A Biography of Frida Kahlo (3-100)

Summary: The novel A Biography of Frida Kahlo by Hayden Herrera is evidently about Frida Kahlo, a female artist who was born in Mexico; July 6, 1907, but Frida actually decided to say her birthday was on July 7, 1910. The need to change her birthday came when the Mexican Revolution began in 1910, since she was a child experiencing all the bloodshed and commotion she decided her and the modern Mexico had been born together. Frida was the third daughter of Guillermo and Matilde Kahlo. Frida also had other sisters, they were Cristina, Matilde, Adriana, Maria, and Margarita. However, her father would always say she was his best daughter. They both shared a love for art, her father would find art in photography and sometimes bring Frida along with him to take pictures, while Frida found herself in paintings. The days in which she shared her father's interest it took a lot of time to develop, retouch, and color photographs, Frida was an impatient girl and would find the job quite conscientious. However, her father's techniques soon caught up to her in which her father's concern for minute surface detail began to show in her own paintings.
    Frida tells her life through paintings, in each painting she would draw something that related to her real life. To actually go into detail, she drew some pictures of her mom, dad, and grandparents and the picture contained her mom on her wedding day with a fetus drawing next to it, which one can infer when Matilde married Guillermo she must of been pregnant with Frida. Also, from the moment Matilde had Frida she was unable to breast feed, therefore Frida had to be breast fed by a nurse and she drew a picture of that event as well. Throughout time Frida experienced the small pox disease which actually left one of her legs deformed, and she would be made fun of. Every time she was made fun of she would curse back at the kids, but still she did hear their commenting and they made her self conscious of how she looked. Which she would also show in her drawings, and once she became distant from people she began to have an imaginary friend whom she would draw a door to go through and meet up with her imaginary friend who was happy and always laughed.
 Frida was definitely known to be a prankster, she dared to tease her father on his German ways. Once she helped her own sister to escape with her boyfriend to Veracruz.


Quote: "I paint myself because I am so often alone, Frida said, because I am the subject I know best"(Herrera 74).
Most of Frida's drawings are of herself, after the accident she experienced which left her invalid Frida began to see the world through a private view of her life. Whether she was painting fruits or flowers she drew it with the vision seen through herself. To Frida nothing seemed more normal than to paint, her paintings were a part of a self-creation, of her life. It was a theatrical presentation, as she recovered from her fatal accident she reinvented herself. 

Reaction: The author Hayden Herrera begins writing about Frida's background and moves on to write more about Frida's personality, in which she quotes things that the painter herself has said, which interests me a lot because not only does she analyze Frida's life and just write about it, but she gives us examples of the things Frida said or how she acted which makes me feel a bit closer to the painter. Also, relating to the class topic on growing up, the author gives enough information of Frida's childhood and how she was Mexican, but her father was German and how she used to spell her name Freda with an e the German way until the Nazi's came in to place which is when she stopped. Also, something that keeps appearing is education, and Frida attended a fine school, and she was even more educated at her catechism class. It states "My childhood was marvelous because, although my father was a sick man (he had vertigos every month and a half), he was an immense example to me of tenderness, of work (photographer and also painter) and above all understading for all my problems"(Herrera 20). Frida had someone she could confide in and that built her road to an adult, she was never ashamed from her father in fact she learned from him and that takes her far in her career.