Determined against all odds

I have always liked Frida Kahlo although at times I find myself not at ease with her paintings. I guess I am more attracted to her personality than her art. Maybe or maybe not; I still cannot decide. I appreciate her strength at times when life was not easy for her, at times of Diego's wandering and womanizing, at times of pain and surgery, at times when she lost many babies to abortion, and many more instances of frustration and pain. I also appreciate her resistance in staying out of any categorization. She never let anyone to label her as a surrealist, and never joined the communist party while at the time it was kind of en vogue to do so. She always stood her grounds, and was an active agent of her life as well as in her art.

I find it amazing that she used her life and her personal experiences as subjects of her paintings, such as in the Two Fridas, in which she uses one Frida (on the right) to show herself as loved and happy while the other one shows the rejected Frida, sitting stoically while bleeding to death. The rejected Frida along with her heart are both broken and damaged while the other one--the happy and contented one--is dressed in traditional Mexican garb holding a picture of Diego Rivera in her hand.

By looking at any of her paintings, one can easily see and, I would like to claim, feel the pain and the misery this woman experienced in her life while keeping herself strong and upright at all times, and determined against all odds.

Afterword: It is disturbing to see that MS Word does not recognize the name of this great artist and underlines it in red. >:(