I. Although she lived a short life she had a very eventful one.
a. Here’s Frida’s early life.
1. She was born on July 6, 1907 in Coyocoan, Mexico City, Mexico
2. She had german dad (photographer) and half Amerindian and half Spanish mother and also two older sisters and one younger sister.
3. Had very poor health in her childhood and contracted polio at age of 6 and had to be bedridden for nine months. The disease caused her right leg and foot to grow much thinner than her left one and as a result she only wore long skirts to cover it up
4. Her father (who was a major influencer in her life) encouraged her to do lots of sports to help her recover. She played soccer, went swimming, and even did wrestle, which is very unusual at that time for
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Luckily, Frida had such a passion in her painting, she often used it as a form of therapy, and as a result almost all her work contains symbolism that had a deep personal meaning to her.
a. Her struggles in
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"Kahlo painted herself as the quietly suffering female. In every possible sense, the mass-culture Kahlo embodies that now-poisonous term: victim-hood. She was the victim of patriarchal culture, victim of an unfaithful husband, and simply the victim of a horrific accident. But that's probably one reason why she's so popular.” "She dramatized the pain in her paintings, while carefully cultivating a self-image as a 'heroic sufferer.'" (Mencimer, 2002)
2. Between her emotional struggles, she also lived most of her life in pain because of her poor health, posture, and the permanent damage caused by her bus accident. A lot of her work shows mostly Frida herself suffering or being trapped or broken in some way.
3. Not only does she deal with pain, but she also deals with self image. She's constantly looking at herself through her self portraits.
4. Chadwick states: "...Kahlo's The Broken Column (1944)... reinforces the woman artist's use of the mirror to assert the duality of being, the self as observer and observed. ... Kahlo used painting as a means of exploring the reality of her own body as her consciousness of its vulnerability; in many cases the reality dissolves into a duality, exterior evidence versus interior perception of that reality." (Chadwick, 2007)
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