Today is the death anniversary of one of the most influential women in Mexican history. Feminist, artist and ambassadress of culture in México and the world. The painter Frida Kahlo.
Frida´s works are one of a kind. According to different critics, her style goes back and forth between surrealism and realism. Frida considered that she was more inclined to realism because she portrayed real life events in her paintings. Frida was able to make the public empathize with her suffering throughout her works. During her teenage years, she suffered from an accident that changed her life. The bus she was traveling in crashed with a trolley leaving her with a very damaged body. She never fully recovered from the accident which led to many health problems in the future. This experience pushed her to let out her feelings through art. At La Casa Azul ( museum of Frida Kahlo) we can clearly see how her paintings evolved through the years. They all have a similar style but each one owns a different motive. She created an open book of the concerns, agony, love and happiness she experienced through in her life.
Frida was constantly getting surgeries because of her deteriorating health. She even got one leg amputated. The struggle for keeping a healthy body defined a lot of her fashion style. She wore painted corsets and long skirts with vibrant colors in order to hide her injuries. She started to incorporate a lot of regional Mexican dresses into her wardrobe, especially the Tehuana style. She would wear this typical garments from our country with an inimitable style. A very important element in Frida´s life was her marriage to the muralist Diego Rivera. They both greatly admired each other. They were an unconventional couple, they loved each other but they also tormented each other.
" And even if its not true, tell me that you love me and can´t live without me." -Frida Kahlo
I am wearing a dress I recently bought in Oaxaca. The Frida Kahlo portrait was painted by my grandfather.
Even in her time Frida was known and praised by the artistic and cultural society of México and abroad. She held exhibitions in New York, Paris and México. It is amazing how she has become an icon that represents a new type of woman and the flourishing of a modern México. Kahlo has inspired fashion, literature and even ballet. She was a woman politically active and interested in the fate of humanity. She was a woman who never lived behind the shadow of Diego Rivera and who opened her heart to everyone who appreciated her art. She was a woman who excelled for her singularity and peculiar outlook on life.
Thanks to her art we now have the opportunity to take a peek into her soul and appreciate the world exactly how she lived it.
-Greta