Women in the Arts

This month we are celebrating Women in the Arts and their influence on visual perspective. This comes during the centennial month of the great Mexican painter Frida Kahlo’s birth. Frida played a significant role in the art world. Not only was she a woman who endured many physical hardships and married to one of the great mural painters of the 20th century, Diego Rivera, but she was one of the defining artists in the Surrealist movement. She was able to communicate intense physical pain and internal chaos in her paintings; staying true to a very stylized colorful darkness and culturally passionate approach.

Most importantly Frida maintained a strong sense of her own artistic identity even though she was married to one of the greatest artists of that time. While Rivera focused on outward issues both political and social in his mural work, Frida maintained more internal and personal subjects displaying her own pain, sorrow and emotional turbulence. While Rivera worked in large scale murals taking commission around the world, Frida’s work was more intimate and small in scale, but equally impacting. This contrast between the masculine view of the world and the feminine ideas about reality resulted in a beautiful artistic balance between the romantic couple.

This balance is what we are missing in our art institutions. Most of the artists canonized by our museums and history books are men, where it has been reported that only 2% are women. There are only a select few female artists who have found their place in art history. Frida’s paintings reveal a vibrant view of relationships, love and the hardships of life. Celebrate artists like her and their contribution to our understanding of the world around us and help to create a place for female artists in your community.