The Two Fridas, 1939

Frida Kahlo was a Mexican surrealist artist recognised for her autobiographical paintings. Inspired by the country’s popular culture, she explored questions of identity, postcolonialism, gender, and class in Mexican society. In 1939 she produced her first large-scale oil painting ‘The Two Fridas’. The artwork features a double self-portrait of Kahlo, wearing a white European Victorian dress while and a traditional Tehuana dress, representing her dual German Mexican heritage. Kahlo also included blood vessels in both portraits alluding to a bus accident she was involved in at eighteen which led to a lifetime of constant pain and surgical procedures.