Frida Kahlo Paintings And Degas Paintings

By Darren Hartley


Frida Kahlo paintings are best remembered for their pain and passion and their intense, vibrant colors. They are celebrated as emblematic of national and indigenous tradition by the Mexicans and for their uncompromising depiction of the female experience and form by feminists.

Vibrant Frida Kahlo paintings are characterized as Naive art or folk art and prominently feature Mexican culture and Amerindian cultural tradition. They are also described as surrealist, as a matter of fact, in 1938, one surrealist described Frida as being a ribbon around a bomb.

Frida was never ashamed to reflect her lifelong health problems in her works. As a matter of fact, half of the Frida Kahlo portraits are self portraits of one sort or another. She was born a bitch and a painter, according to her. The rationale for these self portraits came from Frida herself, her being alone more often than not and her knowing herself best, making herself the best model for her own paintings.

Although Degas paintings have been labelled as impressionistic in style, Edgar Degas prefers to call himself as either a realist or independent. Edgar sought to capture the fleeting moments in the flow of modern life.

However, he showed little interest in painting plein air landscapes. Degas paintings favoured theatre and cafe scenes illuminated by artificial light, clarifying the contours of figures, in total adherence to an academic training.

Recognizing the artistic gifts of his son, Edgar's father took him frequently to Paris museums in an effort to encourage his efforts at drawing. Copies of Italian renaissance paintings at the Louvre consisted the early Degas paintings.

Edgar's training in the traditional academic style started in the studio of Louis Lamothe, with emphasis on line and insistence on the crucial importance of draftsmanship. Degas paintings were also strongly influenced by paintings and frescoes seen during long Italian trips in the late 1850s, when Edgar made many sketches and drawings of these paintings and frescoes in his personal notebooks.




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