Frida kahlo y kees van dongen

Kees Van Dongen and Frida Kahlo

In this essay I´m going to compare Kees Van Dongen and Frida Kahlo’s life, what they both lived and what make them similar and different.

Kees Van Dongen was born in 1877 while Frida was bon in 1907. Kees Van Dongen is a Dutch painter who worked in Paris while Frida was born in Coyoacan in México City.
For instance, the time period they were born and theplaces they worked are very different. Then, how come they have some things in color?
First, to “understand” an artist work, it is necessary to first analyze its life, and try to understand what he/she felt. Frida´s work is highly influenced by all her suffering life, but what did Kees Van Dongen Lived?

His art was inspired by the impressionism and influenced by the style. He studies inRotterdam but didn´t finish. He earned his live hood working in a magazine. His racy drawings of life around the harbor were published with great scandal. He moved to Paris and started to publish some works after a while of being there. His affinity for the German Expressionism can be recognized on his work. Indicative of his work is the intense use of color. He later became a member of the group ofGerman Expressionism. He was later discovered by the upper class.

As we can see, Van Dongen had a pretty normal life comparing to Frida’s life. I´ll talk a little bit of her life.

As I said before, she was born in 1907, although she used to say that she was born in 1910. She had a sad childhood. She had polio which left her with one leg shorter than the other, these made her to feel complex.She was revel and she used to surprise very often. She cut her hair just like a man to piss off her family and Diego Rivera, her husband.
She painted lots of self-portraits because she used to say that she was often alone and that she was the person she knew the best. In 1925, returning from school, she had a terrible accident, were she broke her column, the collarbone, several ribs, the pelvis andshe broke her leg in 11 different parts. She was in bed for a long period of time, and started to kill time by painting. She used to say that she painted her reality, real stuff that she only saw or heard.
She suffered a lot, and showed all of her suffering in her painting. She said that her paintings carried a message of pain, which completed her life.
Frida was married to Diego Rivera, bothwith strong personalities. Frida had several lovers, women and men.
It was Diego´s idea for her to wear Mexican dresses, that accompany her big eyebrows and mustache, which will now be her symbol.
In her accident she was hurt by the tube of a bus in an accident.
Annette Seemann said:
Frida Kahlo fue herida de manera irrevocable en el centro de su feminidad: ya que no podría tener hijos;de los que se enteraría mas tarde. En segundo lugar; esta forma brutal de lesión tuvo en sí algo de martirio. En este caso fue la moderna bestia anónima, la maquina, la causante de un martirio moderno. (Annette Seemann,2004, p46)

Frida was hurt by this machine, she was mad at this modern technology because it was the one cause of her such a great pain.
She wanted to be a doctor when she grewup, but as she couldn’t assist to school she dropped it to release her parents from paying useless money. She started painting because all of her reflections, fears and wishes needed to be expressed somehow. Her first painting is called “autorretrato con traje de terciopelo”, where she reproduces herself as a 19 year old teenager, with a physic less than perfect, a new she but idealized. We can seeon this painting a beautiful Frida, still she highlighted the line of her eyebrows.
Frida se representa delante de un mar nocturno estilizado que muestra agitación, en tanto a ella se le ve totalmente apacible, casi estatuaria, y mira al observador con una intensidad inquietante, como si pretendiera exorcizarlo. (Annette Seemann,2004, p50)

As we can see, the life of both artists was...