Books
Frida Kahlo: The Brush of Anguish
Kahlo's paintings accompany historical photographs and descriptive text, chronicling the significant episodes in Kahlo's life, from childhood to her untimely death: the consequences and aftermath of a tragic bus accident in her adolescence; her tempestuous marriage; her travels abroad; her political convictions and her relationships with the great leaders and artistic personalities of her time.
Frida Kahlo: An Open Life
The author met and interviewed Frida Kahlo a year before Kahlo's death. She lived with Kahlo for a while in Coyoacón in Mexico City and then for a time at Rivera's San Angel Inn home. Frida Kahlo: An Open Life uses medical records, journals, letters, interviews, and personal recollections to bring us closer than ever to the Mexican artist and her milieu
Frida Kahlo: The Paintings
Frida Kahlo painted herself cracked open, hemorrhaging during a miscarriage, anesthetized on a hospital gurney, and weeping beside her own extracted heart. Herrera brings together numerous paintings and sketches documenting each with explanatory text that probes the influences in Kahlo's life and their meaning for her work.
Frida Kahlo: A Retrospective
The life and work of Frida Kahlo were inextricably intertwined. Paintings are accompanied by essays that explore the artist's private writings and the intense public interest in her life, the role of physical and mental suffering in the creative process, and the coded and double meanings hidden in so much of her work.
Frida Kahlo
Shows how the drama of Frida Kahlo’s life informed her art.The catastrophic physical calamities she experienced - polio, a serious bus accident, miscarriages, the lasting pain from her injuries, and her sorrow at remaining childless are all represented literally or symbolically in her paintings.
Spirit and the Politics of Disablement
Reveals how our culture, only recently tolerant and supportive of disabled people, still fears them. Yet, disablement has also revealed powerful alternative understandings of the body and body politic. The chapter “Never Quite Herself Again” is devoted to Frida Kahlo.
Articles from Library Databases
Try searching for different combinations of keywords such as KAHLO AND PAIN or KAHLO AND HEALTH.
Sources available through our databases can be accessed by COD students, faculty, and staff with your COD MyAccess username and password.
- Academic Search Ultimate This link opens in a new window
Web Articles
- Exploring Frida Kahlo’s Relationship With Her BodyDiscussion of how Frida Kahlo’s chronic pain impacted her art
- Did Frida Kahlo Suffer From Fibromyalgia?Studying the artist’s paintings may reveal more about the her early trauma and subsequent pain than suspected.
- Neurological Deficits in the Life and Works of Frida KahloThis article describes biographical events and works of Frida Kahlo that are closely related to neurology: congenital anomaly (spina bifida), poliomyelitis, spine injury, neuropathic pain.
- Medical Imagery in the Art of Frida KahloFocuses on Frida Kahlo's representation of miscarriage, birth and womanhood.
- Examining Frida Kahlo’s Self-portraits from the Perspective of PsychoanalysisKahlo’s self-portraits, not necessarily from a mere feminine narcissism standpoint of the painter, are indicative of ups and downs in her life.
- Frida Kahlo: Portrait of Chronic PainThe purpose of this article is to discuss Frida Kahlo's medical history and her art from a modern pain sciences perspective, and perhaps to increase our understanding of the pain experience from the patient's perspective.
- Pain and the Paintbrush: The Life and Art of Frida Kahlo"Frida Kahlo’s life and artwork can serve as a resource for physicians who want to better comprehend the experience and dehumanizing consequences of pain. Her paintings are a medium to visualize pain and the effect of pain on the human condition."
- Pain Catastrophizing: An Updated ReviewPain catastrophizing is a distinct phenomenon which is characterized by feelings of helplessness, active rumination and excessive magnification of cognitions and feelings toward the painful situation. Frida Kahlo portrayed her unbearable neuropathic pain and fibromyalgia due to motor vehicle accident with a series of surrealistic paintings centered around the theme of brokenness and hopelessness.
- Art and Rheumatology: The Artist and the Rheumatologist’s PerspectiveGreat artists such as Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Antoni Gaudí, Raoul Dufy, Paul Klee, Frida Kahlo and Niki de Saint Phalle are good examples of how rheumatic diseases such as RA, scleroderma and chronic pain can influence the artist’s perspective, the technique used and the content of their work.
- Medicine, Artists and Their ArtA review is presented of examples of visual defects, mental illness, neurological disorders and other medical conditions which have affected certain artists. These have been considered in relation to the possible
effects they may have had on the artist's style, technique and choice of subject matter. - The Fine Art of Patient-Doctor RelationshipsVarious patients' gifts, such as boxes of chocolates or bottles of wine, are always appreciated by the recipient. Although doctors may receive more permanent gifts, very few will have had the delight of having their portrait painted by their patient. Artists from different ages and cultures—Goya, Kahlo, Bellany, Van Gogh, Munch, and Dadd—have all had the desire to record their special relationship with their doctors.
- Frida Kahlo’s Body: Confronting Trauma in ArtA closer look at how Kahlo represented the trauma in her art and life provides some clues to the fascination with her work.