frida kahlo

Preliminary Sketch: Introduction
Many see Frida Kahlo as a person plagued by, but defiant of death.1 The only influence in her work, it seems, is pain. Hers is tragic painting, always related to her inner life, pursued by two or three primordial, refined, and bloody obsessions, with bitter delectations of pain, to free herself from it, and to exalt life. The authenticity of the feeling, of the anguish, is so patent that it created the language for her tortured monologue. Without her work, which was her daily resurrection, Frida Kahlo would have drowned in her own eyes.2 "I paint my own reality," she said. "The only thing I know is that I paint because I need to, and I paint always what passes through my head, without any other consideration."3
What passed through Frida Kahlo's head and into her art was some of the most original and dramatic imagery of the twentieth century. Painting herself bleeding, weeping, cracked open, she transmuted her pain into art with remarkable frankness t...