Today (6.7.2020.) 113 years ago, Frida Kahlo, a Mexican painter, was born.
Frida Kahlo is an artist who has expressed her life feelings, feelings and pains directly and poignantly on canvas. Kahlo, who usually painted herself, unleashed anger, pain, and sorrow through painting, revealing her inner world. Frida tried to emphasize the beauty of imperfection.
An uncompromising description of the female experience. Uncompromising self-portraits.
Already at the age of 19, her father photographed her in a male suit, to make it clear to everyone what feminism is: to be who you are, just the way you want to be, and to hell with criticism.
Frida chose not to succumb to dictates about female beauty and therefore left the mustache and eyebrows attached. Hair trimming (twice) was an act of strength and determination, of voluntarily giving up beauty and femininity.
55 of her 143 paintings dealt with her, showing her rich inner world. It was a clear, political, personal statement that put her, the woman at the center.
Gender issues, personal identity, politics, cultural roots, an ardent communist who fought for equality and social justice.
A unique artist who was ahead of her time.
I share with you a topic that interests me and is present in many of Frida Kahlo’s life and paintings. And was also a part of my life as a teenager, in back straightening treatments.
The corset
The corset accompanied Frida many times in the form of medical treatment, a plaster / metal corset that wrapped around her broken body as a result of a previous accident.
Frida’s Corset of Anguish
A corset is an accessory that the woman wears on her body – on the one hand it is supposed to shape the body into a narrower and more flattering shape for a woman on the other hand it causes anguish and discomfort as it presses on the body and ribs. The tighter it is on the one hand the painful and excruciating it is on the other hand.
The corset highlights the pains and anguish that Frida experiences every day and every hour. Here, too, one can look both inward and outward — outwardly the corset is beautiful and inwardly painful. As Frida tries outward to look strong and held but inwardly tormented and painful.
The corset in Frida’s painting also reminds me of shrouds, white cotton fabrics that wrap the dead in them…
I chose to paint Frida Kahlo. For me Frida symbolizes a strong female figure who has faced in her life physical and mental difficulties.
When I paint a portrait, the most important thing to me is the eye contact created between the painting character and the observer, I tried to convey in her look femininity on the one hand and strength and confidence on the other and all this along with a wink of playfulness.
I also combined a paper collage with the oil paints in this work, I like that the observer slowly discovers the paper fragments that are incorporated in the paint stains, a kind of exploratory and prolonged observation that discovers something new in the painting every time. I think that the colorfulness of the painting character matches the many colors in Frida’s life.
To me she is a symbol of strong, uncompromising femininity, very real and honest with herself and the environment.
Related Posts
