Frida Kahlo: The Paintings: The Paintings

By Hayden Herrera

Book Overview

"[Herrera's] expressive and fluid prose is able to keep pace with Kahlo's riveting canvases and adds to the experience of viewing them. . . . A superb tribute." -- Booklist

In small, stunningly rendered self-portraits, Mexican artist Frida Kahlo painted herself cracked open, hemorrhaging during a miscarriage, anesthetized on a hospital gurney, and weeping beside her own extracted heart. Her works are so incendiary in emotion and subject matter that one art critic suggested the walls of an exhibition be covered with asbestos.

In this beautiful book, art historian Hayden Herrera brings together numerous paintings and sketches by Kahlo, documenting each with explanatory text that probes the influences in Kahlo's life and their meaning for her work.

Included among the illustrations are more than eighty full color paintings, as well as dozens of black and white pictures and line illustrations. Among the famous and little-known works included in Frida Kahlo: The Paintings are The Two Fridas, Self Portrait as a Tehuana, Without Hope, The Dream, The Little Deer, Diego and I, Henry Ford Hospital, My Birth, and My Nurse and I. Here, too, are documentary photographs of Frida Kahlo and her world that help to illuminate the various stages of her life.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B009CYOS9Y
• ISBN13: 9780060923198
• Release Date: September 1993
• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 2.58 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 9.9" x 9.9"

Customer Reviews

An extraordinary life in art

I know nothing about Mexico or about paintings. And I am least interested to read biographies. Still I found myself intriguied by Frida Kahlo who is a Mexican painter and picked this biography on her life. Her life is very extraordinary as I found out when I watched this movie on her starring Salma Hayek. And I loved this book because it told the story of her through her paintings. Its her paintings which make you wanna ask questions, for her paintings are not about pretty flowers or landscape or fishes in the oceans. Many of her paintings are in fact shocking in the way that they are too direct and poignant, and splattered with a lot of blood but still they are not asking for any sympathy or anything at all. Frida was a very talented woman who could make striking poetry on canvas. She painted everything with an element of her in it.... her emotions, her pain, her longing and her feelings. She is all about strength, strong will, determination,and pride. She did not try to do right or wrong thing but live her life her own way, on her rules, a woman who made herself memorable and a legend through her paintings. She inspires because of her gritty life. This book is very engrossing read on Frida's life as seen through her paintings.

The best Kahlo bio out there

This is easily, and without fluff, the best Frida Kahlo bio in print. Herrera not only has a great gift with wordds, but she truly gets within Kahlo's turbulent times, affairs and issues to paint a very descriptive world of this brilliant, tortured woman.

A beautiful, beautiful book

My children gave this book to me for Christmas as a companion to Frida's biography. It is beautiful and comprehensive. A must-have for any fan of her work.

Nice

This is a very nice combination of biographical information and art. A little of both keeps the book interesting. The quality is very good and I was a little surprised how nice the images were for the price.

Captivating

The book, as noted, focuses on her paintings and covers a wide spectrum of her work. I couldn't put it down. I was captivated by Frida's work, and the comments, stories and history added by the author were excellent - relevant, interesting and informative. I recommend it to anyone interested in this fascinating and unique paintor.