Name_____________________________
Class: 9D 9E 9F 9G
Due Date____________
"I paint self portraits because I am the person I know best." - Frida Kahlo
Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird
To see a color image of this painting, go to phavisualart.com, find the GRADE 9 page, then click
on the Frida Kahlo link.
List Five Things seen in Kahlo’s Self Portrait that make you wonder something about the artist.
Write both what you see and what it makes you wonder.
Example: The facial hair makes me wonder about the gender of the artist.
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Now read the following information on Frida Kahlo. Does it help answer the questions that the
Self-Portrait made you wonder about? Under your question write one piece of information you
read that helps clearify what the painting made you wonder about the artist.
Example: The facial hair makes me wonder about the gender of the artist.
Information discovered in Reading: Kahlo was one of four daughters.
Frida Kahlo (1907-1954), Mexican Painter.
From 1926 until her death, the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo created striking, often shocking,
images that reflected her turbulent life. Kahlo was one of four daughters born to a HungarianJewish father and a mother of Spanish and Mexican Indian descent, in the Mexico City suburb of
Coyoacán.
She did not originally plan to become an artist. A polio survivor, at 15 Kahlo entered the
premedical program at the National Preparatory School in Mexico City. However, this training
ended three years later when Kahlo was gravely hurt in a bus accident. She spent over a year in
bed, recovering from fractures of her back, collarbone, and ribs, as well as a shattered pelvis and
shoulder and foot injuries. Despite more than 30 subsequent operations, Kahlo spent the rest of
her life in constant pain, finally succumbing to related complications at age 47.
During her period of recovery Kahlo had begun to paint with oils. Her pictures, mostly selfportraits and still lifes, were deliberately naive, filled with the bright colors and flattened forms
of the Mexican folk art she loved. At 21, Kahlo fell in love with the Mexican muralist Diego
Rivera, whose approach to art and politics suited her own. Although he was 20 years her senior,
they were married in 1929; this stormy, passionate relationship survived infidelities, the
pressures of Rivera's career, a divorce and remarriage, and Kahlo's poor health. The couple
traveled to the United States and France, where Kahlo met celebrities from the worlds of art and
politics; she had her first solo exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York City in 1938.
Kahlo enjoyed considerable success during the 1940s, but her reputation soared posthumously,
beginning in the 1980s with the publication of numerous books about her work by feminist art
historians and others. In the last two decades an explosion of Kahlo-inspired films, plays,
calendars, and jewelry has transformed the artist into a veritable cult figure.
Now List Three things you want viewers of Your Self-portrait to wonder about you and list
items that could lead the viewer to wonder these things.
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