Gisela’s pictures of Frida

The last pictures of Frida Kahlo¹

The author of the rare photographs is Gisèle Freund², a French photographer and one of the most talented portraitists of the 20th century. She admired the artist’s steadfast character: despite serious illnesses, she remained full of strength and energy until the last days of her life. Charismatic, unbroken and gifted – that is how she remained in our memory.

1. Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón (6 July 1907 – 13 July 1954) was a Mexican painter known for her many portraits, self-portraits, and works inspired by the nature and artefacts of Mexico. Inspired by the country’s popular culture, she employed a naïve folk art style to explore questions of identity, post-colonialism, gender, class, and race in Mexican society. Her paintings often had strong autobiographical elements and mixed realism with fantasy. In addition to belonging to the post-revolutionary Mexicayotl (Nahuatl word meaning “Essence of the Mexican”, is a movement reviving the indigenous religion, philosophy and traditions of ancient Mexico (Aztec religion and Aztec philosophy) among the Mexican people.) The movement came to light in the 1950s, led by Mexico City intellectuals otherwise known as the descendants of The Aztec Triple Alliance Elite. movement, which sought to define a Mexican identity, Kahlo has been described as a surrealist or magical realist. She is also known for painting about her experience of chronic pain. ↩︎
2. Gisèle Freund (born Gisela Freund; 19 December 1908 – 31 March 2000) was a German-born French photographer and photojournalist, famous for her documentary photography and portraits of writers and artists. Her best-known book, Photographie et société (1974), is an expanded edition of her seminal 1936 dissertation. It was the first sociohistorical study on photography as a democratic medium of self-representation in the age of technological reproduction. With this first doctoral thesis on photography at the Sorbonne, she was one of the first women habilitated there. ↩︎