A Framework for viewing the works of Frida Kahlo

I have visited a number of Frida Kahlo exhibits over the years: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (Frida: Beyond the Myth), Frist Art Museum (Mexican Modernism), Brooklyn Museum (Frida Kahlo: Appearances can be Deceiving); Museum of Fine Arts Houston (Frida: The Making of an Icon); MOMA (Collection); and National Museum of Women in the Arts (Collection). 

Kahlo exhibitions sourced (clockwise from top left):
Frist, Brooklyn Museum, Virginia MFA, and
MFA Houston

The largest of the Kahlo exhibitions I have viewed was the one at the Brooklyn Museum; unfortunately, no photography was allowed. The most recent exhibition viewed -- Museum Fine Arts Houston -- restricted photography around a subset of the artist's work but all others were fair game. The Virginia Museum exhibition was the most fruitful in that it was rich in Frida's works and also provided the "backbone" for the framework.

I was able to use this backbone to develop trees of the artist's work by period, using images captured during visits to said exhibitions. Those trees are displayed below.

It is impossible to separate the Frida Kahlo story from Frida Kahlo's art. Caravaggio led a fairly tempestuous life, and painted between bouts of "criming," but his experiences were not reflected in his art. Art was on one plane and his lived experience on another. Not so Frida. Her experiences framed her art, serving as source material and impacting how she produced her works.

Frida Kahlo had an intimate relationship with pain throughout her life; and many of her paintings reported on this pain or reflected on its effects. Frida had polio at an early age, resulting in one leg being shorter than the other. She had a catastrophic accident when she was 18 and suffered chronic, debilitating pain for the rest of her life. She married Diego Rivera in 1929 and suffered through multiple episodes of his unfaithfulness, including with her sister. Frida suffered a miscarriage, probably a result of internal damage suffered during the accident.

Frida's paintings are raw and emotion-filled but they are also steeped in Mexicanidad, a key ingredient of Mexican Modernism. Mexican Modernism arose as a result of the post-revolution Mexican regime seeking to use culture as a means to unite the nation and visual artists efforts to use their craft in furtherance of this goal. The chart below graphically illustrates the road to this new Mexican art school.

"Frida Kahlo's art is a tapestry of symbolism, weaving together themes of physical pain (The Broken Column), emotional suffering (Memory, the Heart), and cultural identity (Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird) ... Her use of vibrant color, traditional, attire, and native flora and fauna reaffirm her cultural roots."

Frida Kahlo, The Broken Column, 1944
(Source: fridakahlo.org)

Kahlo's paintings often adopt a surreal quality (The Two Fridas) while gender and identity also surface as central themes (Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair).

Frida Kahlo, The Two Fridas, 1939
(Source: wikipedia.org)

The Surrealist establishment sought to claim Frida as their own but she was resistant. André Breton, one of the leading lights of the movement, visited Mexico in 1938 and described her work as a "ribbon wrapped around a bomb." He invited her to exhibit in Paris, which she eventually did, but the scene was not convincing to her. She resisted the Surrealist categorization famously stating "I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality."

Frida had first taken up painting during her recovery from the accident and had spent many a day in the courtyard garden of the family home (now called La Casa Azul) in Coyocán, a Mexico City borough. "The courtyard garden became her sanctuary and an important source of artistic inspiration. She embraced representations of foliage, fruit, and flowers, often using them to represent fertility and to celebrate the natural beauty of Mexico."

Below are the period trees of which I spoke earlier, wherein Frida's works are distributed between six periods, beginning with her early life and ending with her death in 1954. The dates and storyboards that form the trunks of these trees are photographs of the Frida Kahlo Timeline presented at the exhibition.

Frida's first painting in this collection was done in 1925. It is markedly different from anything else in this or any other period. The earth tones and focus on structures was not vintage Frida. Her skill as a portrait painter is evident even in this early stage with Self-Portrait in a Velvet Dress giving off a Mannerist whiff.

Frida married Diego in 1929 and they traveled to San Francisco in 1930 for him to fulfill some mural commissions. Frida exhibited some of her work for the first time in 1931 and, in the same year, completed the two works shown above.

This period shows a greater number of drawings than any of the other periods. This may be a function of the data that I have access to rather than an actual fact. It will become clearer as I build my data base up with future sightings. The couple were in Detroit and then New York during this time.

This was a period of marital turmoil capped by Diego's affair with Frida's sister.The couple separated but reconciled upon Frida's return from New York. The turmoil seemed to energize Frida. This was her most productive period to date. Her heart was broken, captured in The Heart (1937) and Survivor (1938). She began her embrace of cultural attire as shown in the two self-portraits in the top left.

I saw Fulani-Chang and I (1939) during a November 2025 visit to New York’s Museum of Modern Art. The current manifestation is in two parts with an oil-on-board painting on the left and a mirror in a painted frame on the right. The mirror -- added to the original (1937) composition after 1939 -- was a tool she "often used to extend her field of vision while painting."

The portraits in the 1940+ period begin to show the growing strain on Frida's face. This period also evidences a greater incidence of surrealist-adjacent works. She remarries Diego and affirms their bond by painting him onto her forehead in a few of the works. This was another very productive period.

I also saw Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair (1940) during that November 2025 visit to New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Kerry Downey describes the painting thusly:

She’s wearing this oversized gray suit and crimson shirt. That’s a reference to Diego Rivera, the Mexican mural painter. She was married to him, but then they divorced a few months before she made this painting. If you look up at the top, you can see words and musical notes she included from a popular Mexican folk song. It’s about a man who loved a woman for her hair. But now that she’s cut it off, he doesn’t love her anymore.

The final period of her life showed a number of still lifes and bright red colors; and these paintings seem to almost jump out of the canvas. The remaining works include one of her most surrealist efforts, The Love Embrace of the Universe.

Some observations:

• A significant percentage of the paintings are portraits
• There are many more drawings in the early portion of her career than later
• There is great consistency in depiction of her facial features in the portraits
• The first still life observed was Magnolias in 1945. She followed with a number of substantive works in that genre in later years
• The 1930s and 40s were her most productive years
• Surrealists wanted to claim her as their own and The Love Embrace of the Universe ..., provides ample evidence as to why.

This is by no means the totality of Frida's works. As I come into contact with more of her paintings, I will update the trees accordingly.