Title: The Two Fridas
Year: 1939
Size: Oil on Canvas (68" x 68")
“My painting carries with it the message of pain.”
Frida Kahlo discovered her affinity for painting when she was confined to her bed at the age of 18 after a bus accident. Although art was not an intended career of hers, she found that during her time bed-ridden, she was able to find solace and express her pain regarding her physical and emotional complications through painting.
“I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone, because I am the person I know best.”
Kahlo took to her paintings with a brutally honest yet surreal perspective. Feeling internally conflicted she felt that self-portraits were channel for her to depict her innermost thoughts and reflections.
“I never paint dreams or nightmares. I paint my own reality.”
In keeping with her surrealistic tone, Kahlo claimed that her work was not just an “artistic vision” but a self-contained reality in itself.
I’ve chosen “The Two Fridas” as I feel that it best merges these three themes which were generally central to her work.
Sources:-
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/kahlo.html
http://www.energiacreativa.org/PAINT/art%20quotes.htm
http://arthistory.about.com/od/from_exhibitions/ig/frida_kahlo/fk200708_12.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frida_Kahlo
Done by: Arifah (16)
