The self-portrait The Broken Column was painted by Frida Kahlo in 1944. This work
is oil on canvas, mounted on masonite, and it is 40 x 30.7 cm. The Broken Column is at
Museo Dolores Olmedo in Mexico. This painting is one of Kahlo’s most famous
iconic self-portraits which represents feminism in its time, for it shatters the traditional
idealized image of women through it subject matter, depiction of female beauty and
symbolism.
This life-size painting has a horizontal perspective. In this painting, Kahlo painted
herself as a strong woman with a broken body, because she hurt by a train in
1925. The nude Kahlo stands upright in the midst of a cracked plain. She stares at
the audience directly, and her hands grasp a sheet to hide her private
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This artwork is not meant to please anyone; it is just for
Kahlo herself. It changed what people think about women’s status in the arts. As
Kahlo said: “I paint my reality. The only thing that I know is that I paint because I
need to, and I paint whatever passes through my head without any other
consideration” (Herrera 4). In this painting, Frida Kahlo painted her own special
experience of her body. It essentially represents Kahlo’s anguished experience and
feelings during the mid-1940s. At this time, since Kahlo had to wear the heavy
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corsets to support her back, both her physical and mental conditions suffered. This
painting has Kahlo’s own unique memory and meanings; it is not just how she looks.
During the fifteenth century, these images of women, which were produced by the
ideals of society, showed the ideals of female beauty, behavior and display
(Tinagli 4). But this self portrait expresses her memory and replaced the stereotypical
representations of women in Western artworks. Kahlo used the painting to share