The topic I chose to discuss was the women of Surrealism, or more importantly, Frida Kahlo. As I was reading this chapter, I came across her painting The Broken Column. This image first caught my interest because I felt so sad for the lady in the picture. Despite seeing her paintings in the past, I did not know anything about the artist or why she paints what she paints. This made me want to learn more about the piece. Why was she so broken? What does the image represent? Who is the lady in the image?
Section #2
After researching more on The Broken Column, the textbook, discusses how Kahlo was the most celebrated woman from the surrealism movement. “Kahlo’s paintings, of which were more than one-third are self-portraits, reflect the determined…show more content… The author’s name is Charles Moffat and he is a Canadian artist, writer, and art historian. He is best known for his controversial paintings United States Censorship. The thing I liked most about this source is it just focuses on art history. They do not charge you to get the information and they are very educated. The article educates the reader on Kahlo’s life and how she drifted away from normal surrealism which focused on dream and psychology. The first section explains her childhood and how she grew up in Coyoacán. Her painting are based off her struggles throughout her life and it began at age six when she got polio and that left her right leg deformed, and it did not stop there. “At age 19 she was riding a bus when it crashed into a street trolley car and was practically crushed and pulverized; she suffered 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, the bus handrail impaled her abdomen, pierced her uterus, which permanently damaged her reproductive ability” (Moffat). Kahlo drew herself by looking into a mirror using special easel her mom made and box of oil paints and brushes her dad got her. Other tragic experiences that prompted her portraits were having an abortion to save her own life and her divorce. This article explained her most famous piece The Broken Column and how it showed her pain by the nails in her body as being a metaphor for her physical pain. She painted herself nude to represent her sense of helplessness and sexual anguish. Lastly, the article touches on how her art will live on after her