Frida Kahlo: Feminist, Chicana Heroine

“Frida Kahlo spun her own life into a myth. She was so good at it that her art almost got lost along the way. Her persona, fashioned over almost three decades of self-portraits, fused physical suffering and emotional isolation. Her frank depiction of a womans psychic pain made her a feminist icon. She became a Chicana heroine and an unintended purveyor of Mexican kitsch. She is an emblem of confessional painting at a time when nothing is intimate anymore.

But this year, as Mexico celebrates the centenary of her birth, the largest retrospective ever of her work attempts to look beyond what Mexicans call Fridamania. The result is a rich view of her art and her life, one that broadens the perspective on her career beyond the narrow, cultish view that has at times threatened to obscure her work.”

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