Frida Kahlo: Sex, Pain and Still Life

Two years ago I came across the opportunity to fulfill one of my biggest desires. After following the work of famous Mexican artist, Frida Kahlo, for several years, I would finally able to see her works–in person! The Philadelphia Museum of Art had a 2008 exhibition of the late artist’s paintings, and I had tickets to go. I stood there, only inches away from her most famous works, admiring the intricate paint strokes I’ve only seen upon the flat pages of biographic art books.

The Artist: Frida Kahlo

Frida kahlo’s emergence as a talented painter came as what could only be considered an accident. At the young age of 18 she suffered serious injuries in a trolley car accident that would permanently alter her personal philosophy and influence her later works. The total damage sustained from the accident would include:

…a broken spinal column, a broken collarbone, broken ribs, a broken pelvis, eleven fractures in her right leg, a crushed and dislocated right foot, and a dislocated shoulder. An iron handrail pierced her abdomen and her uterus, which seriously damaged her reproductive ability. – Wikipedia

As a result of the accident, Kahlo was immediately confined to her bed in a full body cast to recover–a present from her father (a custom bed easel and painting supplies) would prove to be the only activity the teenager could endure.
But Kahlo arose from her misfortune to walk again and continued painting beautiful yet painful works that would one day attract the eyes of other artists and people from around the world. However, the physical and emotional pain she would endure for the rest of her life as a result of the accident and experimental medical procedures became a continuous subject of her paintings.

Sex and Pain

Kahlo would later marry to her fellow rebellious Mexican painter, Diego Rivera, who was known for womanizing and frequent infidelity. As a result, Kahlo led a promiscuous lifestyle, engaging in secret bisexual encounters and love affairs, while desperately hoping to save her marriage. Sex, love, and her ever changing philosophy regarding both would also become prominent in her works…

…which leads me to…

Still Life: “Fruits of The Earth”

By no means is Frida Kahlo most famous for her controversial still life paintings–but when she did create them they had a unique association with sex and pain. Many note her works as surrealistic paintings; she didn’t consider herself as a surrealist, merely an artist conveying her beliefs and pains on canvas with brush and vibrant oil paints.

Taking a look at the painting you’ll notice that several of the fruits show similarities with familiar genital parts. Their features, painted with the same delicate details of a penis and vagina are atop a fruit bowl with a sky-like background commonly seen in other works. An even more blatant display of erogenous thoughts are the two pieces of fruit “positioned for intercourse.”

Bruising The Fruit
Unique to Kahlo’s style is the dark, sorrowful coloring and bruising of the still life. Fruits are sliced open revealing an almost human-like gorey inside with additional bruising on surrounding fruits. Kahlo’s work was always in direct correlation to her life, and often made still life bruised and mutilated to embody the pain from her life altering accident.

Additional painful symbolism can be found in the fact that Kahlo was unable to bear children due to her injuries, often communicating artistically her emotional suffering on the topic after the miscarriage of her first child.