Frida Kahlo

Frida Kahlo was a strong woman who had passion for life and for love. Some people don’t understand her art, she was going through so much pain that the only thing she could do was to express her feelings in painting, she painted with her heart, not with her eyes, as they say.

Her love for Diego Rivera was unique; I believe her love was more like a mother, since she couldn’t conceive a child and that frustrated her. She protected him and forgot about his infidelities and it was strange because Diego admired Frida as an artist as well, he once said: “Her work is acid, sweet and hard like steel. Thin like a butterfly wind, kind like a smile and cruel like life’s bitterness…You see, I don’t think any woman has ever captured such a distressing poetry in a painting”.

But who are we to judge if we don’t know what she went through, right? That is why her paintings were so raw because that is what she saw and felt.

My husband gave me a great birthday present last year, Frida Kahlo’s journal, it is so amazing and it makes you understand a little bit more her life. It has everything, drawings, quotes, thoughts, letters, stories and things we will never know what they mean but it is something very valuable.

What can I say? I LOVE Frida Kahlo =)

My favorite quotes are:

“Pies…Para que los quiero si tengo alas para volar?”
“Feet, why do I need them if I have wings to fly?"

"Me retrato a mi misma porque paso mucho tiempo sola y porque soy el motivo que mejor conozco."

"I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone and because I am the person I know best"

I’ve read tons of sites honoring Frida but this is, in my opinion, the best so far:
http://eluniversodefridakahlo.splinder.com/

Here are some paintings I took from the following site and a great Bio:
http://www.fridakahlo.com

BIOGRAPHY.-
Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo Calderón 1907-1954

From 1926 until her death, the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo created striking, often shocking, images that reflected her turbulent life. Kahlo was one of four daughters born to a Hungarian-Jewish father and a mother of Spanish and Mexican Indian descendent, in the Mexico City suburb of Coyoacán.

She did not originally plan to become an artist. A polio survivor, at 15 Kahlo entered the premedical program at the National Preparatory School in Mexico City. However, this training ended three years later when Kahlo was gravely hurt in a bus accident. She spent over a year in bed, recovering from fractures of her back, collarbone, and ribs, as well as a shattered pelvis and shoulder and foot injuries. Despite more than 30 subsequent operations, Kahlo spent the rest of her life in constant pain, finally succumbing to related complications at age 47.

During her convalescence Kahlo had begun to paint with oils. Her pictures, mostly self-portraits and stills, were deliberately naive, filled with the bright colors and flattened forms of the Mexican folk art she loved. At 21, Kahlo fell in love with the Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, whose approach to art and politics suited her own. Although he was 20 years her senior, they were married in 1929; this stormy, passionate relationship survived infidelities, the pressures of Rivera's career, a divorce and remarriage, and Kahlo's poor health. The couple traveled to the United States and France, where Kahlo met luminaries from the worlds of art and politics; she had her first solo exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York City in 1938. Kahlo enjoyed considerable success during the 1940s, but her reputation soared posthumously, beginning in the 1980s with the publication of numerous books about her work by feminist art historians and others. In the last two decades an explosion of Kahlo-inspired films, plays, calendars, and jewelry has transformed the artist into a veritable cult figure.