Frida Kahlo example essay topic

Frida Kahlo was born in the "Blue House" in Coy oac " an, a quiet town on the outskirts of Mexico City. She gave her date of birth as July 7, 1910, however her birth certificate shows July 6, 1907. Her father Wilhelm Kahlo was a Hungarian Jew. He changed his name to Guillermo and worked as a photographer specializing in architectural monuments of the pre-Hispanic and colonial eras. Frida's life was far from perfect or easy. She was faced with several life threatening and life changing events.

On September 17, 1925, at about the age of 18, Frida Kahlo was involved in a tragic bus accident which left her with broken spinal column, a broken collarbone, broken ribs, a broken pelvis, and 11 fractures in her right leg. In addition her right foot was dislocated and crushed, and her shoulder was out of joint. For a month, Frida was forced to stay flat on her back, encased in a plaster cast and enclosed in a boxlike structure. She was to remain partially handicapped and in pain for the rest of her life. This life-changing event set in motion the practice of faithfully recording the painful episodes of her life through her art. Frida's strength and determination allowed her to survive and make a remarkable recovery.

She began painting shortly after the accident as she got bored confined to a bed. Painting became her lifelong profession. Although Frida recovered (she regained her ability to walk), she did have relapses of tremendous pain and fatigue all throughout her life, this sometimes caused her to be hospitalised for long periods of time, bedridden and also required to undergo numerous (30) operations in her lifetime. She turned to alcohol, drugs, and cigarettes to ease her physical suffering. Frida boldly requested Diego Rivera to critique her work while he was perched high up on a scaffold, absorbed in his first fresco creation.

Diego agreed and was impressed with Kahlo's original style and mode of expression. Frida was twenty-four years Diego's junior, they were married in 1929 and began a relationship of many mutual painful separations and reconciliations. Frida also suffered from a second painful life changing event. A miscarriage. After her miscarriage Frida hurtled into a sort of depression. She let out all of her emotions onto a canvas.

She painted her anger and hurt of her turbulent marriage, her painful miscarriage, and the physical suffering she underwent because of her accident. Frida only ever had one exhibition in Mexico, it was held in the spring of 1953. Frida's state of health was in a very bad condition and her doctors told her not to attend her exhibition. Frida was taken to her exhibition in an ambulance and carried from it inside on a hospital stretcher.

She was placed on her bed in the middle of the gallery. Frida told jokes, entertained the crowd, sang, and drank the whole evening. The exhibition was a huge success. During her short life Frida tried to commit suicide a couple of times. Near the end of her life, in response to the many critics who said she belonged to the school of Surrealism, Frida said "They thought I was a surrealist but I wasn't. I never painted dreams.

I painted my own reality". On July 13, 1954, Frida Kahlo died at the age of 47. No official autopsy was done and suicide has been rumoured, however it is believed by most that Frida died from un-preventable infections. Her last words in her personal diary read "I hope the leaving is joyful and I hope never to return". Frida gave her fans one last frightening goodbye. As mourners cried a sudden blast of heat from the open incinerator doors blew her body bolt upright.

Her hair was on fire and it blazed around her head like a halo. Frida's lips seemed to curl into a seductive grin just as the doors closed shut. She was not the type to leave without a big bang!