The immense popularity of the work of Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) and the overwhelming public interest in her life may lead some observers to conclude that her small output of paintings has been over-praised and over-valued. But, while the cult based on Kahlo's perceived status as the feminist heroine of a romantic tragedy may be somewhat misguided, there are sound reasons for incorporating biography into the study of her paintings. Kahlo's history, emotions, politics, and self-image constituted her primary subject. In electing to adhere quite closely to this limited range Kahlo produced an iconography and style that drew on both European and Mexican culture but were, considered in themselves, a radical departure from centuries of male-centered art. Kahlo brought all her influences and personal material together in a body of work that makes a coherent statement about culture, women, and suffering. A brief analysis of this art demonstrates that, no matter how many T-shirts feature her face, Kahlo was a uniquely gifted painter whose work opened the way to new, specifically female, modes of representation and expression.
Kahlo was born in 1907 in Coyoacßn, now a part of greater Mexico City, to Guillermo Kahlo, "the son of Hungarian Jews who lived in Baden-Baden, Germany," and Matilde Calderon Kahlo, "a Mexican of mixed Indian and Spanish ancestry" (Herrera 18). Kahlo's father was a prominent and accomplished photographer, and amateur painter, who assembled a "prodigious archive" of photographs of ancient and modern Mexican architecture (Arias 38). Though Guillermo trained Kahlo as a photographer, she never developed a very strong interest in the profession. Kahlo's mother was an illiterate, deeply religious woman with a very practical approach to life. Kahlo was proud of her friendship with her mother, but their relationship had suffered when Matilde fell ill shortly after her daughter's birth. According to some analyses the ...