Alone With Frida
Two self-portraits by Frida Kahlo that tell the story of relationships, rifts, and reconciliations
Frida Kahlo painted many self-portraits during her tumultuous life. She observed this was because she was so often alone, and her self was the subject matter she knew best. The two self-portraits discussed here can be seen as marking milestones in her relationship with her husband, the artist Diego Rivera, and reflect developments in how she used her art to portray her inner self and correlation within the cosmos.
The first, Self Portrait With Cropped Hair, was painted in 1940. This was when Frida and Diego Rivera had just divorced after various infidelities. She is sombre, filled with grief, and looks directly at us. She wears an oversize man’s suit and shirt, possibly Diego’s, rather than the traditional Mexican dresses she often wore, and which Diego liked her to wear. Perhaps this signals that she, herself is capable of filling the void left by his absence. She holds scissors, as though she has just cut her hair, and the fallen tresses are shown dropped around her.
Stanzas from a Mexican folk song are depicted across the top of the painting. In English, the quote translates as ‘Look if I loved you it was because of your hair, Now you are without hair I don’t love you anymore’, a clear reference to…
