I was still a child the first time I saw one of Frida Kahlo's paintings and I've been transfixed ever since. When I was younger, it was the accuracy of her vibrant self-portraits that captivated me. But as I grew older, and endured much trauma, I was drawn to her expression of pain. You can tell from Kahlo's paintings that she is fluent in the language of suffering, and her visual representations of it have the unique quality of being literal while still nuanced. Kahlo was a Mexican artist who at the time she painted the most, was married to a larger-than-life Mexican muralist named Diego Rivera. As a child, she survived a horrible bus accident which left her with severe life-long injuries and would eventually paralyze her. That, coupled with her husband's flagrant infidelity and her many miscarriages, would have destroyed most people. But Kahlo's indomitable spirit allowed her to create meaningful, nuanced art that communicated her struggles. She remains celebrated for her art, her carefree life and feminism. Read more for my favorite paintings and a tour of an exhibition I saw of hers at the Brooklyn Museum.
Frida Kahlo, pictured above working on a painting of her father.
An early piece that Kahlo painted of the bus she had the infamous accident on.
