Artistic career and chronicles of Frida Kahlo:
She was a Mexican painter known for her many portraits, self-portraits, and works inspired by the nature and artifacts of Mexico. Inspired by the country's popular culture, her paintings often had strong autobiographical elements and mixed realism with fantasy. In addition to belonging to the post-revolutionary Mexicayotl movement, which sought to define a Mexican identity, Kahlo has been described as a surrealist or magical realist. She is known for painting about her experience of chronic pain.
- ‣● 1907 - Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderónwas born on 6 July 1907 in Coyoacán, Mexico City, Mexico
Frida Kahlo childhood photos - ‣● 1922 - Kahlo was accepted into the elite National Preparatory School, where she focused on natural sciences with the aim of becoming a physician.
- ‣● 1925 - A severe bus accident in 1925 left Kahlo in lifelong pain. The accident ended Kahlo's dreams of becoming a physician and caused her pain and illness for the rest of her life. Confined to bed for three months following the accident, Kahlo began to paint. Painting became a way for Kahlo to explore questions of identity and existence.
- ‣● 1926 - This painting, Self Portrait in a Velvet Dress (1926)is one of Frida Kahlo’s earliest paintings and her first self portrait, a subject to which she would return on numerous occasions throughout her lifetime. In this self-portrait, Frida was wearing a wine-red velvet dress and looks like a princess in it. This painting was used as a token of love to regain affection from her lover. She started working on this painting during the late summer of 1926 when her relationship with Alejandrowas turning sour because Alejandro thought she was too liberal.
Self Portrait (1926) - ‣● 1929 - This painting, The Bus (1929), clearly shows Diego Rivera's influence on Frida Kahlo's political attitudes. In this painting, a few people are sitting side by side on a wooden bench of a rickety bus. They are representatives of different classes of Mexican society. This painting is also a depiction of the bus accident that happened in 1925 and changed her life forever. "I suffered two grave accidents in my life," Frida Kahlo once said. "One in which a streetcar knocked me down. . . . Diego and Frida's union was both carnal and comradely. The most powerful bond between the two was their admiration for each other's art. Diego was the greatest artist to her, and she called him the "architect of life." To Diego, Frida was "a diamond in the midst of many inferior jewels" and "the best painter of her epoch."
The Bus (1929) - ‣● 1930 - After her marriage in 1929, Frida Kahlo created this self-portrait - Time Flies (1930), It depicts Frida in the way that Rivera cherished. In the painting, Frida is dressed in traditional Mexican costume, the style that was consistently utilized by Diego as a part of his murals. Frida Kahlo continued to use these lively colors of Mexican style throughout her entire career. When Kahlo and Rivera moved to San Francisco, Kahlo was introduced to American artists such as Edward Weston, Ralph Stackpole, Timothy L. Pflueger, and Nickolas Muray and further developed the folk art style she had adopted in Cuernavaca.
self-portrait - Time Flies (1930) - ‣● 1931 - She made Frieda and Diego Rivera (1931), a double portrait based on their wedding photograph, and
Frieda and Diego Rivera (1931)The Portrait of Luther Burbank (1931), which depicted the eponymous horticulturist as a hybrid between a human and a plant.
The Portrait of Luther Burbank (1931) - ‣● 1937 - She painted more than she had in all her previous eight years of marriage, creating such works as My Nurse and I
(1937),Memory, the Heart (1937),
Memory, the Heart (1937)Four Inhabitants of Mexico (1938), and
Four Inhabitants of Mexico (1938)What the Water Gave Me (1938)and the National Autonomous University of Mexico exhibited some of her paintings in early 1938.
What the Water Gave Me (1938)The Frame (1938)(El marco in Spanish) is a 1938 self-portrait The painting is notable as the first work by a 20th-century Mexican artist to be purchased by a major international museum, when it was acquired by the Louvre in 1939.
The Frame (1938) - ‣● 1939 - In January, Kahlo sailed to Paris to follow up on André Breton's invitation
to stage an exhibition of her work. She
painted several of her most famous pieces during this period, such as The Two Fridas (1939),
The Two Fridas (1939)Self-portrait with Cropped Hair (1940),
Self-portrait (1940)The Wounded Table (1940), and
The Wounded Table (1940)Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird (1940). Their divorce was mainly caused by their mutual infidelities. He and Kahlo were granted a divorce in November 1939, but remained friendly.
Self-Portrait (1940) - ‣● 1940 - Frida's works from this period include Self Portrait, Dedicated to Dr Eloesser (1940)Christian imagery, especially the theatrically bloody martyrdoms that hang in Mexican churches, pervades Frida's iconography. Kahlo traveled to San Francisco for medical treatment for back pain and a fungal infection on her hand. They remarried in a simple civil ceremony on 8 December 1940. Despite the medical treatment in San Francisco, Kahlo's health problems continued throughout the 1940s. Due to her spinal problems, she wore twenty-eight separate supportive corsets, varying from steel and leather to plaster, between 1940 and 1954. She experienced pain in her legs, the infection on her hand became chronic, and she was also treated for syphilis.
Self-Portrait (1940) - ‣● 1941 - In the United States, Kahlo's paintings continued to attract interest. Her works were featured at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, and, in the following year, she participated in two high-profile exhibitions in New York.
- ‣● 1943 - The Self Portrait as a Tehuana (1943)painting was begun in August of 1940 when she and Diego Rivera divorced. She didn't finish this painting until 1943. This painting is also known with two other names: "Diego in My Thoughts" and "Thinking of Diego". She was included in the Mexican Art Today exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Women Artists at Peggy Guggenheim's The Art of This Century gallery in New York.
Self Portrait as a Tehuana (1943)
This self portraitThinking about death (1943)when Frida's health was deteriorating during that period and she had to be bedridden most of the time. During the later years of Frida's life, she was tortured by numerous illnesses and complications.
Thinking about death (1943) - ‣● 1944 - By the mid-1940s, her back had worsened to the point that she could no longer
sit or stand continuously. In June 1945,
she traveled to New York for an operation which fused a bone graft and a steel support to her spine
to straighten it.
Her paintings from this period, such as The Broken Column (1944), Without Hope (1945),
Without Hope (1945)Tree of Hope, Stand Fast (1946), and
Tree of Hope, Stand Fast (1946)The Wounded Deer (1946), reflect her declining health.
The Wounded Deer (1946) - ‣● 1947 - In 1946, Frida's health worsened and she made a trip to New York for a spinal fusion surgery. This operation was called "the beginning of the end" by Frida Kahlo because after this operation, her condition kept getting worse even though she consulted many doctors and specialists. This self-portrait (1947)was painted while she was recovering from this surgery. Frida looks thin and exhausted in this painting. The legend on the scroll at the bottom of this painting reads: "Here I painted myself, Frida Kahlo, with my reflection in the mirror. I am 37 years old and this is July, 1947. In Coyoacan, Mexico, the place where I was born".
Self Portrait with Loose Hair (1947) - ‣● 1948 - In 1948, Frida's health continued deteriorating and this self-portrait (1948)is the only painting she painted that year. In this portrait, she is wearing the traditional Tehuana costume which Diego Rivera admired a lot. But her lace ruff takes up all the space and she seems trapped in there. Her face looks calm and emotionless but there are tears on her face. Her signature slight mustache makes her look more obviously masculine.
Self-Portrait (1951) - ‣● 1950 - In 1950, Kahlo spent most of the year in Hospital ABC in Mexico City, where
she underwent a new bone graft surgery on
her spine. Dr. Farill performed 7 surgeries on Frida's spine in 1951. She painted Self-Portrait with the Portrait of Doctor Farill (1951). This painting is Frida's last signed self-portrait. It caused a difficult infection and necessitated several follow-up surgeries.
Self-Portrait with the Portrait of Doctor Farill (1951) - ‣● 1953 - Kahlo's right leg was amputated at the knee due to gangrene in August 1953. She became severely depressed and anxious, and her dependency on painkillers escalated.
- ‣● 1954 - In her last days, Kahlo was mostly bedridden with bronchopneumonia. She
seemed to anticipate her death, as she drew
skeletons and angels in her diary. The last drawing was a black angel, which biographer Hayden
Herrera interprets as the
Angel of Death. It was accompanied by the last words she wrote, "I joyfully await the exit – and I
hope never to return
– Frida" ("Espero Alegre la Salida – y Espero no Volver jamás"). Viva la Vida, Watermelons (1954)was the last painting that Frida Kahlo created. A vibrant conclusion to the short life of Frida Kahlo.
Viva la Vida, Watermelons (1954) - ‣● 1954 - 13 July 1954 (aged 47) Coyoacán, Mexico City, Mexico, her nurse found her dead
in her bed. The official cause of death
was pulmonary embolism. The following day, her body was taken to the Panteón Civil de Dolores, where friends and family attended an informal funeral ceremony.Hundreds of admirers stood outside. In accordance with her wishes, Kahlo was cremated in a fittingly spectacular fashion that, according to legend, saw the mourners witness her hair catching fire, her corpse sitting up, and her face forming one last seductive grin. Rivera, who stated that her death was "the most tragic day of my life", died three years later, in 1957. Kahlo's ashes are displayed in a pre-Columbian urn at La Casa Azul, which opened as
An informal funeral ceremonya museum in 1958.
The Museo Frida Kahlo