Depicting the inner person

Frida Kahlo has become one of the most recognizable painters of the 20th century. Her outward appearance is arguably more well-known than her paintings; her likeness is used as a symbol of Mexican cultural heritage and indigenous pride, and she is hailed as a feminist hero. But who was she, really? A few biographical details are known to many—her rocky relationship with her husband and fellow painter Diego Riviera, her frail health compounded by the severe injuries she sustained in a bus accident at 18. Movies and books have portrayed her as a style icon and a symbol of marginalized people everywhere. Kahlo’s mystique frequently obscures the facts. What is the truth about her inner life?

Her enigmatic, surrealistic self-­portraits offer a partial answer to the question, yet they are steeped in a private language of inscrutable symbolism. At various times, she painted herself as a deer punctured by numerous arrows, with a spine made of a marble column broken in pieces, wearing a prickly necklace reminiscent of Christ’s crown of thorns, and with a monkey perched on her shoulder. What do these symbols mean? They cry out for interpretation, but interpretations are often not forthcoming.

Painted in 1939, The Two Fridas is perhaps her most recognizable work. It is a double self-portrait; in the picture, one Frida wears traditional Mexican clothing while the other is dressed in garments evocative of Victorian Europe. The hearts of both are visible, and a dangling artery connects them, twining around and behind the sitters. One of the Fridas is cutting the artery with medical forceps; blood flows out, dripping down her otherwise immaculate white dress. The other Frida holds a small miniature portrait of Diego Riviera. Frida and he, married since 1929, had divorced only a few months prior to the painting. They would marry again the next year and remain together until Frida’s death in 1954.

A detail shows an artery flowing to the portrait of Diego Riviera. Fine Art Images/Heritage Images via Getty Images

Kahlo’s life was a record of painful troubles. Her broken body, her miscarriage, her stormy love affairs all added up to shape her into a difficult, irascible, complicated person. Through her many self-portraits she sought release from anguish and a better understanding of herself. Her oftentimes puzzling canvases seem to gesture toward the events in her life. (Is her heart broken by the loss of Diego? Do the dual portraits serve as a comment on her mixed European/Mexican heritage?) But they bump into interpretive limits: Some of her symbols are simply too private to be easily understood.

Other famous self-portraits—those of Rembrandt and Van Gogh come readily to mind—do not indulge so frequently in personal and idiosyncratic symbolism. Perhaps Kahlo’s work is an example of art gone too far, too ingrown, and therefore unable to communicate clearly. It is indeed true that when artists look inside themselves for their subjects, what comes out can sometimes be so esoteric that it becomes unintelligible, a barrier to understanding.

Diego and Frida, remarried, work in a studio circa 1945. Hulton Archive/Getty Images

However, Kahlo’s self-portraits proclaim a profound Biblical truth: that what appears on the outside is not the real truth about a person—that what is in the soul is more important than what appears on the surface. “Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart,” says 1 Samuel 16:7.

In The Weight of Glory, C.S. Lewis says the people we see as we go about our everyday lives hold within themselves vast reservoirs of spiritual significance that cannot be perceived from their outward appearances. “There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal,” he writes. Everyone we meet has an immortal soul, one either full of the bounty of the Holy Spirit or steeped in sin and corruption. This cannot be seen by looking at a person’s outward appearance, but it is, in fact, the true reality of who one is.

Perhaps it is only in the realm of art that we can have a glimpse of that deeper reality. By using a vocabulary of symbolism—publicly understood or private and personal—artists can reveal the hidden meanings of their own personalities and spiritual states. Kahlo’s double self-portrait is an extreme example of this kind of art, but a powerfully memorable one nonetheless.