Delhi-based artist Kanchan Chander on what makes Frida Kahlo’s 1939 artwork ‘The Two Fridas’ essential viewing

WHY?

From my days as an art student, I have admired Frida Kahlo. She has not just inspired me as an artist but also as a powerful personality. It was the film based on her life that motivated me the most.

Born to German and Mexican parents, and married to the famous Mexican artist Diego Rivera, the physical pain and turmoil she experienced in her personal life made her stronger and that strength is also reflected in her art. She suffered from polio in her childhood and underwent several serious operations later; she was dogged by depression and anxiety, but it was her strong willpower that made her paint even from her hospital bed.

Though most women at the time were confined to their homes, responsible for everyday chores, Kahlo was defiant and extremely independent. She never shied away from depicting daring subjects, and, in several of her works, one witnesses her own struggles as a woman and an artist. In museum collections across the world, some of her famous works include Henry Ford Hospital (1932), Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird (1940) and The Broken Column (1944).

This particular work, The Two Fridas, depicts sadness and heartbreak. Painted right after her divorce with Rivera, she has two women seated on a bench — one in a bridal dress and the other wearing a Tehuana bright dress. Both figures have a heart, while one is full, the other is open. The figure in the bridal dress has a surgical pair of scissors in her hands, with blood dripping down. Though Frida led a very unhappy life, the colours in her paintings were always vibrant and bright — it was probably how she hid her sorrows. Unfortunately, she did not live long and died at the age of 47.

In 2008, I began a series dedicated to Frida, titled “Frida and Me”, visualised as a conversation between the two of us, with our photographs brought together in mixed-media paintings and collages.

Trained in painting and printmaking from College of Art, Delhi, Kanchan Chander is known for her kitsch artwork that borrows from various sources and introspects on the nature of the self

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