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For the purpose of establishing her historical and biographical information this first slide will just give everyone an overview of her life.
Frida, was a dughter of the Mexican Revolution and always identified as such. She was of mixed parentage: her father German and her mother Mexican and her mother Mexican with her grandparents each coming from Creole and from Indian heritages.
She was ina bus accident in 1925 which changed her life dramatically as she was peirced through the pelvis with the metal railing that came loose in the accident (she was 18). She was lucky to survive but nevertheless suffered breaks in her pelvic bone, spinal column, collar bone- ribs were cracked, her right leg was broken in 11 places and her right foot was crushed. But though she recovered it hadtremedous psychic and physical consequences.
Artistically and politically, she remained active. She had a deep sympathy for the disenfranchised and disadvantaged peoples of Mexico. In every facet of her life she was defiant: against conventional codes of behavior, dress, and roles for women.
She had a turbulent marriage with Diego Rivera and was, for quite awhile overshadowed by him as an artist. yetshe continued to paint in her independent , individualist style.
1937 and 1938 are important years for her as she gains public recognition in the United States as she comes to the attention of a NY art dealer : Julien Levy.
It was right around this time that she captured the attention of the Surrealists. Specifically, Andre Breton.
what exactly was it about her art that attracted theSurrealists?
Unlike the Cubists who were content to take advantage of the formal characteristics of appropriating the folk art of non-Western cultures, the Surrealists explored the psychological bondage that the European bourgeois conventions had imposed on Latin America. Economically, politically, socially and psychically.
It is against this scenario that Breton's enthusiasm for Kahlo's work can beconsidered.
Kahlo's surrealism was an innate cultural expressionism more than it was a convention or a technique demonstrating a disjuncture of rational reality as defined by the Europeans....
remember, or rather, know that Kahlo had no idea what surrealism was until she was called a surrealist by Breton.

What was Surrealism and what were their tenets?
They were, above all, interested in theliberation of the mind. As such, they were cognizant of and interested in the theories of Freud.
But there was a big difference:
Where Freud and his followers saw hallucinations, irrational thought associations, psychic automatism, dreams as "symptoms" of neurosis that needed to be cured...the Surrealists saw these symptoms as a way to access the unconscious and thus things/processes to becelebrated.
Kahlo was ambivalent to the Surrealist movement and never fully identified with it.
Historically, Europeans who went to Mexico had a particular expectation of Mexico as "primitive", strange, exotic...these expectations fueled a perception of Mexico and, as such, allowed it to occupy a special place in Surrealists' imagination.
The Surrealist preoccupation with ethnography and the"other" brings up a point of dissimilarity between teh Surrealists and Kahlo. For Breton, these primitive elements offered teh experience of the unfamiliar, the strange, the bizarre, and thus the Other (in contradistinction from the European). For Kahlo, these Aztec, Mayan, Mesoamerican elements permeated every aspect of her life and were thus, entrenched in her identity. If anything, they were,for her absolutely familiar.
This piece" What the Water Gave Me" was to the Europeans truly surrealist.
Kahlo presents forms with double meanings: a cluster of black, viney growth mimics pubic hair; the conch symbolizes the labia...this resembles the notion of free association which is significant to surrealist objectives and significant in Freud's theories.
By rendering several images...