Published 2025-03-13
Keywords
- Frida Kahlo,
- Mexican Renaissance,
- pre-Columbian civilizations,
- cyclical time,
- Surrealism
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Abstract
«Today still goes on», writes Frida Kahlo on the back of one of her first canvases, Self-Portrait in a Velvet Dress of 1926. Closely linked to pre-Columbian cultures concept of cyclical time, Frida Kahlo reveals through her painting that same vision of history, constructed by returns and analogies. The Italian Renaissance, as was promoted to a model by post-revolutionary Mexico’s cultural politics, becomes for the artist the main pictorial reference. Evoking the great works of Renaissance painting, Frida Kahlo appropriates them to renew their meanings. So she places her art in a temporal continuity that expresses through images the eternal reiteration of events. From the individual to the universal, these events are presented like the matrices of humanity’s history.