Frida Kahlo (July 6, 1907 – July 13, 1954) was a Mexican mainly autodidact artist who is known for her self-portraits. Mexican culture and the art of the pre-Columbian peoples of America had a great influence on her work. Frida Kahlo’s artistic style is sometimes referred to as rustic art or folk art. André Breton, the founder of surrealism, classified her as a surrealist.
She was in poor health all her life. She fell ill with polio at the age of six, the consequences of which accompanied her forever. In 1925, she suffered a serious car accident which left her in pain. In 1928 she married the famous Mexican artist Diego Rivera, and in addition to their common interests they were linked by the fact that they both supported the Communist Party.
As Chilvers and Glaves-Smith (2003: 974) aptly write, “Kahlo’ paintings of her own physical and psychic pain are narcissistic and nightmarish, but also – like her personality -fiery and flamboyant. She presents herself as a wounded deer in a painting of 1946 or with her spine as a broken column (1944, Museo Dolores Olmedo Patino, Mexico).” (For more info: s.v. Kahlo, Frida, in: Chilvers, Ian and Glaves-Smith, John (2003) A Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Art. OUP.)
Frida (2002) is an American biographical film which depicts Frida’s professional and private life.
Photo: The Broken Column (Original title: La Columna Rota), 1944, Oil on Masonite, 39.8 cm × 30.6 cm (15.7 in × 12.0 in), Location: Museo Dolores Olmedo, Xochimilco, Mexico City, Mexico
For a quick review of „The Broken Colum“ watch the following film:
Keith Haring was born in 1958 in Reading, Pennsylvania. Using chalk, he began drawing small, vibrant characters and animals as well as various recognizable symbols such as dazibaos in New York
Because of his origins, Marc Chagall intensely felt the problems of the Jewish community in Europe at the beginning of the 20th century, just as he intuitively experienced the problems that Russia, his native country, was going through with the First World War and the October Revolution.
Driven by fascination as well as by contempt, Stéphane Mandelbaum (1961–1986) produced hundreds of portraits within a short creative period of just ten years. The subjects include Arthur Rimbaud, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Francis Bacon, Pierre Goldman, his grandfather Szulim, and his father Arié Mandelbaum, but also National Socialist criminals such as Joseph Goebbels and Ernst Röhm.
Cultural exchange and cooperation are important parts of the comprehensive Sino-European strategic partnership. They play an irreplaceable role in enhancing mutual understanding between people and promoting the value of our relations. At the 14th Sino-European Summit in 2011, the leaders stressed that cultural exchange is one of the three pillars of Sino-European relations.
Chagall is one of the most famous artists in France in the 20th century. His work has characteristics of surrealism and neo-primitivism.
Chagall was born on 7 July 1887 in Russia, in a Jewish family. He was brought up in the peace and tenderness of his mother, who taught him to read and to love the Bible and people. Vitebsk remained in Chagall’s imagination as the naive paradise of childhood, and the painter represented it in many paintings, in his youth and also later.
He is considered one of the major French painters of the 19th century, and one of the most important inventors of modern art along with Klimt, Munch, Seurat and van Gogh.