A Framework for viewing the works of Frida Kahlo

I have visited a number of Frida Kahlo exhibits over the years with the most recent being the Virginia Museum of Fine Art's Frida: Beyond the Myth. One of the highlights of this exhibition was the display of a timeline highlighting the various periods of the artist's life.

I was able to use this construct to develop trees of the artist's work by period, using images captured during visits to said Virginia Museum, Frist Art Museum (Mexican Modernism), Brooklyn Museum (Frida Kahlo: Appearances can be Deceiving); and National Museum of Women in the Arts (Collection). Those trees are displayed in the charts below.

Some observations:

• A significant percentage of the paintings are portraits (13 of 31)
• 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 folllowed 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.

I saw two additional Frida Kahlo works during a November 2025 visit to New York’s Museum of Modern Art: Fulani-Chang and I (1937) and Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair (1940). 

The former 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 composition after 1939 — was a tool she “often used to extend her field of vision while painting”

Artist Kerry Downey describes Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair 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.

Frida Kahlo, Fulani-Chang and I,
 as it appeared in 1937

Frida Kahlo, Fulani-Chang and I, 
 as it appeared post-1939
(Viewed at MoMA; 11/18/25)

 

Frida Kahlo, Self-Portrait with Chopped Hair, 
(Viewed at MoMA; 11/18/25)