How are you?
Currently, I am
introducing the stories about various artists and their paintings with the
title “Interesting
Art Stories”.
The 66th story is “The Two Fridas” by Frida Kahlo.
"The Two Fridas" is an
oil painting by Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, considered Kahlo's first
large-scale work and one of her most notable paintings. The painting is a
double self-portrait of two versions of Kahlo sitting together, one wearing a
white European-style Victorian dress while the other wearing a traditional
Tehuana dress.
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| Frida Kahlo |
Kahlo painted the painting in 1939,
the same year she divorced artist Diego Rivera, although they remarried a year
later. According to Kahlo's friend, Fernando Gamboa, the painting was inspired
by two paintings that Kahlo saw at the Louvre earlier that year: "The Two
Sisters" by Théodore Chassériau and "Gabrielle d'Estrées and One of
Her Sisters" by the anonymous painter.
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| The Two Sisters, Théodore Chassériau (1843) |
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| Gabrielle d'Estrées et une de ses soeurs, unknown artist (c. 1594) |
In the painting, the Frida in Mexican costume is holding a small portrait of Diego Rivera and the Frida in European costume is holding forceps. Blood spills onto her white dress from a blood vessel that has been cut by the forceps, and it seems to indicate the tragic motor accident that left her with many of her surgeries and long bedridden throughout her life.
The blood vessel connects the two Fridas as it runs through the European Frida’s hands and connects to her heart and again connects to Mexican Frida's heart. Both Fridas show an open heart, but Mexican Frida's heart looks healthy, while European Frida's heart appears to be amputated and ill.
Together with the constant pain that Frida is going through,
the painting suggests two separate personalities, the strong Frida and the weak
Frida. However, despite these differences, the blood vessel connecting the two
Fridas suggests that although the two Fridas have separate personalities, they
must be combined together to become perfect Frida.
The painting was exhibited along
with “The Wounded Table” by Kahlo at the International Surrealist Exhibition in
Mexico City in January 1940.
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| The Wounded Table, Frida Kahlo (1940) |
It was owned by Kahlo until it was
taken over by the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes (INBA) in 1947, which
transferred it to the Museo de Arte Moderno in Mexico City, where is currently
housed, on December 28, 1966.
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| Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City |
Thank you.
