Brookhaven National Laboratory United States Department of Energy.
https://www.bnl.gov/bera/activities/globe/frida.html
Frida Kahlo
This year, the US Postal Service is issuing stamps honoring the great Mexican artist Frida Kahlo.
Interest in Frida Kahlo's works has kept on growing steadily.
In 1995, her painting "Self-Portrait with Monkey and Parrot" was sold for $3.2 millions.
In 2000, another self-portrait was sold for $5 millions, which is thought to have set two new records: the highest ever paid for a non-European painter as well as the highest for a female painter.
Three of Hope
Frida Kahlo was born in Coyoacan, Mexico, in 1907.
She started painting in 1925, while bedridden following a street accident, the wounds from which would never heal, and would eventually lead to an early death in 1954.
Diego Rivera's flower seller
In 1929, Frida married the Mexican painter Diego Rivera.
Both artists, though schooled in European painting techniques and styles, decided to explore their own Native-american and Spanish roots, creating in fact, one of the most fascinating and original schools of the 20th century.
Diego Rivera was one of the most influential painters of his time, intensely devoted to popular causes. He is best known for her exquisite paintings featuring flower sellers as well as for his huge murals.
Roots
Frida Kahlo selected instead a more restricted range of themes and more modest dimensions for her expression.
In fact, many of Kahlo's paintings are self-portraits. These deeply felt and moving autobiographical pieces, as Rivera said: " had no precedent in the history of art, paintings which exalted the feminine quality of truth, reality, cruelty and suffering. Never before had a woman put such agonized poetry on canvas as Frida did..."
Three of Hope Kahlo and Rivera's relationship had its difficult times, they married twice, and Frida Kahlo had affairs with women.
Three of Hope
Frida Kahlo's rebellious and independent spirit, her extraordinary sensitivity, the depth and originality of her art which was never commercial, her love for Mexico, strong but not chauvinistic, her struggle with the physical disabilities that afflicted her, her conflict with a society that did not encourage women to excel, and her public recognition, despite being the partner of another great painter, are some of the reasons that may help to explain the attraction she has generated.
References:
The best way to get acquainted with the lives and art of Frida Kahlo, and simultaneously with that of Diego Rivera, is of course, to spend several days in Mexico City, visiting the museums and buildings that exhibit their work.
Among books, one of the most interesting is Carr, O'Keeffe, Kahlo : Places of Their Own by Sharyn Rohlfsen Udall, who explores the parallel lives of Frida Kahlo, Georgia O'Keefe and Emily Carr, the foremost female painters of Mexico, USA and Canada respectively, who coincidently, were also bisexual. Also of interest, Frida : A Biography of Frida Kahlo by Hayden Herrera.
A Hollywood rendition of Kahlo's life, featuring Salma Hayek is currently being filmed.
