Acceso usuarios
Mey Yen Moriuchi
Much has been written about how Frida Kahlo’s artistic production revealed the intense emotional and physical pain that she endured throughout her life. Subjects such as the tragic bus accident that she survived as a teenager, or her troubled relationship with famed Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, have informed numerous biographical readings of her work. And though her indebtedness to the colonial traditions of ex-voto and retablo paintings has been noted, little has been said of her relationship to other aspects of Mexican visual culture. This article contextualizes Kahlo’s oeuvre within the genres of eighteenth-century casta painting and nineteenth-century costumbrismo, genres that were preoccupied with depicting socio-racial and socio-familial relationships and with representing Mexico’s miscegenation, or racial mixing.
