, texture, and form, what are the obvious qualities of the work, and how do they contribute to the way that the work looks and its atmosphere?
In conclusion, considering all of the above, what is Frida Kahlo intending to communicate to an audience?
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