Frida Kahlo

Applied Semiotics

Fridas' paintings analysis

September 20th 2007

Identify two paintings of your interest then specify: (The whole assignment is in essay type format).

1. Author: Frida Kahlo.

2. Title of the painting: "La columna rota" and "Las dos Fridas"

3. Date: 1944 and 1939

4. Format: Rectangle and square.

My first impressions of these two paintings were kind of painful because sadness and pain are shown in both of them. But at the same time they show the strength that Frida had.

In both paintings there are similar lines, for example, in both of them Frida is looking at us, is the same line of Frida's sight. In both paintings are used contrasting colors, and also in both we have a darkish background. It is obvious that we have a repetition in one of them, following the same pattern to paint the two Fridas.

We have a lot of symbolism in both of them. In the painting "Lacolumna rota" we have the broken column which represents all the pain caused by the bus accident she had. Also we have all the nails that Frida has on her body which represent all the pain she had had because of many surgeries, but we have a bigger nail on her heart, which means her pain caused by Diego when he cheated on her. The way she's looking at us represents how strong she was besides all the problems she had had. The background could mean two things, first the sky represents the hard past she had, and the soil or land represents all the obstacles she had jumped.

In the painting "Las dos Fridas" we have the Frida in white dress which represents the Frida that didn't love