Viva Frida Kahlo!

By Lolos

FRIDA KAHLO
On her 102nd anniversary

It is impossible to write about Frida Kahlo without creating a whirlwind of contradictory feelings mixed with admiration and horror. One of twentieth century's most important and revered artists, Frida literally embodied pain and tragedy and used art as a process of spiritual and metaphysical transformation

When she was a teenager, Frida was pierced by a metal handrail in a tragic trolley accident. The railing entered through her spinal cord and exited through her pelvis. She converted her ravaged body into some of the most memorable images that haunt our dreams. Her psychic and physical pain became a revolutionary metaphor of politics and feminism, of sexuality and subversion.

We think that her art is a lesson in artistic integrity, and the intensity of her emotions and fierce loyalty to her country has inspired women from all walks of life, but in particular Chicanas and Latin American artists, to create an alternative cultural expression, not constrained by gender but defined by artistic focus and a way of producing.

Facing her self-portrait, Frida acknowledges, "I have spent my whole life dying."

FRIDA KAHLO, /The Two Fridas/, 1939. Oil on canvas, 68 1/4 x 68 inches. Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City.

But that acceptance and sublimation of pain into art has given us, artists and craftspeople more that one reason to live and enjoy every minute of our work, making our obstacles and difficulties easier to accept and conquer. Thank you Frida.

Frida painted this eight days before she died. She called it “Viva la Vida”, an untranslatable play of words to Live and Life.




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