Recommended by Oscar

Frida Kahlo – The Paintings


I. Author
A. Lifespan
Hayden Herrera is an art historian, she was born in Kent, England in 1939. She has lectured widely, curated several exhibitions of art, taught Latin American art at New York University, and has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.
B. Background
She now lives and works in New York City.
C. Relevant facts about the author
1961- BA in English Literature, Cambridge University, England.
1964- BFA and MFA in Painting, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut.
1964-65 - Post-Graduate Fellowship. University of Pennsylvania.
1967-79 -Teaches painting at the University of Pennsylvania.
1999 Inducted into the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.
D. Notable works
She is the author of numerous articles and reviews for such publications as Art in America, Art Forum, Connoisseur, and the New York Times, among others. Her books include Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo; Mary Frank; and Matisse: A Portrait.



E. Influence of life on works
Hayden pursued graduate study in art history, earning her MA from Hunter College and her PhD in 20th Century American Art from CUNY, where she wrote her doctoral dissertation on Frida Kahlo, the basis for her later biography and a topic suggested by a professor at CUNY. Writing about Frida “was perfect,” Hayden says, “because this was during the feminist movement, the mid 1970s, and it was very emotional to write about a woman and her life.”
Another important influence in Hayden’s evolution as a writer was her lifelong battle with dyslexia. “Struggling with reading means you try to write very clearly—you really think about the reader and take him by the hand.”
(North Country School’s Website).
II. Brief plot summary
In this book, art historian Hayden Herrera brings together numerous paintings and sketches by the amazing Mexican artist, documenting each with explanatory text that probes the influences in Kahlo‘s life and their meaning for her work. Included among the illustrations are more than eighty full–color paintings, as well as dozens of black–and–white pictures and line illustrations. Among the famous and little–known works included in Frida Kahlo: The Paintings are The Two Fridas, Self–Portrait as a Tehuana, Without Hope, The Dream, The Little Deer, Diego and I, Henry Ford Hospital, My Birth, and My Nurse and I. Here, too, are documentary photographs of Frida Kahlo and her world that help to illuminate the various stages of her life.
Frida's life began and ended in Mexico City, in her home known as the Blue House
At age 6, Frida was stricken with polio, which caused her right leg to appear much thinner than the other.
Frida enters high school she was a tomboy full of mischief .
On September 17, 1925, when she was 18, she was riding a bus in Mexico City when it was struck by a trolley car. A metal handrail pierced her abdomen, exiting through her vagina.
Diego and Frida get married on August 21,1929. Their marriage consisted of love, affairs with other people, creative bonding, hate, and a divorce in 1940 that lasted only for one year.
During her lifetime, Kahlo did not enjoy the same level of recognition as the great artists of Mexican muralism lile Rivera.
Her paintings, rooted in 19th-century Mexican portraiture, ingeniously incorporated elements of Mexican pop culture and pre-Columbian primitivism that, in the 1930s, had never been done before.
Proud of her luxurious facial hair that she painted it right on to her self-portraits.
Frida amazed people with her beauty and everywhere she went, people stopped in their tracks to stare in wonder. Men were fascinated with her, and because of this Frida had numerous, scandal filled affairs.
Attempted suicide a couple of times. In 1954, suffering from pneumonia, Kahlo went to a Communist march to protest the U.S. subversion of the left-wing Guatemalan government.
Her last words in her diary read:
"I hope the leaving is joyful and I hope never to return".


III. A. Characters
Relationships
Frida Kahlo – Main Character
Diego Rivera – Lover/Husband
Guillermo Kahlo – Frida’s father
Matilde Calderon – Mother
Cristina - Sister
Matilde - Sister
Adriana – Sister
Leon Trotsky – Lover/Soviet Communist leader
B. Development
The author narrates Frida’s life from her childhood to her dead. She is able to connect every event of her life to her paintings. Her biography is completely intertwine to her paintings. Frida was not a very outspoken person in her younger years, she decided that the best way for her to communicate was through her art.
“I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone,” Frida Kahlo once said, “because I am the person I know best.” (Frida Khalo, The paintings, Hayden Herrera)
Frida is well known for her self-portraits, they depict pain, happiness, sadness and love. Her best works of art displaying the most personal and original imagery were produced between the years of 1926 to 1954, when she died at the age of fourty-seven.
IV. Setting
A. Time and time span
1926 to 1954
B. Place
Coyoacan, Mexico
C. Importance of setting to the story
It could, but this was the best setting for it, since Frida was born and lived all her life in Coyoacan. She would long to come back to her town every time she went elsewhere.
V. Conflict
Frida Kahlo straggles all her life to show who she really was. She re-invented herself several occasions during her life time, she identified with the indigenous peoples of her country, she had acquired leftists communist ideas. She tried to find love throughout her life but at times it seemed impossible. The central love of her life was Diego Rivera, even though she knew he was not able to only love her. Though separated from him at times, their lives were always intertwined together like a rope. Her physical pain and suffering was also the main plot of her paintings and the story.
VI. Resolution
After a long life of pain and suffering, and dealing with the ever changing tumultuous love to Diego, Frida devoted herself to the things she loved more in her life, her family, her friends and her animals. She was finally recognized as an artist in her hometown and she was honored with the first one-person exhibition. Although her doctors had forbidden her to attend the opening, she arrived at the gallery in an ambulance. Enthroned in her own four posted bed. After many more surgeries, Frida’s health was deteriorating rapidly and she had her right leg amputated. She reportedly died of a pulmonary embolism, but given her many suicide attempts, many of Frida’s friends believed that she killed herself.
VII. Vocabulary
A. La Raza
1. Definition
Race
2. Quotation (including page number) from text
Frida expressed her ties to what she called la raza, or the people. Not only in art but in her dress, her behavior, and the decoration of her home. (p.7)
B. Pata de Palo
1. Definition
Peg leg
2. Quotation (including page number) from text
When she was riding her bicycle we would yell at her ‘Frida, pata de palo!’(p.29)
C. Alegria
1. Definition
Happiness
2. Quotation
Even in moments when she summoned her babitual alegria. (p.216)VIII. Personal criticism and recommendation
A. Criticism
My personal opinion of the book is that it was very well written and organized. The author has the ability to describe chronological events of Frida’s life, and she is able to attach these events to her paintings at the same time, giving the reader not only the text but a painted image of that event. She writes about an imaginary friend that Frida had when she was 6 years old, and she includes the actual writing of this event:

“I most have been 6 years old when I experienced intensely an imaginary friendship with a little girl more or less the same age as me. On the glass window of what at that time was my room, and which gave onto Allende Street, I breathed vapor onto one of the first panes. I let out a breath and with a finger I drew a door”… Full of great joy and urgency, I went out in my imagination through this “door.” I crossed the whole plain that I saw on front of me until I arrived at the dairy called “Pinzon.”…(p.29)
The author conducted a very extensive research before launching into the writing of the book. She used hundreds or reliable resources which help her make the story as accurate and credible as possible.
The movie cites a lot of the passages of her life as witnesses described it to the most intimate detail. I think the movie is a great depiction of her life and works of art.
B. Recommendation
I would recommend this movie to all audiences. Frida is not just a good role model for Mexican-Americans but for all of us. The Author is very good at narrating the life and art accomplishments of Frida chronologically which makes the reading more and more interesting as the reader surfs through the book. The movie is a good match to the book, it is the visual complement of the story.