Frida and Diego: A Story of Love and Pain
By Sasha Scheherzade
Life experience is a common theme in Kahlo's approximately 200 paintings, sketches and drawings. Her physical and emotional pain are spread starkly on canvases, as was her stormy relationship with her husband, fellow artist and love of her life, Diego Rivera, who she married... twice!!!
During her life, 'self portrait' is a subject that Kahlo always returned to, as artists have always returned to their beloved themes. Of her 143 paintings, 55 are self-portraits. Had she lived, she would have been coined the Selfie Queen of present times.
Kahlo and Rivera had a tempestuous relationship that was marked by multiple affairs on both the sides.
Self-Portrait With Cropped Hair (1940) - Kahlo is depicted in a man's suit, holding a pair of scissors, with her fallen hair around the chair in which she sits. This represents the times she would cut the hair Rivera loved when he had affairs. The lyrics of a song painted across the top of this potrait which reads:
"See, if I loved you, it was for your hair, now you're bald, I don't love you any more."
After the separation with Diego, Frida choose to abandon her feminine image. She chopped her hair shot, got rid of the Tehuana dress that Diego was obsessed with and started to wear a man's attire.
Diego and I - This painting was painted by Firda Kahlo as a present for her husband Diego Rivera on their 15th wedding anniversary. She later repainted another version of this painting to keep for herself. The dates in the title, 1929-1944, speak for their years of marriage (excluding the brief period they were divorced in 1939-1940). The painting expresses Frida's deep love for Rivera. In this double-portait, they were portaited not as a couple, but as only one person. Both halves of faces complete each other. The sun and moon is the symbol of husband and wife, the Kahlo-Rivera couple is shown to belong together. At the bottom of the painting, the joined scallop and conch are symbols of their love union.
Memory, the Heart (1937) - shows Kahlo's pain over her husband's affair with her younger sister Christina. A large broken heart at her feet shows the intensity of Kahlo's anguish. Frido and Diego divorced in 1939, but reunited a year later and remarried.
The Two Fridas (1939) - depicts Kahlo twice, shortly after the divorce. One Frida wears a costume from the Tehuana region of Mexico, representing the Frida that Diego loved. The other Frida wears a European dress as the woman who Diego betrayed and rejected.
Later, she is back in Tehuana dress in Self-Portrait as a Tehuana (1943) and Self Portrait (1948).
Kahlo did not sell many paintings in her lifetime, although she painted occasional portraits on commission. She had only one solo exhibition in Mexico in her lifetime, in 1953, just a year before her death at the age of 47.
"My painting carries with it the message of pain." - Frida Kahlo
Image source - fridakahlo.org
Life experience is a common theme in Kahlo's approximately 200 paintings, sketches and drawings. Her physical and emotional pain are spread starkly on canvases, as was her stormy relationship with her husband, fellow artist and love of her life, Diego Rivera, who she married... twice!!!
During her life, 'self portrait' is a subject that Kahlo always returned to, as artists have always returned to their beloved themes. Of her 143 paintings, 55 are self-portraits. Had she lived, she would have been coined the Selfie Queen of present times.
Kahlo and Rivera had a tempestuous relationship that was marked by multiple affairs on both the sides.
Self-Portrait With Cropped Hair (1940) - Kahlo is depicted in a man's suit, holding a pair of scissors, with her fallen hair around the chair in which she sits. This represents the times she would cut the hair Rivera loved when he had affairs. The lyrics of a song painted across the top of this potrait which reads:
"See, if I loved you, it was for your hair, now you're bald, I don't love you any more."
After the separation with Diego, Frida choose to abandon her feminine image. She chopped her hair shot, got rid of the Tehuana dress that Diego was obsessed with and started to wear a man's attire.
Diego and I - This painting was painted by Firda Kahlo as a present for her husband Diego Rivera on their 15th wedding anniversary. She later repainted another version of this painting to keep for herself. The dates in the title, 1929-1944, speak for their years of marriage (excluding the brief period they were divorced in 1939-1940). The painting expresses Frida's deep love for Rivera. In this double-portait, they were portaited not as a couple, but as only one person. Both halves of faces complete each other. The sun and moon is the symbol of husband and wife, the Kahlo-Rivera couple is shown to belong together. At the bottom of the painting, the joined scallop and conch are symbols of their love union.
Memory, the Heart (1937) - shows Kahlo's pain over her husband's affair with her younger sister Christina. A large broken heart at her feet shows the intensity of Kahlo's anguish. Frido and Diego divorced in 1939, but reunited a year later and remarried.
The Two Fridas (1939) - depicts Kahlo twice, shortly after the divorce. One Frida wears a costume from the Tehuana region of Mexico, representing the Frida that Diego loved. The other Frida wears a European dress as the woman who Diego betrayed and rejected.
Later, she is back in Tehuana dress in Self-Portrait as a Tehuana (1943) and Self Portrait (1948).
Kahlo did not sell many paintings in her lifetime, although she painted occasional portraits on commission. She had only one solo exhibition in Mexico in her lifetime, in 1953, just a year before her death at the age of 47.
"My painting carries with it the message of pain." - Frida Kahlo
Image source - fridakahlo.org
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