StMU Research Scholars

Featuring Scholarly Research, Writing, and Media at St. Mary’s University

October 16, 2017

Frida Kahlo’s Artistic Growth: From Divorce to Fame

Me pinto a mi misma porque soy a quien major conozco” (“I paint myself because I’m the one that knows me best”)—Frida Kahlo

 

Frida Kahlo is one of Mexico’s most influential female painters. Her elaborate and detailed self-portraits exhibit painful imagery and naturalistic symbolism.1 She expressed originality by using surrealism rather than the reflections of dreams or fantasies. Each and every one of her paintings was a real representation of her own life, emotions, and personal experiences. Frida Kahlo was born in Coyoacán, Mexico in 1907. She was the daughter of a German-Jewish photographer and his Indian-Spanish mother. Despite her European background, Kahlo related to her Mexican heritage, embracing the style of indigenous women, which later became Kahlo’s iconic look.2

Traditionally, women are expected to find a husband, get married, and have children. A woman who marries her dream husband would expect to be content with her life. In the case of Frida Kahlo, she fell madly in love with muralist Diego Rivera, and she married him on August 21, 1929.3 Diego was Frida’s dream come true. She first met Rivera in 1922 at the age of fifteen when she enrolled at the National Preparatory School in Mexico City. However, Kahlo was up for a rude awakening. Her dream marriage turned out to be a life full of pain and disappointment after she discovered Rivera’s infidelity.

“Frieda y Diego Rivera” | Frida Kahlo | 1931 | Courtesy of www.FridaKahlo.org

In the early stages of her marriage to Diego, Kahlo was swept with an abundance of feelings of happiness and love. We might call this the honeymoon stage of Khalo’s marriage and artistic career. Her paintings during this period of her life displayed just such a happy mood. She was proud to be Diego’s wife, and Kahlo was content and ready to show the world their wonderful love. In an early 1931 painting of hers, Frieda y Diego Rivera, her canvas features Diego Rivera and Kahlo holding hands. By holding hands, the artist is expressing her feelings of possession of Diego. It is well-known that Rivera was unfaithful to Frida throughout their marriage, and Kahlo was aware of his many affairs. By painting this picture, she makes a bold statement that demonstrates Diego as her husband.4 The painting reveals Diego as the extraordinary master, as he is holding a wooden palette and paint brushes. The painting is a reflection of the couple’s marriage at the time, expressing the theme of an adoring wife who loves her husband despite his flaws. This is ironic because, due to Rivera’s flaws and their future, troubling divorce, Frida’s career grew more and more independent from Rivera’s artistic shadow.

On September 17, 1925, at the age of seventeen, while she was attending the National Preparatory School, Kahlo’ was involved in a terrible bus accident where she was impaled by an iron handrail. As a consequence, Kahlo experienced a broken spine, pelvis, collarbone, and rib injuries. These injuries presented her with difficulties during a number of her pregnancies, the first of them occurring in 1932 while in Detroit. This miscarriage influenced her relationship with Diego. She had the normal motherly desire to have a child, but it became a major dispute between her and Diego.3 The sequel of hurtful events permanently damaged her fantasy marriage. The artist reached the reality stage of the marriage as she began to acknowledge Diego’s infidelity and betrayal.

Despite the disappointment of the miscarriage and her awareness of Diego’s various infidelities, the worst was yet to come for Kahlo. Her most painful marriage experience was in discovering Rivera’s affair with her own sister Christina. Although this was one of the many affairs Rivera had, it was the most painful one for her.3 After Rivera’s betrayal, the relationship declined quickly and led to the couple’s separation on November 6, 1939.7 The sorrow and regret Kahlo experienced while married had been expressed in her artistic productions. The emotional roller-coaster of her marriage and her final break with Rivera and her divorce drove Kahlo to a crisis and the forming of two identities. The way she resolved her crisis was by painting two of her most famous portraits. Unlike her husband’s elaborate murals, Kahlo’s paintings reflect the shocking lifelong emotional and physical pain she has experienced.3

“Dos Frida’s”
(Two Frida’s)
|Courtesy of Commons Flickr

Frida was heartbroken after the divorce; the perfect life she had hoped for when she exchanged vows with Diego had become a lie. Frida Kahlo’s first thematic painting, of 1939,  relates to her now ex-husband Diego Rivera. The painting was known as Las Dos Fridas (The Two Fridas). Kahlo painted a canvas full of sorrow and painful imagery. The piece shows two identical Frida’s, in which Kahlo explored her two different identities. Each Frida has different clothes and accessories, indicative of their different personalities. One of the Fridas is labeled as the Mexican Frida, representing the Frida that Diego Rivera fell in love with, symbolized by the style of her traditional Mexican dress. The other Frida is representing the European Frida, as she is revealing her new, emerging identity. Here she depicts herself as a broken-hearted woman wearing traditional Victorian attire. The color of the white dress is an archetype for purity. This Frida is an independent artist. In the painting, both Fridas’ hearts are exposed, and there is a vein connecting them both. In the left traditional European Frida, Frida is holding surgical scissors that have cut the vein reflected in her lap. The vein leads to the Mexican Frida, where she is holding a small portrait of Rivera.9 The details of the painting echo Kahlo’s identity struggles after her divorce, illustrating the pain she was experiencing at the time.

“Autorretrato con Collar de Espinas”
| Courtesy of www.FridaKahlo.org

The second painting of this period of her sorrow was a self-portrait, called Autorretrato con Collar de Espinas (Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace). Today, this painting is still considered one of the most meaningful and widely recognized self-portraits of an artist, due to its emotion and symbolic context. Frida painted the portrait during the same time of grieving in her marriage. The disappointment Frida experienced from Rivera’s betrayal was captured in this gloomy painting. The canvas was completed in 1940, the year after her disturbing divorce from Diego Rivera came to an end. The portrait displays a series of meaningful elements; for example, the thorns sinking into her neck are a symbol of the pain she experienced when her relationship with Diego ended. The thorn necklace is a well-known symbol of the painful Crown of Thorns that Jesus was forced to wear on the day of his death. In the painting, Kahlo is wearing her signature Mexican dress, which formed a part of her unique style. Other symbols include a black dead hummingbird with outstretched wings, a black cat, and a monkey.10 Each animal has its own significance; for instance, the hummingbird symbolizes the end of the couple’s marriage, the black cat on Kahlo’s shoulders is a symbol of bad luck, and finally, the monkey represents a gift from Diego. It indicates how her husband’s treatment made her feel.

The thematic context presented in her paintings have captured the attention of numerous artists. As she was able to use symbolic connections rather than physical ones to expose her repetitive cycle of earthly sorrow, Kahlo also incorporated various traditional Mexican elements representing her Hispanic heritage.7 Her divorce was a significant period for career growth, as she was able to gain independence from her husband’s artistic shadow.7 Throughout her life she was able to express her happiness, sorrows, and tragedies to mourn the difficulties of her life. Her inspiration evolved out of rough and traumatic events, such as her husband’s infidelity, their divorce, her miscarriage, and even her earlier bus accident. The dissatisfaction and misery Kahlo experienced when her marriage failed left her with a sense of emptiness because her dream was to live a joyful life with Rivera. Frida’s work was inspired by traumatic physical and psychological events. The three paintings examined here show different stages of Kahlo’s artistic evolution that parallel her personal tragedies and experiences. Her unique painting style developed from her ability to interpret and convey her own reality. Kahlo’s innovative incorporation of her suffering and personal experiences earned her admiration of people from the 20th century.9 Kahlo envisioned a life full of happiness. She wanted loyalty, love, children, and a giving husband, and instead, she lived a life full of pain and treachery. Her dream marriage turned out to be a dreadful experience that greatly influenced her artwork.

  1. Women in World History: A Biographical Encyclopedia, 2002, s.v. “Frida Kahlo (1907-1954),” by Diane Moody.
  2.  Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2006, s.v. “Frida Kahlo.”
  3. Salem Press Biographical Encyclopedia, January 2017, s.v. “Frida Kahlo,” by Tate Teresa Neva.
  4. Holly Barnet-Sanchez, “Frida Kahlo: Her Life and Art Revisited,” Latin American Research Review 32, no. 3 (1997): 247-248.
  5. Salem Press Biographical Encyclopedia, January 2017, s.v. “Frida Kahlo,” by Tate Teresa Neva.
  6. Salem Press Biographical Encyclopedia, January 2017, s.v. “Frida Kahlo,” by Tate Teresa Neva.
  7. Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2006, s.v. “Frida Kahlo.”
  8. Salem Press Biographical Encyclopedia, January 2017, s.v. “Frida Kahlo,” by Tate Teresa Neva.
  9. Women in World History: A Biographical Encyclopedia., 2002, s.v. “Frida Kahlo (1907-1954),” by Diane Moody.
  10. Holly Barnet-Sanchez, “Frida Kahlo: Her Life and Art Revisited,” Latin American Research Review 32, no. 3 (1997): 248-250.
  11. Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2006, s.v. “Frida Kahlo.”
  12. Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2006, s.v. “Frida Kahlo.”
  13. Women in World History: A Biographical Encyclopedia., 2002, s.v. “Frida Kahlo (1907-1954),” by Diane Moody.

Tags from the story

Diego Rivera

Frida Kahlo

Recent Comments

Manuel Rodriguez

Frida Kahlo is an icon in various aspects and her artwork exemplifies that. When I was in high school, my Spanish class briefly covered the life of Frida, but the article was extremely detailed and provided some great insight into information that I was not familiar with. For example, I never knew that Frida’s divorce from Diego inspired some of her most notable artwork. It looked like she lived a rough life and experienced many setbacks, but she used her talent to express herself. Not for the world to see, but to heal the wounds she suffered.

reply

27/09/2020

4:38 pm

Mia Hernandez

This article was very interesting. I had only heard specific facts about Frida Khalo but I enjoyed learning about her entire background story. Her art was a great representation of her feelings and hopes. It was so unique. I can’t believe he had an affair with her own sister! How disrespectful! She turned her biggest weakness into an even bigger strength and that is what made her art work stand out from all the others.

reply

04/10/2020

4:38 pm

Jonathan Wilbur

This article is very intresting I was heart felt about her pain in many forms, because I know that if my life were like that i would not be able to take that pain

reply

30/10/2020

4:38 pm

Kayla Mendez

Frida Kahlo is a name that cannot be mistaken, yet many people, including me, only relate the individual to intriguing artwork. This article allowed me to recognize the life that made such a mesmerizing artist. Although her emotions were the essence of her paintings, it came from raw experiences. The amount of betrayal and pain she endured during her lifetime was great, but she shared it with the world, which has allowed to admire not only her talent, but her character as well.

reply

07/11/2020

4:38 pm

Maria Ferrer

As a Mexican, it fills me with pride that a person like Frida Kahlo represents part of our culture. She undoubtedly had a very complicated life that was full of many emotions. Everything she did in her life should be admired. She should be admired because, despite having suffered a lot, she used that pain to create works of art and she had the strength to share her life with many people. I’m glad that she was always proud of being Mexican and how she represented that in her work. I believe that her strength is something that women should seek to emulate and I love how her strength is reflected in this article.

reply

24/01/2021

4:38 pm

Camryn Blackmon

This article is super interesting and descriptive of the life of Frida Khalo. I really liked that you discussed in depth two of her most iconic portraits. I didn’t know that the animals in the portraits had such a deep meaning. I really enjoyed reading more about her life and the meanings behind her famous work.

reply

14/09/2021

4:38 pm

Faizah Ijaz

I love this article! It brings a lot of emotions to the reader as it gives better insight on Frida Khalo’s life and the complicated situations she went through. It was interesting reading about how Diego heavily affected her artwork and how she portrayed him, and it makes me wonder what her artwork would be like if she did not go through all these emotional events.

reply

14/09/2021

4:38 pm

Christopher Metta Bexar

Not having read much about Frida Kahlo just having seen pictures of her artwork I was interested in this article. Like so many women who had affairs or married famous men in the arts while they too were in the arts I sort of expected this story might have this sort of narrative. Not every marriage is the one Sophia Loren had with her beloved director husband Carlo Ponti who made her an international star. Many are more like Frida Kahlo with Diego Rivera or Vivien Leigh with Laurence Olivier.

reply

03/10/2021

4:38 pm

Daniela Iniguez-Jaco

Prior to this article I honestly did not know much about Frida, but now I admire her even more. I am so proud that she represents Mexican culture and Mexican women as well. Her artwork will always the so mesmerizing because it shows how much she suffered in life, I could be overanalyzing, but that’s how I see it.

reply

05/10/2021

4:38 pm

Lyle Ballesteros

This article is great! Frida Kahlo was a great artist and especially with self portraits that inspired many people to go into art and express myself, including my mother with Frida Kahlo being somewhat of an influence to her own style. I did not know the details of her troubled life and traumatic events that happened to her, especially with her then husband Diego who broke her heart many times. You explained the details within her most famous pieces of art and how they related to what she was going though emotionally and physically very well and things that people may not notice on first glance and may not know her full story and past, like I did not fully know.

reply

15/01/2023

4:38 pm

1 2 3 7

Leave a Reply