Frida Kahlo - A Few Small Nips 1935

Frida Kahlo - Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair 1940

“Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair” was the first self-portrait iconic Mexican painter Frida Kahlo created after her divorce from artist Diego Rivera. Renouncing the feminine image depicted in her other self-portraits, Kahlo (1907 – 1954) has just cut off the long hair Rivera admired, and is wearing a suit that was most likely his. Conveying the deep sorrow of her loss, the image appears to express Kahlo’s yearning for the freedom and independence of a man. The large empty space around Kahlo suggests the depth of her loneliness and misery, and the song verse above her reads, “See, if I loved you, it was for your hair, Now you’re bald, I don’t love you anymore.”

Frida Kahlo - Pitahayas (1938)

Frida Kahlo - Self-Portrait (1940)

Quote of the Day

I drank to drown my pain, but the damned pain learned how to swim, and now I am overwhelmed by this decent and good behavior.

Frida Kahlo

Frida Kahlo - Sun and Life (1947)

Frida Kahlo: The Bride Frightened at Seeing Life Opened (1934)

Frida Kahlo: The Two Fridas (1939)

Quote of the Day

"I am not sick. I am broken. But I am happy as long as I can paint."

– Frida Kahlo

Frida Kahlo: The Little Deer (1946)

Frida Kahlo - Self-Portrait as a Tehuana (Diego in My Thoughts) 1943

Quote of the Day

“I was born a bitch. I was born a painter.”

– Frida Kahlo

Frida Kahlo: What the Water Gave Me (1938)

An unusually revealing self portrait by Kahlo because it also reveals some of her health issues reflected in the water with the open wound next to the big toe, suggesting spina bifida. The painting also shows the shortened toes on the right foot due to surgical procedures. Deformity of the right leg due to polio also caused continual circulation problems, and her life seems to have been one of constant pain. By all accounts some of this was also self-inflicted due to her own choices and poor self management. Alcohol and morphine were her methods of self-medication. She was to eventually die from a morphine overdose which was probably suicide.

Quote of the Day

"I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone, because I am the person I know best."
                                   - Frida Kahlo

Portrait: Frida Kahlo