Frida and her obsession for self portraits
Frida Kahlo is one of the most famous female artists in Mexico. She did not always aspire to be an artist, many of her works are self-portraits that symbolically express her own pain. Kahlo was married and influenced by the Mexican muralist Diego Rivera and shared his Communist views.
Lots of people have defined Frida Kahlo for her self-portraits (she painted about 1/3 of her works) as a type of therapy to survive an isolation of suffering and physical pain, a kind of repression of the ravaging action inflicted by external events on her body (bus accident, abortions, surgery operations and "weird" medical treatments of her age).
The body definitely was for Frida the centre of any kind of idea, she painted about herself -her body, injured, pierced, distorted by bus and by the medical treatments-and she painted about her external environment such as cultural, political and social aspects of her time and she painted using vibrant colors that was influenced by indigenous cultures of Mexico and European influences that include Realism, Symbolism, and Surrealism. Nevertheless she thought "They thought I was a Surrealist, but I wasn't'', she said."I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality.''
Anyway this representation must not be interpreted as an idolatry of the self. In spite of Frida's love of religious Mexican idols, often represented in her paintings in particular the picture known as “retablos”, which shows Mexican churches, Frida does not idolize her self: she does not show herself as a divine image, there is no trace of mystical tension in her works, neither as exaltation of her personality.
We can formulate the hypothesis that Frida was moved to represent herself and her body by a profoundly perseverant attitude, throughout this interpretation it is possible to understand that Kahlo's thought by the external world and by the disease, Frida has always held a great energy, a surprising dynamism. Maybe this attitude was possible thanks to her internal force.
Nowadays she has long been recognized as an important painter, public awareness of her work has become more widespread since the 1970's. Her "Blue" house in Coyoacán, Mexico City is a popular museum, donated by Diego Rivera after her death in 1954.
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