Frida Kahlo Essay

Frida Kahlo, a Mexican artist born in 1907 is best known and remembered for her self-portraits that were brilliantly vibrant coloured and bold, along with her passion and pain. Kahlo started painting mostly self-portraits after she was severely injured in a bus accident, as she was slowly recovering in a body cast. During this time, she taught herself to read and paint often, while studying the art of the Old Masters. Common themes that were in Kahlo’s approx. 200 paintings, sketches and drawings were life experience, the human body, death and identity. Besides being very well known for her work, she was also known for her relationship with fellow communist artist Diego Rivera – whom she married in 1929, divorced 10 years later, and remarried …show more content…
The next year, Kahlo travelled to Paris to show her work and that was where The Louvre acquired one of her works, ‘The Frame’, deeming Kahlo the first 20th century Mexican artist to be included in the museum’s collection. Throughout the mid-1930s, Kahlo and Rivera had multiple affairs on both sides which caused the two to divorce in 1939. ‘The Two Fridas’, one of Kahlo’s most famous pieces was painted during this same year. ‘The Two Fridas’ show two figures holding hands, one representing Kahlo and the other her opposing side. Dressed in a European-style wedding dress, the figure to the left is the side that Rivera rejected, and dressed in Tehuana clothing, the figure to the right is the side Rivera loved best. However, throughout the following year, 1940, Kahlo and Rivera remarried but lead largely separate lives, despite having moved into their childhood home, The Blue House, in Cocoacan. At the Education Ministry’s School of Fine Arts, La Esmeralda, Kahlo was later appointed professor of