Frida Kahlo’s Revolutionary Nationalism

Throughout this nationalistic period, Mexico faced a revolution that had many dominating leaders who impacted Mexican nationalism in a great manner. Many artists during and after the Mexican Revolution impacted the culture, people, and even the global society. Specifically, Frida Kahlo impacted Mexicans through her self-portraits that represented her own personal reality (Chasteen, 2016).

Kahlo expressed her sense of nationalism through her hairstyles, jewelry, and clothing-especially long “folk Tehuana dresses of southern Mexico” (Chasteen, 2016, p. 243). The dresses she wore represented female leadership and independence. It seems like her spirit belonged to the revolution because she even claimed that she was born in 1910 to correspond her birth with the beginning of the Mexican revolution. As Kahlo’s work became more popular, anything related to national identity became very well-known and Mexicans had a new deeply rooted sense of what it meant to be Mexican (Rosas). The food, music, bright colors, and traditional customs emerged as a nationalist renaissance, the emergence of a once-forgotten cultural identity. She tended to use Aztec symbols, flowers, monkeys, and skulls in many of her paintings. Kahlo discovered her Mexicanidad within the revolution, but it continued far beyond the end. Her ideas were also influenced by socialist, communist, and Marxist ideas that were introduced to Mexico pre-revolution. As well as social and political changes, traditionally, women were expected to stay at home and support their husbands, but Kahlo established her own career and held her own radical conventions (while she was enduring a lot of pain due to injuries she sustained in the past).

Ultimately, Frida Kahlo played a huge role in the nationalist movement of Mexico through her artwork and her own radical ideas. Due to the inspiration of her profound interests in her own Mexicanidad, she was an essential revolutionary nationalist.

Works Cited

Arquin, Florence. Portrait of Frida Kahlo on the Patio of Her House in Coyoacán, Mexico. Photograph. Coyoacan, Mexico, January 24, 1948.

Chasteen, John Charles. “Nationalism: Nationalists Take Power.” Essay. In Born in Blood and Fire: A Concise History of Latin America, 239-243. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 2016.

Rosas, Alejandro. “How Frida Kahlo Fused Her Mexicanness with Socialism.” Google Arts & Culture. Google. Accessed March 12, 2021. https://artsandculture.google.com/story/how-frida-kahlo-fused-her-mexicanness-with-socialism/7wIiyOyRt3urIA.

 By: Giselle Rivera