Product Description

In small, stunningly rendered self-portraits, Mexican artist Frida Kahlo painted herself cracked open, hemorrhaging during a miscarriage, anesthetized on a hospital gurney, and weeping beside her own extracted heart. Her works are so incendiary in emotion and subject matter that one art critic suggested the walls of an exhibition be covered with asbestos.

In this beautiful book, art historian Hayden Herrera brings together numerous paintings and sketches by the amazing Mexican artist, documenting each with explanatory text that probes the influences in Kahlo's life and their meaning for her work. Included among the illustrations are more than eighty full-color paintings, as well as dozens of black-and-white pictures and line illustrations. Among the famous and little-known works included in Frida Kahlo: The Paintings are The Two Fridas, Self-Portrait as a Tehuana, Without Hope, The Dream, The Little Deer, Diego and I, Henry Ford Hospital, My Birth, and My Nurse and I. Here, too, are documentary photographs of Frida Kahlo and her world that help to illuminate the various stages of her life.

---

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #56659 in Books
• Published on: 1993-10-13
• Released on: 1993-09-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

From Library Journal
Frida Kahlo's extraordinary life and revolutionary art continue to bear fruit with two superb new books, coming quickly on the heels of Martha Zamora's acclaimed Frida Kahlo: The Brush of Anguish ( LJ 1/91). Lowe's biography, the first in a promising new series on women artists, is a succinct, insightful profile of the Mexican painter, combining a biographical chapter with an extended discussion of the self-portraits that make up the core of her oeuvre. Without becoming mired in florid language, Lowe cogently describes the biographical contexts of individual paintings and draws our attention to Kahlo's frequent employment of pre-Columbian symbolism. Lowe goes on to separate Kahlo's art from her biography in an extended analysis of the art historical setting within which she worked. This approach revitalizes the paintings, placing Kahlo's work in such explicitly Latin American traditions as retablo iconography and agitprop from the Left and also demonstrating the obsession of European Surrealists with "primitive" art. Herrera's ( Frida , LJ 1/83) beautifully produced book is laden with large color plates and dozens of photos of Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and their cronies. It improves upon Zamora by providing perhaps the most direct analysis of Kahlo's life and art within one volume to date. The two books are essential for any library without a Kahlo monograph, and for those having already purchased Zamora's biography, Lowe's economical paperback is an excellent supplementary text.
- Douglas F. Smith, Oakland P.L., Cal.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
"Engaging and well illustrated." -- Wall Street Journal

"Perhaps the most direct analysis of Frida Kahlo's life and art within one volume to date." -- Library Journal

Review
"Engaging and well illustrated." (Wall Street Journal )

"Perhaps the most direct analysis of Frida Kahlo's life and art within one volume to date." (Library Journal )

---

Customer Reviews

Captivating
The book, as noted, focuses on her paintings and covers a wide spectrum of her work. I couldn't put it down. I was captivated by Frida's work, and the comments, stories and history added by the author were excellent - relevant, interesting and informative. I recommend it to anyone interested in this fascinating and unique paintor.

An extraordinary life in art
I know nothing about Mexico or about paintings. And I am least interested to read biographies. Still I found myself intriguied by Frida Kahlo who is a Mexican painter and picked this biography on her life. Her life is very extraordinary as I found out when I watched this movie on her starring Salma Hayek. And I loved this book because it told the story of her through her paintings.
Its her paintings which make you wanna ask questions, for her paintings are not about pretty flowers or landscape or fishes in the oceans. Many of her paintings are in fact shocking in the way that they are too direct and poignant, and splattered with a lot of blood but still they are not asking for any sympathy or anything at all. Frida was a very talented woman who could make striking poetry on canvas. She painted everything with an element of her in it.... her emotions, her pain, her longing and her feelings. She is all about strength, strong will, determination,and pride. She did not try to do right or wrong thing but live her life her own way, on her rules, a woman who made herself memorable and a legend through her paintings. She inspires because of her gritty life.
This book is very engrossing read on Frida's life as seen through her paintings.

Nice
This is a very nice combination of biographical information and art. A little of both keeps the book interesting. The quality is very good and I was a little surprised how nice the images were for the price.