The Narrative of Self through Art: Frida Khalo between pain and resilience

Abstract

Art has the power to connect with the inner world and the world around us, and this is what one of the world’s best-known painters,
Frida Kahlo, shows us. The artist’s biography touches the innermost chords of the human soul and is so rich that even today, years later, it still generates continuous rewriting and reinterpretation. The subjects of his paintings, often self-portraits, are interwoven with his personal life, love affairs, precarious health conditions and above all his country of origin, Mexico. This contribution aims to look at some of Frida Kahlo’s most significant works to highlight her choice to cultivate a sense of intimacy when narrating her life using different expressive techniques. The preference for the self-portrait represents a very personal form of expression, in fact, of Frida’s 143 canvases, 55 are self-portraits and are included among the most popular and best of her production. Frida’s greatest subject is
herself. Her self-portraits, after all, can be seen as a kind of autobiography as they represent an interweaving of different emotions ranging from grief to love to the strength to live that re-member an image of a courageous and resilient woman that is still very relevant today.