Frida Kahlo

When Frida Kahlo was only eighteen years old when she got into a terrible bus accident. The bus hit a turning street car causing them to crash which resulted in a metal handrail to impale Kahlo through the abdomen and out her genitals. She suffered a copious amount of injuries including: breaking multiple ribs, shattering her spine in three places, shattering her pelvis, breaking many bones in her right leg, and breaking her collarbone. It took her two years to recover, but she still was not fully recovered after that accident. That accident is the inspiration for The Broken Column or La Columna Rota. In the painting, the cracking column that is in place of where Kahlo’s spine should be, represents the pain of the spinal surgery she had to have. After the surgery, she was placed into a metal corset, like

Typically, Kahlo painted her self portraits with, at least, one animal by her side or somewhere in this picture. As seen in Kahlo’s painting, Self-Portrait with a Monkey, she painted a plain picture with just leaves as the background, but added a monkey on her shoulder. Since this was painted right after she had spinal surgery, she could have felt very alone through the whole process of treatment from the bus accident. In the painting, Frida is placed in the center, giving the feel that she was in the present moment and not in the past or future. If she was placed more towards the front, back, or sides of the painting, she would represent either a time of the past or of the future. There is not really any movement in the painting except for the way her skirt is flowing in front of her. That tells us that since Frida and the background are static, she is feeling all of that pain in the present moment. The terrain in the background is broken and cracking. The tears in the ground represents the pain she is suffering on the inside from the