Personally I love this woman's spirit. Our "mother of art" as we would aptly call her, Anita, sat us down and introduced us to miss Kahlo via a film rightfully named Frida. It stars Selma Hayek and it's a great watch, if you really want to know the essence of who Frida Kahlo was, watch that film. Frida was a strong woman, she is my personal inspiration, I watch her film, or even look at her artwork sometimes and I feel humbled because I realise some people have had it worse than me and it never held them back.
Her story is a testament of living life .... regardless.
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Fresh faced and unaware of the art world, my art tutor in college opened up my eyes to an artist whom I continue to grasp inspiration from. Frida Kahlo was a Mexican firebomb, she was a very confident, self described bitch. Who had the determination of a pit-bull and she did a lot considering her circumstances. A film simply entitled “Frida” documented her life; the film displayed her life behind her art. As a young child she contracted the crippling disease polio causing her to have one leg smaller than the other, she was born during the Mexican Revolution, dodging bullets and ongoing riots. So from an early age she has always faced some form of adversity. Then it all ironically began when her life nearly ended, when she was in a traffic collision, this meant that most of her bones were broken and the possibility of having children became slim, she was bed ridden for months and she was in a full body cast that only left the top half of her body free, she was an 18 year old medical student at the time, due to this incident she underwent 35 operations during her lifetime. After many weeks of boredom and dwindling hope, her parents gave her an easel, paints and paintbrushes, after she had already artistically engulfed the parts of her cast that she could reach. Due to the fact that her mobility was limited to lying on her back, she was mostly able to paint what she could see, as well as using her thoughts, vivid imagination, life experiences and Mexican art as inspirations. With the assistance of a mirror, she proceeded to create endless self portraitures, her artwork has a quite naive and dream like appearance, which caused many art critiques to put her work under the surrealist movement, however it embodies much depth and in every way it is an autobiographical depiction of her life. She married famed mural artiste` Diego Rivera. She held her first art exhibition in 1953, she was bed ridden at the time and she insisted that she was present, due to crippling pain she was unable to walk or move, so she had her bed placed inside the back of an ambulance which escorted her to the venue and then four men carried the bed she laid upon and brought her to her awaiting guests. The majority of her work depicts pain, as if her pieces are diary entries of tumultuous parts of her life, often portraying sensitive subjects such as miscarriage. Her womb was badly injured when a pole skewered straight through her lower abdomen, meaning that she would become pregnant but due to the extensive damage, she had up to 3 miscarriages. She displayed great inner strength even though her outer body failed her, her heart and her desires kept on burning. Contrary to the fact that she never had her own children, her legacy created a collection of art lovers who can all draw a motherly inspiration from her work, amongst them are feminist groups, who may see her fire and strength as a great attribute for all women to have. Her humble abode, in mexico that she lived in with Diego for the majority of their marriage was made into a museum “casa asul” (Blue House) with the permission of Diego. Before her death she requested that her remains were burned;
”Burn it…I don’t want to be buried. I have spent too much time lying down…Just burn it!”
The same fire that burned within her was manifested into reality and eventually consumed her physical form; the outer fire paid homage to the fire inside and without singeing her soul it encapsulated her will power and strength forever.
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