Los Dos Fridas
The two Fridas or Los Dos Fridas was painted by Frida Kahlo in 1939 during the movement know as surrealism (Stokstad 1079). Kahlo 's self-portrait reflects her emotions within her mind and body. It reflects the emotions that she truly feels. Frida does this in a way that others would interoperate as stuff of dreams and nightmares. It is how others see her work that makes it surrealism. Frida writes, "I never painted dreams I painted my own reality" (Stokstad 1079). Frida Kahlo did the surrealist painting "The two Fridas" at what was probably the second most difficult time in her life. Frida was born in 1907, yet she would say that she was born in 1910, the year of Mexico 's revolution. Many believe she did this to be closer to her Mexican heritage. She died on July 13, 1954, at the age of 44 (www.pbs.org). I believe that Frida 's influences were her father Guillermo Kahlo a German Jewish immigrant who was a photographer; who has turned her to painting after her life threatening accident which involved a bus and a trolley car on September 17, 1925. Before this accident happened Frida had been artistically encouraged and taught to draw by Fernando Fernandez. He was a commercial printmaker. She served as his paid apprentice, where she would copy prints by Anders Zorn; a Swedish Impressionist painter (Ketterman 12). It wasn 't until after her 1st accident that she started to take more of an interest in painting, but it wasn 't until after her 2nd accident, which was her marriage to Diego Rivera that her interest and ability really took off (Ketterman 17). I believe that Diego was her biggest influence as well as her biggest fan. It was her two accidents that affected her life and made her work what it is. Frida Kahlo 's life was full of great amounts of pain and anguish. From Diego being "unfit for monogamy" , to her being incapable of carrying a child, and mostly the amount of physical pain she felt from her body being impaled by a trolley car. All of this is
Cited: Stokstad, Marilyn. Art History. Rev.2nd ed. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2005. Ketterman, Andrea. Frida Kahlo. Los Angeles: Taschen, 1992. www.pbs.org.