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Writer's pictureSean Chapman

The Importance of the Great Frida Kahlo


Frida Kahlo is viewed to this day as a huge source of inspiration and empowerment to women over generations as she was known for her brilliantly colored self-portraits that all send a very powerful message of identity, death, and the human body. At a young age, Kahlo had a pretty tough childhood, contracting polio at the age of six and being forced to be on bedrest for nine months. Later on, she got in a serious bus accident that left her in the hospital for months, and to kill time, she would paint and express all her emotions and feelings into her self portraits. Her complicated childhood turned her into a powerful, resilient woman that learned to take control of her own life, and her childhood has caused her to be praised for overstepping society’s limits. Her struggle is used as a way to strengthen other women to be just as confident as she is now. She's expressed all of her personal life into her art, and I think that is another reason that people found her as such an icon—she didn’t care what others thought about her or how they would judge her based on her looks. Instead, she expressed herself fully.


Henry Ford Hospital

In 1932, Frida decided to add more realistic and surrealistic components into her painting style to create a painting that shows her laying on the hospital bed exposed and surrounded with things floating around her. This art show a reflection of her miscarriage and her feelings of helplessness and disconnection. Each of the things “flying” around her represent something different too. For instance, the snail represented the slowness of the operation.


The Two Fridas

This painting was a little bit after her divorce with Diego Rivera. What's really powerful about this portrait is that it represents Frida’s two personalities where one shows her as broken-hearted and the other shows her as independent even though on the inside, she admitted she expressed how lonely and depressed she felt without her one true love.


These portraits are only a couple of her amazing artworks that she has created. The originality and creativity that she puts into her artwork is what makes her so important. She was true to herself and wasn’t afraid to show the public all her fears and thoughts going on through her crazy life. I love how her paintings gave life lessons to her viewers, and people could relate to her emotions as well.

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