What Lies Behind This Impressive Self-Portrait of Frida Kahlo?
How the Mexican artist once again uses paint to tell the story of one of the worst moments of her life
⚠️ Trigger warning — The work is quite ‘violent/traumatic’, so it wasn’t easy to work on it. But I deliberately decided to write on an important part of Frida Kahlo’s life, on a series of events that marked her. We’re talking today about miscarriage, abortion and pain, so if you feel that’s too much for you, skip it.
The Henry Ford Hospital, also known as The Flying Bed, is a self-portrait painted by Frida Kahlo in 1932. It represents and expresses the artist’s suffering after undergoing a second miscarriage. This painting is one of a long series of self-portraits by Frida Kahlo, which were a way for her to tell her life story.
In 1930, following numerous commissions that the muralist and Kahlo’s partner Diego Rivera received, the couple moved to the United States, first to San Francisco and then to Detroit. That same year, Frida had to terminate a pregnancy for medical reasons. She became pregnant again in 1932, and this second pregnancy was seen as a minor miracle. After her serious bus accident when she was 18, she had been told she would never be able to have children. The accident left her with many after-effects…
