Kahlo, Frida. (1939). Photograph of Artist in 1939 Photo by Nickolas Muray. Retrieved from https://library.artstor.org/asset/ARTSTOR_103_41822000976843
"Feet, what do I need you for when I have wings to fly?" - Frida Kahlo (1907-1954)
Part 1: Basics
Frida Kahlo was a Mexican painter whose works
fascinated the world over and continues to fascinate us to this day. Her life and her art touched artists,
musicians, models, politicians, and even exiled communist leader, Leon
Trotsky. Her painting titled The Frame was the first painting from a modern Mexican artist purchased by The Louvre
museum and there have been many movie adaptations of her life. Kahlo’s paintings are filled with color, pain,
life, and her own reality, which always struck a chord with me. I chose to create this pathfinder about one
of my favorite artists to provide children and adults, students or otherwise,
with information from a collection of respectable and varied reference
resources within various different formats. Below you will find four reference books, three academic journal articles, two websites, three videos, a link to four more videos, and a podcast to get anyone started in learning more about the artist.
Part 2: Written Resources
Reference Books
The Columbia Encyclopedia provides a brief
overview of Frida Kahlo and her life. It
denotes her as a Mexican-born painter, born in 1907, in Coyoacán. And makes reference to her works being “shocking”
in their portrayal of her pain and life as a woman and that her own personal
experiences were used as her fuel. It states
that 55 of her 143 paintings are self-portraits and that her works are filled
with symbolism for various things such as Mexico and her unique
experiences. Though she is oftentimes labeled
as a surrealist, and even exhibited works with several times with surrealist
artists, she never felt that her works were surreal, as she felt she was
painting her own reality. Because of her
paintings filled with female themes, Kahlo is sometimes seen as a feminist cult
figure, especially in the last decades of the 20th century.
Kahlo, Frida. (2018). In P. Lagasse, & Columbia
University, The Columbia Encyclopedia (8th
ed.). New York, NY:
Columbia University Press.
Kettenmann’s book, simply titled Frida Kahlo,
is one in a series of small art books tasked with the job of introducing a
particular artist. In under 90 pages,
Kettenmann provides a snapshot of Frida Kahlo’s life, hitting the high points
and displaying Kahlo’s work in black and white photographs and sketches and
brightly colored artwork and illustrations.
The chapters, some of which are titled as quotes by Kahlo, are grouped
by chronological events. The book begins
with a chapter titled “Peg-leg Frida,” a cruel nickname given to Kahlo in her
childhood after contracting polio. The
chapter details her childhood and the events that would shaper her adult
life. Other chapter titles include,
“These surgeon sons of bitches,” a quote taken from a letter written to a
patron after back surgery, and, “I hope the exit is joyful…,” in which Kahlo
imagines her death as her health declined.
The final chapter lists the important dates in Kahlo’s life, starting
with her birth and ending with her death.
In between documents points of political acts, exhibitions, betrayal,
many surgeries, times of great pain, and receiving awards.
Kettenmann, A. (2000). Frida Kahlo. Cologne,
Germany: Taschen.
Amelia to Zora: Twenty-Six Women Who Changed the World is an alphabet children’s
book, with each letter of the alphabet being the first letter of the first name
of a woman Chin-Lee believed changed the world.
“F is for Frida, painter and folklorist” is the page for Frida
Kahlo. Her miniature biography details
how she is Mexico’s most famous woman artist and that she was a “free-spirited
and naughty child.” After being stricken
with polio, her father encouraged her to take up soccer, wrestling, and boxing –
which were considered boy’s sports at the time.
In addition to polio, the traumatic bus accident is mentioned and how
both her marriage and her health had their ups and downs, but that she persevered
with “humor and imagination.” Also
mentioned is her varied painting surfaces, including canvas, copper, tin,
glass, and wood. Kahlo also taught art
in Mexico City, encouraging her students to start by painting and drawing
everyday objects.
Chin-Lee, C. (2008). Amelia to Zora: Twenty-six
Women Who Changed the World. Watertown, MA: Charlesbridge.
Viva Frida is a children’s book created by
Yuyi Morales, a Mexican-born author, artist, and puppet maker. The book is vibrant and detailed. The book is both a picture book and a
Spanish-language teaching book in one.
Each page follows a Frida Kahlo puppet in her bright, traditional garb
as she searches, plays, paints, dreams, and lives; each pages a different
Spanish word or phrase. Each brightly
colored page helps to tell a simple story.
At the end of the book, the author writes about her pride in Kahlo and
that, as a young girl in Mexico, she was very curious about the unapologetic
“woman with her mustache and unibrow” that told her own story filled with new
and old symbols of Mexico. The more she
learned about Kahlo, the more she admired Kahlo for her “indomitable spirit”
and courage. The book won a Pura Belpré
Award in 2015 for illustration and a Caldecott Honor Award in 2015.
Morales, Y. (2014). Viva Frida. New York,
NY: Roaring Brook Press.
Journal Articles
“Aztec Imagery in Frida Kahlo’s Paintings:
Indigenity and Political Commitment.”
Helland states that though Frida Kahlo’s art
displays her personal pain, it also displays her “commitment to Mexico and the
Mexican people” (1990). The author
refers to Kahlo’s nationalism as Mexicanidad, a type of nationalism that
focuses on traditional art that unites indigenistas, indigenous people and
nations. Kahlo’s art displays strong
feelings for pre-Spanish cultures and traditions, expressed through her
revering of Aztec traditions above all others.
Helland posits that this is due to Kahlo’s “political demand for a
unified, nationalistic, and independent Mexico” (1990). The writer uses Self-Portrait on the Border
Between Mexico and the United States (1932) as an example: Kahlo stands at the
border, the United States a robotic mess of metal and cables and Mexico filled
with traditional works and artifacts, plants, and a clear sky. One of the traditional pieces in the painting
is in the squatting style seen by many other squatting figures found in Aztec
sculpture. Even Kahlo herself wears a
necklace similar to Coatlicue, an Aztec goddess.
Helland, J. (1990). Aztec Imagery in Frida Kahlo’s
Paintings: Indigenity and Political
Commitment.
Woman’s Art Journal, 11(2), 8-13. Retrieved from https://www-jstor-org.lynx.lib.usm.edu/stable/3690692
“Unsettling Bodies: Frida Kahlo’s portraits and
in/dividuality.”
Latimer discusses in their article the idea that
the body is significant in understanding self and reality. Kahlo herself had stated that her paintings
were of her self and her reality. While
many know of Kahlo’s distinctive looks peering out at the viewer in most of her
paintings, the author suggests that it is the entire frame that creates a
whole. For example, My Grandparents,
My Parents and I (1936) show portraits of both sets of Kahlo’s grandparents,
her parents, and a child. It is a
self-portrait of her as a creation. The
writer posits that Kahlo’s portraits “offer us a way of imagining self that
resists the very notion of subsuming self to a singular, categorical identity”
(2009). She is placed outside trivial
categories of male or female, human or animal, child or adult, because she is
all of these things at once even if they do not settle into a whole that is comfortable
with all of this togetherness.
Latimer, J. (2009). Unsettling bodies: Frida
Kahlo’s portraits and in/dividuality. Sociological
Review Monograph, 56(2),
46-62. Retrieved from
“Now I Live on a Painful Planet”
Zarzycka feels that, at the time of publishing
their article in 2006, a second wave of Frida Kahlo mania was sweeping through
the world. The author believes this new
wave is due in part two exhibits in London: one at the National Portrait
Gallery and one at the Tate Modern. The
exhibition at the Tate was the first exhibit exclusively dedicated to a Latin
American artist. The writer posits that
Kahlo’s pain and disability has been used as a tool to determine timeframe
(whether a painting was done before or after an operation, an incident, a
miscarriage) rather than a defining tool to evaluate her art. Zarzycka also states that Kahlo fills in the
void of Western art history before the 1970s with a strong female legacy. “She explored women’s physical experiences
such as birth, lactation or miscarriage, but also disablement, rejection,
bisexuality, subversion and violation.” The author offers that Kahlo knew her body
through her pain and her pain became a language seen through her art.
Zarzycka, M. (2006). Now I Live on a Painful
Planet. Third Text, 20(1), 73-84. Retrieved from
Part 3: Online Resources
The Life and Times of Frida Kahlo
The Life and Times of Frida Kahlo, which premiered
March 23, 2005, on PBS, was a biography film by filmmaker Amy Stechler. Stechler’s research included interviews with
people who were in Kahlo’s life, which included Mexican authors Carlos Fuentes
and Carlos Monsivais, and unprecedented access to previously unpublished or not
broadcasted newsreels and home movies, photographs and paintings. Filming locations included La Casa Azul in
Coyoacán, her husband’s studio in San Angel, and San Ildefonso, where Kahlo
attended Mexico’s famed school, the Preparatoria. The website provides a timeline of Kahlo’s
life interspersed with important events as well as mini-biographies of very
important people in Kahlo’s life. Though
labeled a surrealist, Kahlo never was one for labels and her biographer
describes her work as weaving both fact and fantasy.
PBS. (2005). The Life and Times of Frida Kahlo –
Where to Find Frida’s Paintings. Retrieved
Frida Kahlo. (1938). The Frame ("Le cadre"). [painting]. Retrieved from https://library.artstor.org/asset/AWSS35953_35953_30933035
Self Portrait - The Frame
The Frame (1938), originally purchased by The
Louvre, is in the care of the Musée National d’Art Moderne in Centre Pompidou
in Paris and is the only museum in Europe to have a Frida Kahlo piece. Other pieces are in private collections
across the world or in American and Mexican museums (PBS, 2005). The piece is also “the first painting from a
20th century Mexican artist ever bought by The Louvre” (USEUM,
n.d.). This website also includes a link
to the piece at Musée National d’Art Moderne in Centre Pompidou which details
the articles of the painting. The
self-portrait was painted with oil paints on a thin aluminum plate, the under
glass painting which is a production done in Juquila, Mexico, and the frame
which was the artist’s own.
“Self Portrait – The Frame” Frida Kahlo. (n.d.). USEUM. Retrieved from
Other sources:
PBS. (2005). The Life and Times of Frida Kahlo –
Where to Find Frida’s Paintings. Retrieved
Frida (2002) - The Two Fridas and Trotsky’s
Assassination [Video file].
There have been several movie adaptations to Frida
Kahlo’s life, the most recent of which, simply titled Frida (2002), was released in
2002 and won 17 awards and was nominated 46 times (IMDB, n.d.). The awards include two Oscars, a Golden
Globe, and a BAFTA. The movie is
beautiful, surreal, and haunting and I highly recommend viewing it. This clip from the movie contains imaginary
of The Two Fridas (1939) painted to the backdrop of Chavela Vargas, Costa
Rican-born Mexican singer, singing “La Llorona” to Frida, as played by Salma
Hayek. Vargas knew Kahlo in her lifetime
and it is alleged that the two had a love affair at one time, though this
wasn’t ever fully confirmed as the relationship “protested the social code of Mexico
at the time” (Barsh, 2018).
Movieclips. (2011, September 30). Frida (2002) - The Two Fridas and Trotsky’s Assassination
[Video file]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/E3wiJJOrgho
Other sources:
Frida. (n.d.). Internet Movie Database. Retrieved
from
Barsh, M. (2018). The Relationship between singer
Chavela Vargas and artist Frida Kahlo. The
HWS
Update. Retrieved from https://www2.hws.edu/the-relationship-between-singer-chavela-vargas-and-artist-frida-kahlo/
The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston acquired Dos Mujeres, a very
early piece of Kahlo’s, in 2015. This
piece is quite different than most pieces Kahlo is known for as it is not a
self-portrait, but a painting of two maids that worked in her family’s home. It was painted in 1928 and originally
purchased in 1929 and taken to the United States where it moved about and was
eventually purchased by the MFA, Boston.
To celebrate, the museum hosted lectures on Kahlo, her works, and her
life and posted the videos for all to see.
The first five videos on the list are the most relevant, each with their
own focus: Kahlo and her life and works, Kahlo and Indigenismo and Mexican
history, Kahlo and Revolution and Upheaval in Mexico, Kahlo and photography,
and Kahlo as a fashion icon.
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. (2017). Search results [List].
Retrieved from
A video tour of Frida Kahlo's home, Casa Azul [Video File]
Christie’s auction house offers a video tour of Frida Kahlo’s home, La Casa Azul. Lush landscapes and bright colors drift by as Hayden Herrera, Kahlo’s biographer provides tidbits of the artist’s life. Kahlo was born in La Casa Azul, a house her father built for his family. Herrera, who spent a lot of time at the house while doing research, states she could feel Kahlo’s presence in the home, especially through the objects she kept. Herrera believes that objects, especially those that people brought back for her from trips they took, were a connection to the outside world that, at oftentimes, she could not experience due to pain, disability, and surgery. The house is inundated with folk artifacts, showing her strong sense of Mexicanidad. Herrera feels that the house became a reflection of the artist.
Christie’s. (2016, May 12). A video tour of Frida Kahlo’s
home, Casa Azul [Video File].
The Forum - Frida Kahlo: A life in colour - BBC Sounds.
Bridget Kendall, a BBC journalist, sits down with
Circe Henestrosa, fashion curator and head of the School of Fashion at LASALLE
College of the Arts, Gannit Ankori, professor Fine Arts and Chair in Israeli
Art at Brandeis University, and Oriana Baddeley, professor of Art History and
Dean of Research at the University of the Arts London. The three guest speakers are well versed with
Frida Kahlo and have either written books or articles about the artist. First, the group discuss Kahlo’s life: having
polio at six, being accepted at age 15 into the famed Mexican school, La Preparatoria,
and the trolley accident at age 18 that injured her and caused much of the pain
she felt throughout her life, her marriage to painter Diego Rivera when she
creates her paintings, her dresses and fashion, and her death. The group also posits that after a
miscarriage, Kahlo paints Henry Ford Hospital (1932) and it is then that she
goes from “interesting portraitist to the revolutionary, unique, innovative
artist that we know today” (2018).
Kendall, B., Henestrosa, C., Ankori, G., & Baddeley, O.
(2018, September 29). The Forum –
Frida Kahlo: A life in colour – BBC
Sounds. Podcast retrieved from https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3cswpsl
