Frida Kahlo painting

Prisilla Bueno

september 22, 2017

Throughout the history of humanity, Art has played an important role in our societies.  Art is defined as “something that is created with imagination and skill and that is beautiful or that expresses important ideas or feelings: works created by artists: paintings, sculptures, etc. “There are quite a few art periods and to enumerate just a few: Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, Romanticism, Academic, Impressionism, Surrealism (from 1920) …etc. During my visit at MOMA, I have admired some beautiful paintings from different artists, different periods. One of the paintings from Frida Kahlo caught my attention “My Grandparents, My Parents, and I (Family Tree).  By researching let’s see how Frida’s painting reflects the art period that she lived, the ideas and feelings that she was expressing, an artist of the Surrealism art period.

Frida was born in Mexico; her father was a German photographer who migrated to Mexico and married her mother Matilde.  At the age of 6, she had polio but she recovered from the illness that left her slightly crippled.  Later, she was involved in a car accident that left her infertile.  She was a very intelligent, she became a political activist and her oil paintings contributed to her fame.  In her art work, her emotions, her pain, her opposition can be felt. Some considered her art as controversial.  By reading the label of the painting mentioned above, one can understand why the artist choose to express her views, her emotions through some non-verbal manner in favor of imagery: “While Kahlo celebrated Mexican culture by invoking its traditions in her art and wearing elaborate traditional attire, this painting is as much a tribute to her European and Jewish heritage. On the right are her German-born Jewish father and his parents, symbolized by the sea, and on the left her Mexican mother and her parents, symbolized by the land and a faintly rendered map of Mexico that appears above her grandparents’ heads. Kahlo was fluent in German and closely monitored the rise of Nazism in Europe. She made this painting shortly after Hitler passed the Nuremberg laws, forbidding interracial marriage. While the painting adopts the format of genealogical charts used by the Nazis to advocate racial purity, Kahlo uses it subversively to affirm her mixed origins”

The dramatic life of Frida is reflected on all her art work, her illness, her handicap, her emotions all contributed to some of the provocative images that she had produced through her paintings.  Some of her works were more challenging than others; Critics even characterized some of them as controversial.  The surrealism art period was a movement where Artists employed fantasy and dream imagery, “artists created works in a variety of Medias that exposed their inner minds in eccentric, symbolic ways, uncovering anxieties and treating them analytically through visual means”.  By analyzing the period that the artist lived in, one can easily understand how harsh life was for a woman, handicapped, married, divorced then remarried.  In that period society wanted a woman to be pretty, submissive and a mother.  She had to face this constant gender struggle; she chooses to overcome these obstacles by using Art through her paintings and expressing her inner thoughts. 

Kahlo also used her Art to bring attention to the mistreatment of women and to aid the feminist movement. “She taught painting to youth across Mexico, affecting hundreds of lives with her mentorship. In her final days she left the hospital, despite doctors’ orders, to participate in a political protest. She was in a wheelchair, having lost a leg to gangrene, sickly thin, with colorful yarn tied into her hair. The things she saw and experienced led to the dramatic works that flowed from her brush”.

In my thought I feel she express their feelings, their emotions, their happiness, their sorrow either through paintings or sculptures … Researchers have found evidence that humans evolved to be moved by art. Frida Kahlo is no exception, she used Art to promote awareness using different techniques and manners that were appropriate during that moment and conform to the art movement “Surrealism”.  As humans, our emotions, our passions, our feelings can guide us and can help us make a difference. Art can be considered as a form of communication to denounce what is unjust, to show acceptance, to expose the beauty of our world.

Work cited:

www.moma.org/collection/works/78784

www.theartstory.org/movement-surrealism.htm