Frida Kahlo
Frida Kahlo was born on 6th July 1907 in Coyocoan, Mexico City, Mexico. Frida contracted polio at the age of 6 and was bedridden for 9 months. As a result of her illness Kahlo was left with a thin right leg and foot, which caused her to limp.
Frida really began to paint during her recuperation following a bus crash in 1922. Kahlo was seriously injured in the crash when a steel handrail impaled her through her hip, fracturing her pelvis and spine and leaving her in a lot of pain. As part of her recovery Frida had to wear a full body cast for 3 months. During this period Kahlo’s parents encouraged her to paint by giving her brushes and boxes of paint, and by building her a special easel which enabled her to paint in bed. Frida completed her first self portrait the following year.
Kahlo married the famous Mexican muralist Diego Rivera in 1929.
In 1932 Kahlo began adding more realistic and surrealistic elements to her paintings. For instance, Kahlo’s work entitled ‘Henry Ford Hospital’ (1932) shows her lying naked on a hospital bed surrounded by floating objects such as a fetus, a flower, a pelvis and a snail, all of which are connected by veins. This painting expressed Frida’s feelings about her second miscarriage. Kahlo longed to have children but was unable to due to the injuries that she had sustained in the bus crash.
Kahlo once said about her work ‘…I do not know whether my paintings are surrealist or not, but I do know that they are the frankest expression of myself…Since my subjects have always been my sensations, my states of mind and the profound reactions that life has been producing in me. I have frequently objectified all this in figures of myself, which were the most sincere and real thing that I
could do in order to express what I felt inside and outside of myself’.
I feel that this statement clearly sums up what Frida’s art is about and what influenced/inspired her.
Kahlo died on 13th July 1954.
Vincent van Gogh
Vincent van Gogh was born in 1853 in Holland. His father was a minister and his mother was an artist whose love of nature, drawing and watercolours was passed down to her son.
Vincent’s first job was at the Hague branch of an international art dealing firm. However, this work did not interest him, and he was dismissed in 1876.
Van Gogh briefly worked as a teacher in England and a preacher in Southern Belgium
In 1880, at the age of 27 Vincent decided to become an artist. Van Gogh moved from place to place teaching himself to paint and draw by studying from books and by attending lessons by himself, all the while being financially supported by his younger brother Theo. In 1886 Vincent decided to move to Paris to be closer to Theo.
Whilst living in Paris Van Gogh made friends with many artists. His painting style became influenced by impressionism and his work became lighter and brighter as a result.
Vincent also became influenced by Japanese art and began studying Eastern philosophy to enhance his art and life.
Van Gogh struggled with his mental health and stayed in a number of asylums. In fact, Vincent painted one of his most famous paintings ‘Starry Night’ whilst staying at an asylum in Saint-Remy, (France) in 1889.
Van Gogh died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound on 29th July 1890. He was only 37 years old.
Vincent completed more then 2,100 works of art, consisting of 860 oil paintings and more then 1,300 watercolours, drawings and sketches.
Following his death, it was Theo’s wife Johanna who helped to get Vincent’s talent as an artist recognised. As a result, Van Gogh is now known as one of the greatest artists in human history.
Anna Mary Robertson AKA ‘Grandma Moses’
Anna Mary Robertson was born on September 7th 1860 in Greenwich, New York. She grew up as one of 10 children on her parent’s farm.
Robertson began to teach herself to paint landscapes as a child. At this time Anna would paint using juices from lemons and grapes.
At the age of 12 Robertson left home to work as a hired girl for a neighbouring farm. She married her husband Thomas Moses in 1887 and the couple set up home in Shenandoah Valley, Virginia. It was there that the couple ran their own farm together and raised five children.
In 1905 Moses, her husband and her children returned to New York and began running another farm called Eagle Bridge. It was there that Anna began creating art again. However, Moses’ artwork at this time seems to have consisted of embroidered pieces made using yarn and sewing. It was only when Anna developed arthritis in her hands and could no longer sew that she turned back to painting. Painting may have also helped Moses through her grief when she lost her husband in 1927.
Moses’ career as an artist really took off in the mid-1930’s when she was in her 70’s. An art collector named Louis J. Caldor saw some of Anna’s paintings being exhibited in a local shop and decided to buy them all. The following year Moses had some of her work displayed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in an exhibition of unknown artists.
Anna’s captivating scenes of rural life where painted from memory. Over the course of her career as a painter Moses created over 1,500 works of art.
Moses died at the age of 101 on December 13th 1961. She became known as the self-taught grandmother of American folk art.
References
1. Jon Mann; Artsy (2018) ‘8 Famous Artist Who Were Self-Taught’: https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-8-famous-artists-self-taught
2. FridaKahlo.org (2020) ‘Frida Kahlo Biography’: https://www.fridakahlo.org/frida-kahlo-biography.jsp
3. The National Gallery (2020) ‘Vincent van Gogh’: https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/artists/vincent-van-gogh
4. BBC (2014) ‘Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890)’: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/van_gogh_vincent.shtml
5. Biography.com Editors (2020) ‘Vincent van Gogh Biography’: https://www.biography.com/artist/vincent-van-gogh
6. Biography.com Editors (2019) ‘Grandma Moses Biography’: https://www.biography.com/artist/grandma-moses
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