The Art of Frida Kahlo: Realist and Overwhelming The autobiographical movie “Friday” directed by Julie Tomato and release in October, 2002. It is a realistic portrait of the life of Mexican painter Friday Kohl and her life’s bitterness, her political believes, and the tormented relationship with her painter husband, Diego Riviera. As a result the motive of her artworks is basically in self- portraits. Friday’s personality projects to be a liberal, passionate, independent, strong, and charming woman.
She was an eminent artist in the 20th century who exposes angular exceptional thoughts ahead of her time; as a result, many people consider her as feminist although there is a little controversy about this. Magdalene Carmen Friday Kohl y Cauldron, known as Friday Kohl, was born July 6, 1907 in Accompany, Mexico City, Mexico. She died July 13, 1954 in the same place that she was born. She suffered poliomyelitis at the age of six, and at age eighteen, she was a victim of a tragic bus accident which resulted nine surgeries that left her with constant pain and infertility.
However, her strength made her replace her agony with art. While she was in bed for recovery, her mom gave her a mirror to see herself. Therefore, through her paintings, we can feel her pain and sensibility. For instance, in one self-portrait “The Broken Columns” dressed in a metal corset, she painted in a surrealistic way because she was almost naked with nails in her whole body. She is crying; perhaps, we can imagine the dimension of the pain, but she knew what the pain truly was (Sayers).
Friday had been damaged for the life by illness and the bus accident, but the last injury was from Diego Riviera, her husband, who Just brought emotional disturbance which lasted until her death. She loved him passionately and obsessively, so she endured his many infidelities including with her sister, Christina. However, she also had many affairs not only with men but also with women. Having a liberal personality, Friday was never committed to social norms; thus her behavior was consequent with her identity and freedom. Even more, she was always inspired by love for her country, dressing in Mexican native gowns.
Besides, the political struggle as consequence of 30 years under the government of Portfolio Ditz, a rebellion environment, the Mexican Revolution, and the Mexican constitution surrounded Friday when she was growing up. Therefore, she acquired a social consciousness, identified with the Communist Party. Also, she took the risk of hiding Leon Trotsky, the revolutionary Marxist activist against Stalin, in her house having an affair with him during that time (Hearer). As a feminist, Friday is considered an idol precisely for her personality.
She never cares about superficial elements to get attention. She assumed her identity with plenty of liberty, and never suppressed her inclination to be bisexual. Today, many women admire her because she acted at that time as a contemporary woman in the criterion of being a feminist. However, there is a controversy about this because her emotional dependence on Diego has been questionable. She was completely independent, having her own style in her work. Perhaps, she had great and unusual capacity to love that not everybody could understand.
In addition, Friday has been an inspiration for many writers, directors, and Journalists to write about her (Gunderson). Her self-portraits reflect the reality of one life with all the experiences, suffering, pain, tradition and history, with bright colors, so these things captivate the hearts of women and men. Friday had the first exhibition of her work a year before her death, and she was well known as an artist. Her true fame began in 1978, with public presentations around the world of her artwork, recognizing her as one of the best painters not only in Mexico but also in the roll.
In fact, we can find Friday’s paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), and one of her portraits was sold to Soothers a British multinational corporation, for nearly 1. 5 million dollars, being one of the biggest prices paid at a bidding for a Latin American artwork (Sayers). Ironically, her fate was not the enjoyment of all the values that she had, such as an artist, but Friday is a legacy of art, history, and humanity. Her work is biographic, full of passion, and she reflects the bitterness of life for what today we identified with her beautiful mind.
