Grab a glass of sparkling cider as we celebrate the new year with some breathtaking art from an incredible female artist. Some of you may be familiar with her name already! She is very well recognized in the Muggle world. She's also well-known in the wizarding world but not as much which is why I think it's of the utmost importance that we cover her here today. I hope you're all ready to learn about the amazing work of Frida Kahlo!
Frida Kahlo was a Mexican female artist who pursued her passion for art soon after suffering from an accident that left multiple fractures over her whole body. She used art as a mechanism to paint away the pain. Creating self-portraits became a large part of her life as her body healed from the injuries. Frida created her work based on personal experiences. There is a painting titled The Broken Column that depicts Frida with metal pieces wrapping around her body and a hospital sheet. She used this painting to portray the pain she was going through in the healing process after the accident.
Her pieces were very influenced by her Mexican culture in the way she used bright colors. She once said, "I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone, because I am the person I know best," meaning that she often was her own inspiration. She also became an iconic figure for defying the norms of beauty. Frida would purposefully darken her facial hair.
In her piece The Two Fridas, she paints two versions of herself after her divorce from her husband Diego Rivera. The painting depicts two different sides of her, one of them is broken while the other presents an independent woman. The broken version of her is wearing traditional clothing while the independent version of her is wearing clothes to be considered more modern.
Below is one of her early self-portraits and is referred to as "Between the Curtains". She painted this for Leon Trotsky in 1937 as a birthday gift. If you look closely, on the note that she is holding she added a message for him. A year later, this painting was shown at her first solo exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York City.
Picture taken from FridaKahlo.org
I think something we can take away from Frida is how she powered through the difficulties that life threw at her. Although times were often difficult, she pushed through. In this new year, use her as inspiration to power through all that you set your mind to. Or, if you'd like, do like Frida and use yourself as your own inspiration!