Frida Kahlo - Essay 3

Frida Kahlo

What would you do without your legs or constrained to a wheel chair or bed? Many people in the world today spend their lives wishing things were not as they were, attempting to forget how they are, or trying to change how they are going to be. When disabled people succeed, it is commonly thought that those individuals are amazing for over coming their disabilities and thriving in life. Frida Kahlo was one who transformed her disabilities to create complex forms of art that force the audience to gain a different perspective on disabilities. Her disability became her power.
Frida Kahlo de Rivera was born Magdalena Carmen Frieda Kahlo Y Calderon, a Mexican painter and communist born in Coyocon, Mexico City, Mexico on July 6, 1907.She grew up in the family’s home where she was born, later referred to as the Blue House or Casa Azul. Her father, Wilhelm also called Guillermo, was a German photographer who immigrated to Mexico where he met and married her mother Matilde. Frida had two older sisters, Matilde and Adriana, and her younger sister Cristina, was born the year after her.
Around the age of six, she contracted polio, which caused her to be bed ridden for nine months. While she did recover form the illness, she limped when she walked because the disease had damaged her right leg and foot. At the age of eighteen years old she suffered critical injuries when a streetcar collided with a bus she was riding with Alejandro Gomez some she was romantically involved with. As a result of the collision, Kahlo was impaled by a steel handrail, which went into her hip and came out the other side. She suffered several serious injuries as a result, including fractures in her spine and pelvis. The injuries form the accident left her with a lifetime of pain, disabled and unable to bear children.
After staying at the Red Cross Hospital in Mexico City for several weeks, Kahlo returned home to recuperate further. She began painting during her recovery. She was an...