by: Ellen C. Caldwell
for JSTOR Daily
Artist Frida Kahlo has made the news in recent months—from Mattel’s newly released Frida Barbie and its subsequent legal battles with her estate, to actor and director Salma Hayek’s accusations against Harvey Weinstein when they worked together on Frida, to more recent medical considerations of Kahlo’s physical battle with ongoing pain and fatigue.
Over the years, many art historians and medical professionals have noted how Kahlo’s paintings address physical pain. In 1989, David Lomas and Rosemary Howell described Kahlo’s consistent depiction of medical injury and personal trauma related to her numerous miscarriages and ongoing surgeries. In discussing Kahlo’s accident, Lomas and Howell wrote that her “resulting scars were deeply etched.” They examine her painting The Broken Column, 1944, which they say references “that first trauma.”