Frida Kahlo

Yesterday I mentioned Diego Rivera’s wife, Frida Kahlo. For a long time she was better known as Rivera’s wife than as an artist in her own right. After her death, though, she became very well known around the world. Several movies have been made about her and many books have been written. Today, you’ll learn about Frida Kahlo, the artist.

Kahlo was born in Mexico in 1907. Her life was a painful one. Even as a child she saw suffering and fighting all around her. Her parents argued a lot and were not happy together. Furthermore, the Mexican Revolution for independence from Spain began in 1910. Fighting continued for 10 years. The revolutionaries (the people fighting for Mexico) sometimes hopped the fence around Kahlo’s house and stayed for a meal and a safe night’s sleep.

It was a painful experience that led Kahlo to paint. She was studying medicine until she was in a terrible bus accident. She broke nearly every bone in her body and had stay in bed for a long time. Kahlo’s mother set up a special easel and Kahlo learned to paint. It was one of the only activities she could do from her bed. During this time she painted a lot of self-portraits. She painted more than 50 self-portraits over the course of her life. Look at this self-portrait from 1930 and this self-portrait from 1937

Kahlo was inspired by Mexican Indians, as Diego Rivera was, and she used bold colors. She painted realistic scenes but she was influenced by surrealism. For an example, look at Four Inhabitants of Mexico. Many of her paintings are quite disturbing. Because her life was painful, pain showed up in her art.

In 1929, as you know, Kahlo married Diego Rivera. Their relationship began as a friendship. Kahlo liked Rivera’s art and asked him to help her with hers. About a year later they were married.

Kahlo continued to paint until she became too sick. She created nearly 150 paintings. Frida Kahlo died in 1954.

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Diego Rivera

Diego Rivera and his twin brother, Carlos, were born in 1886 in the mountains of Mexico. Rivera’s parents helped poor people live better lives. This helped shaped the way Rivera painted.

Rivera began to draw when he was only three years old. He drew on everything: floors, furniture, walls, and paper. He loved to draw huge pictures on walls (murals) so his parents covered his bedroom walls with paper.

When he was 10, Rivera began to use paints. He took art classes after school. It wasn’t long before he decided to become a painter.

Rivera studied art at the San Carlos School of Fine Arts where he learned about the art of the Mexican Indians. He loved their paintings of people at work and Rivera began painting similar subjects. Rivera also learned from a teacher who enjoyed painting the differences between rich people and poor people.

He then went to study in Europe, first in Spain, then Paris. He made friends with many important artists. At this time, cubism was a growing style. Rivera painted some cubist paintings (such as Portrait of Martin Luis Guzman, shown below) before moving toward a post-impressionistic style. He began to paint large, simple shapes and used bold colors. He developed his own style while he was in Paris and his paintings started to attract attention. Rivera’s paintings were very popular and sold well. Check out Flower Festival for an example. Notice the difference between that painting and the one shown below.

In 1922, Rivera married his first wife, Guadalupe Marin. She was a model and a novelist. The marriage didn’t last and in 1929 Rivera married Frida Kahlo. She was also an artist. I’ll post about her tomorrow. When Kahlo died, Rivera married a third time. His final wife was Emma Hurtado, his agent (the person who sold his paintings).

Rivera became famous for his large frescoes. He liked creating art that would be seen by many people; murals were the perfect form. He painted 27 murals for the Detroit Institute of Arts. He also painted murals in New York City, San Francisco, and Mexico.

In 1955 Rivera fell ill. He died in 1956.

Go to Olga's Gallery to view more of Rivera's paintings.

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Bamiyan Cave Oil Paintings

I have already written about oil paints. You know that artists used to have to grind minerals into powder and then mix the powder with oil to make their paint. It was long believed by art historians and scholars that oil paints were not used until the 1600s. They also believed that oil paints were invented in Europe. Recently an act of terrorism allowed us to find new information about the history of oil paint.

In 2001 members of the Taliban blew up two, huge sculptures of Buddha. Behind the sculptures were paintings from the 5th to 9th centuries. The paintings had always been protected from the sun and the environment by the Buddha scultures but the attack put the paintings at risk. While trying to protect the paintings, scientists were able to study them.

Using a special type of light, scientists studied each layer of the paintings. They discovered that oil was used in paintings from the 7th century. Oil painting began in the Middle East 800 years earlier than art historians had thought!

From destruction came new knowledge. Sometimes there is a thin silver-lining.

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Blogroll Update

I have added two links to my blogroll!

Check out Gifts for Kids which, just as it says, features great gift ideas for boys and girls.

Also, if you haven’t yet discovered Kids Craft Weekly, it is a terrific resource for craft ideas especially for young children. Though it isn’t exactly weekly, every issue is creative and well done.

Hope you’re all having a great weekend!

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Paul Klee

Last week I wrote about Surrealism and some of the movement’s important members. Paul Klee was a bit different from Salvador Dali and Max Ernst. Klee’s style was a blend of surrealism, cubism, and expressionism. He also loved the drawings of kids and tried to mix that energy and simplicity into his own work.

Paul Klee was born in Switzerland in 1879. When he was young he loved music and thought he might become a musician when he grew up. His grandmother gave him a box of chalk and he drew with it often. He began to love art as well. As a teenager he decided he enjoyed drawing more than playing the violin. He went to school at the Munich Academy in Germany to study his craft.

He did not think he was a very good painter and he struggled at school. Throughout his life, Klee met many great painters, including Kandinsky, and each helped him improve a little.

Klee’s early works were colorless. He created mostly pen-and-ink drawings and etchings. During this time (early 1900s) he thought that color was just decoration. He didn’t think it was essential or even needed. Then he traveled to Tunisia and saw the color and the light. He fell in love with color and his artistic style changed forever.

Click here to see the color in some of Klee’s paintings. Most of his painting were very small and used a lot of color.

During World War I, Klee painted camouflage on German planes. Following the war, he taught at the Bauhaus school then at the Dusseldorf Academy. He was targeted by the Nazis during the years leading up to World War II and he had to leave his teaching job. Seventeen of his paintings were shown in the Nazi exhibition of “degenerate art.”

When he died in 1940, Klee had painted nearly 9000 works.

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