Women's History Month: A Tribute to Women in the Arts

By Andrea Horner

It has often been said that life imitates art. In the case of Frida Kahlo, one of Mexico's greatest and most beloved painters, her life literally was her art. A gifted and brilliant woman, Kahlo's life was filled with beauty and tragedy. At 18, Kahlo was in a debilitating bus accident that, she later recalled, "harmed everybody and me most of all." It left her in constant physical pain and unable to have children — themes that manifested themselves in much of her work. While recovering in what she called her casa azul ("blue house") in Mexico City, Kahlo painted to pass the time.

Although she had no formal art lessons, Kahlo wasn't afraid to show her artwork to Diego Rivera, one of the most controversial and respected muralists in the city. He immediately fell in love with her paintings, as well as the painter herself. Her stormy, 25-year relationship with Rivera — to whom she was married, divorced, and married again — played a significant role in the development of the darker side of Kahlo's signature surrealistic style. After Kahlo discovered that Rivera had been having an affair with her sister, for example, she began to use symbols, such as a skull in a circle on her forehead, that reflected her suicidal thoughts and deep depression. Her overwhelming emotional state also led her to cut off all her hair and have affairs with both women and men (most notably, exiled Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky).

Her artwork depicts scenes in her life like an open journal. We see her dark, brooding eyes framed by trademark heavy v-shaped eyebrows and full red lips, and we cannot help but admire her bold confrontation with the most realist and darkest corners of our own minds and bodies.

"I paint my own reality," Kahlo once said. Remaining true to the realist parts of ourselves as Kahlo did, and using that creative energy to shake up the world is something all young feminists should aspire to.

AAUW Women in the Arts

Marina Nunez del Prado, a 1940-41 AAUW International Fellow, went on to become one of Bolivia’s premiere artists. Known for monochromatic sculptures characterized by gentle sloping profiles, this prolific artist was influenced by the likes of Michaelangelo and Pablo Picasso, whom she once met. Her most famous work, Mother and Child, is part of the permanent collection at the National Museum for Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C.