Maria Teresa Hernandez
Associated Press
Mexico City Frida Kahlo was not religious, so why did the Mexican artist include several religious symbols in the paintings she created until her death on July 13, 1954?
“Frida conveyed the power of each individual,” says art researcher and curator Ximena Jourdan, “and her self-portraits are a reminder of how we can harness life, or the power, so to speak, that God has given us.”
Born in Mexico City in 1907, Kahlo used her personal experiences as a source of inspiration for her art, and her “Blue House” remains on display in the city today.
The bus accident she survived in 1925, the physical pain she endured as a result, and her troubled relationship with her husband, the Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, all nurtured her creativity.
Her outlook on life and spirituality created a connection between her paintings and the viewer, and even 70 years after her death, many people remain ardent fans of her work.
One key to understanding how she accomplished this lies in her self-portraits, Jardan said.
Though Kahlo appears in many of her works, she didn’t portray herself in a naturalistic way, but instead “recreated” herself through symbols that convey the depths of the human soul, Jardin said.
“Diego and I” is a perfect example: Painted by Kahlo in 1949, it sold for $34.9 million at Sotheby’s in New York in 2021, setting an auction record for a work by a Latin American artist.
In the painting, Kahlo’s expression is calm despite tears streaming from her eyes, she has Rivera’s face on her forehead, and in the center of his head is a third eye, which in Hinduism represents unconsciousness and in Buddhism represents enlightenment.
One interpretation is that the painting represents the pain Rivera inflicted on her, but Jardin offers a different interpretation.
“The religious nature of the painting is not that Frida has Diego in her heart,” Jourdan says. “The fact that she holds him as a third eye, and that Diego himself has a third eye, reflects that his love for Frida has caused her to transcend into another dimension of existence.”
In other words, Kahlo depicted how an individual can connect to spirituality through love.
“I identified with her heart and her writing,” said Chris Mello, a 58-year-old American artist whose favorite Kahlo work is the aforementioned painting. “We had the same language of love and a similar history of heartache.”
Unlike Kahlo, Mello never experienced the life events that led to a bus accident that ripped a hole in her pelvis and forced her to have surgery, an abortion, and an amputation.
Still, Mello said she endured years of physical pain, and in the midst of it all, despite fears that she would lose her resilience, she told herself, “If Frida could endure this, so can I.”
Although much of Kahlo’s work depicts her mental and physical pain, her paintings do not evoke feelings of sadness or helplessness. Instead, she is seen not only as an artist but also as a woman strong enough to face a broken body without letting it weaken her spirit.
“Frida inspires a lot of people to be consistent,” said Amni, a London-based Spanish artist who asked to be identified only by his artistic name and who is using artificial intelligence to reinterpret Kahlo’s work.
“I’ve been inspired by other artists, but Frida is the most special because of all she endured,” Amni says. “Despite the suffering, heartbreak and accidents, she always remained resolute.”
For him, and for Mero, Kahlo’s most memorable work is one in which Rivera appears as a third eye on his forehead.
According to Jordon, Kahlo struck a chord that few artists of her time could: muralists like Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros, influenced by revolutionary nationalism, distanced themselves from the viewer through intellectual works that focused primarily on social, historical and political views.
Kahlo, on the other hand, did not shy away from depicting her own disability, her bisexuality, and the diversity of beliefs that weigh on the human psyche.
In “Wounded Deer,” for example, she transforms into a bleeding animal shot by an arrow, yet, like a martyr in Catholic painting, Kahlo’s expression remains calm.
A Marxist sympathizer, Kahlo considered the Catholic Church demasculine, intrusive, and racist, but despite her disdain for the church, she understood that her faith led to a rewarding spiritual path.
Ten years after the disaster, perhaps overwhelmed by the fact that she had survived, Kahlo began collecting votive offerings (small paintings given by Catholics as thanks for the miracle), 473 of which are still preserved in her Blue House.
Kahlo may have considered her survival a miracle, Jourdan says, “the only difference being that she attributed it to the generosity of life, given the circumstances, rather than to a God of Catholic origin.”
Perhaps that is why, late in life, she decided to paint what would be her final series of vibrantly colored watermelons.
The canvas showed a broken watermelon under an overcast sky, above which she had written “Vida la vida” (Vida la vida).
