title: George Soros

text: In a discussion at the Los Angeles World Affairs Council in 2006, Alvin Shuster, former foreign editor of the "Los Angeles Times", asked Soros, "How does one go from an immigrant to a financier? ... When did you realize that you knew how to make money?" Soros replied, "Well, I had a variety of jobs and I ended up selling fancy goods on the seaside, souvenir shops, and I thought, that's really not what I was cut out to do. So, I wrote to every managing director in every merchant bank in London, got just one or two replies, and eventually that's how I got a job in a merchant bank."


title: George Soros

text: In 1954, Soros began his financial career at the merchant bank Singer & Friedlander of London. He worked as a clerk and later moved to the arbitrage department. A fellow employee, Robert Mayer, suggested he apply at his father's brokerage house, F.M. Mayer of New York.


title: George Soros

text: In 1956, Soros moved to New York City, where he worked as an arbitrage trader for F. M. Mayer (1956–59). He specialized in European stocks, which were becoming popular with U.S. institutional investors following the formation of the Coal and Steel Community, which later became the Common Market.


title: George Soros

text: In 1959, after three years at F. M. Mayer, Soros moved to Wertheim & Co. He planned to stay for five years, enough time to save $500,000, after which he intended to return to England to study philosophy. He worked as an analyst of European securities until 1963.


title: George Soros

text: During this period, Soros developed the theory of reflexivity to extend the ideas of his tutor at the London School of Economics, Karl Popper. Reflexivity posits that market values are often driven by the fallible ideas of participants, not only by the economic fundamentals of the situation. Ideas and events influence each other in reflexive feedback loops. Soros argued that this process leads to markets having procyclical "virtuous" or "vicious" cycles of boom and bust, in contrast to the equilibrium predictions of more standard neoclassical economics.


title: George Soros

text: From 1963 to 1973, Soros's experience as a vice president at Arnhold and S. Bleichroeder resulted in little enthusiasm for the job; business was slack following the introduction of the Interest Equalization Tax, which undermined the viability of Soros's European trading. He spent the years from 1963 to 1966 with his main focus on the revision of his philosophy dissertation. In 1966 he started a fund with $100,000 of the firm's money to experiment with his trading strategies.


title: George Soros

text: In 1969, Soros set up the Double Eagle hedge fund with $4m of investors' capital including $250,000 of his own money. It was based in Curaçao, Dutch Antilles. Double Eagle itself was an offshoot of Arnhold and S. Bleichroeder's First Eagle fund established by Soros and that firm's chairman Henry H. Arnhold in 1967.


title: George Soros

text: In 1973, the Double Eagle Fund had $12 million and formed the basis of the Soros Fund. George Soros and Jim Rogers received returns on their share of capital and 20 percent of the profits each year.


title: George Soros

text: In 1970, Soros founded Soros Fund Management and became its chairman. Among those who held senior positions there at various times were Jim Rogers, Stanley Druckenmiller, Mark Schwartz, Keith Anderson, and Soros's two sons.


title: George Soros

text: In 1973, due to perceived conflicts of interest limiting his ability to run the two funds, Soros resigned from the management of the Double Eagle Fund. He then established the Soros Fund and gave investors in the Double Eagle Fund the option of transferring to that or staying with Arnhold and S. Bleichroeder.


title: George Soros

text: It was later renamed the Quantum Fund, after the physical theory of quantum mechanics. By that time the value of the fund had grown to $12m, only a small proportion of which was Soros's own money. He and Jim Rogers reinvested their returns from the fund, and also a large part of their 20% performance fees, thereby expanding their stake.


title: George Soros

text: By 1981, the fund had grown to $400m, and then a 22% loss in that year and substantial redemptions by some of the investors reduced it to $200m.


title: George Soros

text: In July 2011, Soros announced that he had returned funds from outside investors' money (valued at $1 billion) and instead invested funds from his $24.5 billion family fortune, due to changes in U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission disclosure rules, which he felt would compromise his duties of confidentiality to his investors. The fund had at that time averaged over 20% per year compound returns.


title: George Soros

text: In 2013, the Quantum Fund made $5.5 billion, making it again the most successful hedge fund in history. Since its inception in 1973, the fund has generated $40 billion.


title: George Soros

text: The fund announced in 2015 that it would inject $300 million to help finance the expansion of Fen Hotels, an Argentine hotel company. The funds will develop 5,000 rooms over the next three years throughout various Latin American countries.


title: George Soros

text: Soros had been building a huge short position in pounds sterling for months leading up to the Black Wednesday of September 1992. Soros had recognized the unfavorable position of the United Kingdom in the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. For Soros, the rate at which the United Kingdom was brought into the European Exchange Rate Mechanism was too high, their inflation was also much too high (triple the German rate), and British interest rates were hurting their asset prices.


title: George Soros

text: By September 16, 1992, the day of Black Wednesday, Soros's fund had sold short more than $10 billion in pounds, profiting from the UK government's reluctance to either raise its interest rates to levels comparable to those of other European Exchange Rate Mechanism countries or float its currency.


title: George Soros

text: Finally, the UK withdrew from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, devaluing the pound. Soros's profit on the bet was estimated at over $1 billion. He was dubbed "the man who broke the Bank of England". The estimated cost of Black Wednesday to the UK Treasury was £3.4 billion. Stanley Druckenmiller, who traded under Soros, originally saw the weakness in the pound and stated: "[Soros's] contribution was pushing him to take a gigantic position."


title: George Soros

text: On October 26, 1992, "The New York Times" quoted Soros as saying: "Our total position by Black Wednesday had to be worth almost $10 billion. We planned to sell more than that. In fact, when Norman Lamont said just before the devaluation that he would borrow nearly $15 billion to defend sterling, we were amused because that was about how much we wanted to sell."


title: George Soros

text: Soros was believed to have traded billions of Finnish markkas on February 5, 1996, in anticipation of selling them short. The markka had been put floating as a result of the early 1990s depression. The Bank of Finland and the Finnish Government commented at the time they believed that a "conspiracy" was impossible.


title: George Soros

text: In 1997, during the Asian financial crisis, the prime minister of Malaysia, Mahathir Mohamad, accused Soros of using the wealth under his control to punish the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) for welcoming Myanmar as a member. With a history of antisemitic remarks, Mahathir made specific reference to Soros's Jewish background ("It is a Jew who triggered the currency plunge") and implied Soros was orchestrating the crash as part of a larger Jewish conspiracy. Nine years later, in 2006, Mahathir met with Soros and afterward stated that he accepted that Soros had not been responsible for the crisis. In 1998's "The Crisis of Global Capitalism: Open Society Endangered", Soros explained his role in the crisis as follows:


title: George Soros

text: The financial crisis that originated in Thailand in 1997 was particularly unnerving because of its scope and severity ... By the beginning of 1997, it was clear to Soros Fund Management that the discrepancy between the trade account and the capital account was becoming untenable. We sold short the Thai baht and the Malaysian ringgit early in 1997 with maturities ranging from six months to a year. (That is, we entered into contracts to deliver at future dates Thai baht and Malaysian ringgit that we did not currently hold.) Subsequently, Prime Minister Mahathir of Malaysia accused me of causing the crisis, a wholly unfounded accusation. We were not sellers of the currency during or several months before the crisis; on the contrary, we were buyers when the currencies began to decline—we were purchasing ringgits to realize the profits on our earlier speculation. (Much too soon, as it turned out. We left most of the potential gain on the table because we were afraid that Mahathir would impose capital controls. He did so, but much later.)


title: George Soros

text: [N]obody who has read a business magazine in the last few years can be unaware that these days there really are investors who not only move money in anticipation of a currency crisis, but actually do their best to trigger that crisis for fun and profit. These new actors on the scene do not yet have a standard name; my proposed term is "Soroi".


title: George Soros

text: In an interview concerning the late-2000s recession, Soros referred to it as the most serious crisis since the 1930s. According to Soros, market fundamentalism with its assumption that markets will correct themselves with no need for government intervention in financial affairs has been "some kind of an ideological excess." In Soros's view, the markets' moods—a "mood" of the markets being a prevailing bias or optimism/pessimism with which the markets look at reality—"actually can reinforce themselves so that there are these initially self-reinforcing but eventually unsustainable and self-defeating boom/bust sequences or bubbles."


title: George Soros

text: In reaction to the late-2000s recession, he founded the Institute for New Economic Thinking in October 2009. This is a think tank composed of international economic, business, and financial experts, who are mandated to investigate radical new approaches to organizing the international economic and financial system.


title: George Soros

text: In 1988, Soros was contacted by a French financier named Georges Pébereau, who asked him to participate in an effort to assemble a group of investors to purchase a large number of shares in Société Générale, a leading French bank that was part of a privatization program (something instituted by the new government under Jacques Chirac). Soros eventually decided against participating in the group effort, opting to personally move forward with his strategy of accumulating shares in four French companies: Société Générale, as well as Suez, Paribas, and the Compagnie Générale d'Électricité.


title: George Soros

text: In 1989, the Commission des Opérations de Bourse (COB, the French stock exchange regulatory authority) conducted an investigation of whether Soros's transaction in Société Générale should be considered insider trading. Soros had received no information from the Société Générale and had no insider knowledge of the business, but he did possess knowledge that a group of investors was planning a takeover attempt. Initial investigations found Soros innocent, and no charges were brought forward. However, the case was reopened a few years later, and the French Supreme Court confirmed the conviction on June 14, 2006, although it reduced the penalty to €940,000.


title: George Soros

text: Soros denied any wrongdoing, saying news of the takeover was public knowledge and it was documented that his intent to acquire shares of the company predated his own awareness of the takeover. In December 2006, he appealed to the European Court of Human Rights on various grounds, including that the 14-year delay in bringing the case to trial precluded a fair hearing. On the basis of Article 7 of the European Convention on Human Rights, stating that no person may be punished for an act that was not a criminal offense at the time that it was committed, the court agreed to hear the appeal. In October 2011, the court rejected his appeal in a 4–3 decision, saying that Soros had been aware of the risk of breaking insider trading laws.


title: George Soros

text: Until the 2004 presidential election, Soros had not been a large donor to U.S. political campaigns. According to OpenSecrets, during the 2003–2004 election cycle, Soros donated $23,581,000 to various 527 Groups (tax-exempt groups under the United States tax code, 26 U.S.C. § 527). The groups aimed to defeat President George W. Bush. After Bush's reelection, Soros and other donors backed a new political fundraising group called Democracy Alliance, which supports progressive causes and the formation of a stronger progressive infrastructure in America.


title: George Soros

text: In August 2009, Soros donated $35 million to the state of New York to be earmarked for underprivileged children and given to parents who had benefit cards at the rate of $200 per child aged 3 through 17, with no limit as to the number of children that qualified. An additional $140 million was put into the fund by the state of New York from money they had received from the 2009 federal recovery act.


title: George Soros

text: Soros was an initial donor to the Center for American Progress, and he continues to support the organization through the Open Society Foundations.


title: George Soros

text: In October 2011, a Reuters story, "Soros: Not a funder of Wall Street Protests," was published after several commentators pointed out errors in an earlier Reuters story headlined "Who's Behind the Wall St. Protests?" with a lead stating that the Occupy Wall Street movement "may have benefited indirectly from the largesse of one of the world's richest men [Soros]." Reuters's follow-up article also reported a Soros spokesman and Adbusters' co-founder Kalle Lasn both saying that Adbusters—the reputed catalyst for the first Occupy Wall Street protests—had never received any contributions from Soros, contrary to Reuters's earlier story that reported that "indirect financial links" existed between the two as late as 2010.


title: George Soros

text: On September 27, 2012, Soros announced that he was donating $1 million to the super PAC backing President Barack Obama's reelection Priorities USA Action. In October 2013, Soros donated $25,000 to Ready for Hillary, becoming a co-chairman of the super PAC's national finance committee. In June 2015, he donated $1 million to the Super PAC Priorities USA Action, which supported Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential race. He donated $6 million to the PAC in December 2015 and $2.5 million in August 2016. Soros launched a new super PAC called "Democracy PAC" for the 2020 election cycle. By July 2019, he had donated $5.1 million to it.


title: George Soros

text: Since 2016, Soros has been donating sums exceeding $1 million to the campaigns of progressive criminal justice reform proponents through the "Safety and Justice" PAC in local district attorney elections. In many districts, such large contributions were unprecedented and the campaigning strategy was "turned on its head" with a focus on incarceration, police misconduct and bail system, according to the "Los Angeles Times". Larry Krasner was elected as the District Attorney of Philadelphia with the help of a $1.5 million ad campaign funded by Soros in 2017. Soros was the largest donor supporting the campaign of George Gascón for Los Angeles County District Attorney in 2020, contributing $2.25 million to superPACs in Gascón's favor. Soros gave $2 million to a PAC supporting Kim Foxx's campaign for Cook County State's Attorney in 2020.


title: George Soros

text: In the second quarter of 2020, Soros gave at least $500,000 to presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, becoming one of the campaign's largest donors.


title: George Soros

text: For the 2022 United States elections, Soros was the country's largest donor. He donated $128.5 million to support the Democratic Party in the election cycle.


title: George Soros

text: According to Waldemar A. Nielsen, an authority on American philanthropy, "[Soros] has undertaken... nothing less than to open up the once-closed communist societies of Eastern Europe to a free flow of ideas and scientific knowledge from the outside world." From 1979, as an advocate of 'open societies', Soros financially supported dissidents including Poland's Solidarity movement, Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia and Andrei Sakharov in the Soviet Union. In 1984, he founded his first Open Society Institute in Hungary with a budget of $3 million.


title: George Soros

text: Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Soros's funding has played an important role in the newly independent countries. A 2017 study found that a grant program by George Soros which awarded funding to over 28,000 scientists in the former Soviet republics shortly after the end of the Soviet Union "more than doubled publications on the margin, significantly induced scientists to remain in the science sector, and had long-lasting [beneficial] impacts." His funding of pro-democratic programs in Georgia was considered by Georgian nationalists to be crucial to the success of the Rose Revolution, although Soros has said that his role has been "greatly exaggerated." Alexander Lomaia, secretary of the Georgian Security Council and former Minister of Education and Science, is a former executive director of the Open Society Georgia Foundation (Soros Foundation), overseeing a staff of 50 and a budget of $2.5 million.


title: George Soros

text: Former Georgian foreign minister Salomé Zourabichvili wrote that institutions like the Soros Foundation were the cradle of democratization and that all the NGOs that gravitated around the Soros Foundation undeniably carried the revolution. She opines that after the revolution the Soros Foundation and the NGOs were integrated into power.


title: George Soros

text: Some Soros-backed pro-democracy initiatives have been banned in Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. Ercis Kurtulus, head of the Social Transparency Movement Association (TSHD) in Turkey, said in an interview 2006 that "Soros carried out his will in Ukraine and Georgia by using these NGOs ... Last year Russia passed a special law prohibiting NGOs from taking money from foreigners. I think this should be banned in Turkey as well." In 1997, Soros closed his foundation in Belarus after it was fined $3 million by the government for "tax and currency violations." According to "The New York Times" 1997, the Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko has been widely criticized in the West and in Russia for his efforts to control the Belarus Soros Foundation and other independent NGOs and to suppress civil and human rights. Soros called the fines part of a campaign to "destroy independent society."


title: George Soros

text: In June 2009, Soros donated $100 million to Central Europe and Eastern Europe to counter the impact of the economic crisis on the poor, voluntary groups and non-government organisations.


title: George Soros

text: Since 2012, the Hungarian Fidesz government has labelled George Soros as an enemy of the state, due to his humanitarian and political involvement in the European refugee crisis. The government has attacked OSF, the international civil support foundation created by George Soros, and tried to revoke the licence of Central European University (Budapest) (which failed mostly due to significant public outrage). In response, Soros called the government "a mafia state".


title: George Soros

text: As the 2018 election period started, the government introduced public posters with a photo of Soros to create hostility in the general public towards him, using statements such as "Soros wants millions of migrants to live in Hungary", and "Soros wants to dismantle the border fence". The government also prepared a three-part law plan called the "Stop Soros package" (which followed other various law changes in the same year, hindering the workings of several international NGOs in Hungary), which would include various steps against NGOs doing volunteer work related to the refugee crisis.


title: George Soros

text: In March 2017, six US senators sent a letter to then secretary of state Rex Tillerson asking that he look into several grants the State Department and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) have given to groups funded by "left-wing" Soros. In the same context, the conservative group Judicial Watch has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of State and USAID compelling them to release records regarding $5 million transferred from USAID to Soros's Open Society branch in Macedonia. The suit alleges that the money was deliberately used to destabilize the Macedonian government. The Open Society Foundation has said its activities in Macedonia were aimed at ethnic reconciliation with the Albanian minority and other forms of assistance since the collapse of Yugoslavia.


title: George Soros

text: In January 2017, the "Stop Operation Soros" (SOS) initiative was launched in Macedonia. SOS seeks to present "questions and answers about the way Soros operates worldwide" and invites citizens to contribute to the research. In a press conference held during the same month, Nenad Mircevski, one of the founders of the initiative, stated that SOS would work towards the "de-Soros-ization" of Macedonia.


title: George Soros

text: On May 16, 2018, Soros's Open Society Foundations announced they would move its office from Budapest to Berlin, blaming the move on an "increasingly repressive" environment in Hungary.


title: George Soros

text: In November 2005, Soros said: "My personal opinion is there's no alternative but to give Kosovo independence."


title: George Soros

text: Soros has helped fund the non-profit group Independent Diplomat, established by the former British diplomat Carne Ross.


title: George Soros

text: Soros has funded worldwide efforts to promote drug policy reform. In 2008, Soros donated $400,000 to help fund a successful ballot measure in Massachusetts known as the Massachusetts Sensible Marijuana Policy Initiative which decriminalized possession of less than of marijuana in the state. Soros has also funded similar measures in California, Alaska, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Nevada and Maine. Among the drug decriminalization groups that have received funding from Soros are the Lindesmith Center and Drug Policy Foundation. Soros donated $1.4 million to publicity efforts to support California's Proposition 5 in 2008, a failed ballot measure that would have expanded drug rehabilitation programs as alternatives to prison for persons convicted of non-violent drug-related offenses.


title: George Soros

text: According to remarks in an interview in October 2009, it is Soros's opinion that marijuana is less addictive but not appropriate for use by children and students. He himself has not used marijuana for years. Soros has been a major financier of the Drug Policy Alliance – an organization that promotes cannabis legalization – with roughly $5 million in annual contributions from one of his foundations.


title: George Soros

text: The Project on Death in America, active from 1994 to 2003, was one of the Open Society Institute's projects, which sought to "understand and transform the culture and experience of dying and bereavement." In 1994, Soros delivered a speech in which he reported that he had offered to help his mother, a member of the right-to-die advocacy organization Hemlock Society, commit suicide. In the same speech, he also endorsed the Oregon Death with Dignity Act, proceeding to help fund its advertising campaign.


title: George Soros

text: Because of his Jewish identity, wealth, and philanthropy, Soros has been described as "the perfect code word" for conspiracy theories that unite antisemitism and Islamophobia. One prominent Soros-related conspiracy theory is that he is behind the European migrant crisis or importing migrants to European countries. The Hungarian government spent millions of dollars on a poster campaign demonizing Soros. According to anthropologist Ivan Kalmar, "Many of his most outspoken enemies inside and outside Hungary saw him as leading an international cabal that included other Jews such as the Rothschilds, as well as Freemasons and Illuminati."


title: George Soros

text: A pipe bomb was placed in the mailbox at Soros's home in Katonah, New York, on October 22, 2018, as part of the October 2018 United States mail bombing attempts. The package was discovered by a caretaker, who removed it and notified authorities. It was photographed and exploded by the FBI, which launched an investigation. For several days afterward, similar bombs were mailed to Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and other Democrats and liberals.


title: George Soros

text: On October 26, 2018, Cesar Sayoc was arrested in Aventura, Florida, on suspicion of mailing the bombs. In August 2019, Sayoc was sentenced to 20 years in prison for mailing 16 pipe bombs to 13 victims. None of the devices exploded.


title: George Soros

text: Soros's writings focus heavily on the concept of reflexivity, where the biases of individuals enter into market transactions, potentially changing the fundamentals of the economy. Soros argues that different principles apply in markets depending on whether they are in a "near to equilibrium" or a "far from equilibrium" state. He argues that, when markets are rising or falling rapidly, they are typically marked by disequilibrium rather than equilibrium, and that the conventional economic theory of the market (the "efficient market hypothesis") does not apply in these situations. Soros has popularized the concepts of dynamic disequilibrium, static disequilibrium, and near-equilibrium conditions. He has stated that his own financial success has been attributable to the edge accorded by his understanding of the action of the reflexive effect. Reflexivity is based on three main ideas:


title: George Soros

text: A recent example of reflexivity in modern financial markets is that of the debt and equity of housing markets. Lenders began to make more money available to more people in the 1990s to buy houses. More people bought houses with this larger amount of money, thus increasing the prices of these houses. Lenders looked at their balance sheets which not only showed that they had made more loans, but that the collaterals backing the loans – the value of the houses – had gone up (because more money was chasing the same amount of housing, relatively). Thus they lent out more money because their balance sheets looked good, and prices rose higher still.


title: George Soros

text: This was further amplified by public policy. In the US, home loans were guaranteed by the Federal government. Many national governments saw home ownership as a positive outcome and so introduced grants for first-time home buyers and other financial subsidies, such as the exemption of a primary residence from capital gains taxation. These further encouraged house purchases, leading to further price rises and further relaxation of lending standards.


title: George Soros

text: The concept of reflexivity attempts to explain why markets moving from one equilibrium state to another tend to overshoot or undershoot. Soros's theories were originally dismissed by economists, but have received more attention after the 2008 crash including becoming the focus of an issue of the "Journal of Economic Methodology".


title: George Soros

text: The notion of reflexivity provides an explanation of the theories of complexity economics, as developed at the Santa Fe Institute, although Soros had not publicized his views at the time the discipline was originally developed there in the 1980s.


title: George Soros

text: Although the primary manifestation of the reflexive process that Soros discusses is its effects in the financial markets, he has also explored its effects in politics. He has stated that whereas the greatest threats to the "open society" in the past were from communism and fascism (as discussed in "The Open Society and Its Enemies" by his mentor Karl Popper), the largest current threat is from market fundamentalism.


title: George Soros

text: He has suggested that the contemporary domination of world politics and world trade by the United States is a reflexive phenomenon, insofar as the success of military and financial coercion feeds back to encourage increasingly intense applications of the same policies to the point where they will eventually become unsustainable.


title: George Soros

text: Soros argues that the current system of financial speculation undermines healthy economic development in many underdeveloped countries. He blames many of the world's problems on the failures inherent in what he characterizes as market fundamentalism.


title: George Soros

text: Soros's book "The New Paradigm for Financial Markets" (May 2008), described a "superbubble" that had built up over the past 25 years and was ready to collapse. This was the third in a series of books he has written that have predicted disaster. As he states:


title: George Soros

text: In February 2009, Soros said the world financial system had in effect disintegrated, adding that there was no prospect of a near-term resolution to the crisis. "We witnessed the collapse of the financial system ... It was placed on life support, and it's still on life support. There's no sign that we are anywhere near a bottom."


title: George Soros

text: In January 2016, at an economic forum in Sri Lanka, Soros predicted a financial crisis akin to 2008 based on the state of the global currency, stock and commodity markets as well as the sinking Chinese yuan.


title: George Soros

text: When asked about what he thought about Israel, in "The New Yorker", Soros replied: "I don't deny Jews the right to a national existence – but I don't want to be a part of it." According to hacked emails released in 2016, Soros's Open Society Foundation has a self-described objective of "challenging Israel's racist and anti-democratic policies" in international forums, in part by questioning Israel's reputation as a democracy. He has funded NGOs which have been actively critical of Israeli policies including groups that campaign for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel.


title: George Soros

text: Speaking before a 2003 conference of the Jewish Funders Network, Soros said that the administrations of George W. Bush in the U.S. and Ariel Sharon in Israel, and even the unintended consequences of some of his own actions, were partially contributing to a new European antisemitism. Soros, citing accusations that he was one of the "Jewish financiers" who, in antisemitic terms, "ruled the world by proxy", suggested that if we change the direction of those policies, then anti-Semitism also will diminish. Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League later said that Soros's comments held a simplistic view, were counterproductive, biased and a bigoted perception of what's out there, and "blamed the victim" when holding Jews responsible for antisemitism. Jewish philanthropist Michael Steinhardt, who arranged for Soros's appearance at the conference, clarified, "George Soros does not think Jews should be hated any more than they deserve to be." Soros has also said that Jews can overcome antisemitism by "giv[ing] up on the tribalness".


title: George Soros

text: I do not subscribe to the myths propagated by enemies of Israel and I am not blaming Jews for anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism predates the birth of Israel. Neither Israel's policies nor the critics of those policies should be held responsible for anti-Semitism. At the same time, I do believe that attitudes toward Israel are influenced by Israel's policies, and attitudes toward the Jewish community are influenced by the pro-Israel lobby's success in suppressing divergent views.


title: George Soros

text: In 2017, Israeli businessman Beny Steinmetz filed a $10-million lawsuit against Soros, alleging that Soros had influenced the government of Guinea to freeze Steinmetz's company BSG Resources out of iron ore mining contracts in the African country due to "long-standing animus toward the state of Israel". Steinmetz claims that Soros engaged in a "smear" campaign against him and his companies and blames Soros for scrutiny of him by American, Israeli, Swiss, and Guinean authorities. Soros called Steinmetz's suit "frivolous and entirely false" and said that it was "a desperate PR stunt meant to deflect attention from BSGR's mounting legal problems across multiple jurisdictions".


title: George Soros

text: During an award ceremony for Imre Kertész, Soros said that the victims of violence and abuse were becoming "perpetrators of violence", suggesting that this model explained Israel's behavior towards the Palestinians, which led to walkouts and Soros being booed.


title: George Soros

text: In July 2017, a Hungarian billboard campaign backed by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, which was considered to be anti-semitic by the country's Jewish groups, vilified Soros as an enemy of the state, using the slogan "Let's not allow Soros to have the last laugh". The campaign was estimated to have cost 5.7bn forints (then US$21 million). According to the Israeli ambassador, the campaign "evokes sad memories but also sows hatred and fear", a reference to Hungary's role in the deportation of 500,000 Jews during the Holocaust. Lydia Gall of Human Rights Watch asserted that it was reminiscent of Nazi posters during the Second World War featuring "'the laughing Jew'". Orbán and his government's representative said they had a "zero tolerance" of antisemitism, explaining the posters were aiming to persuade voters that Soros was a "national security risk".


title: George Soros

text: Hours later, in an apparent attempt to ally Israel with Hungary, Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a "clarification", denouncing Soros, stating that he "continuously undermines Israel's democratically elected governments by funding organizations that defame the Jewish state and seek to deny it the right to defend itself".


title: George Soros

text: Soros's son Alexander said in an interview that his father cares about Israel, and that he "would like to see Israel in Yitzhak Rabin's image. His views are more or less the common views in Meretz and in the Labor Party." According to Alexander, Soros supports a two-state solution. The younger Soros recounts that after his bar mitzvah in 1998, his father told him: "If you're serious about being Jewish, you might want to consider immigrating to Israel."


title: George Soros

text: In a 2018 interview with "The New York Times", Alex Soros, the son of George Soros, when asked about why his father fights for an open society, Soros replied that in a non-Jewish state, a Jew can only feel safe when other minorities are protected, which is one of most important driving forces why his father has been active in his philanthropy:


title: George Soros

text: But he had always "identified firstly as a Jew," and his philanthropy was ultimately an expression of his Jewish identity, in that he felt a solidarity with other minority groups and also because he recognized that a Jew could only truly be safe in a world in which all minorities were protected. Explaining his father's motives, he said, "The reason you fight for an open society is because that’s the only society that you can live in, as a Jew—unless you become a nationalist and only fight for your own rights in your own state."


title: George Soros

text: On November 11, 2003, in an interview with "The Washington Post", Soros said that removing President George W. Bush from office was the "central focus of my life" and "a matter of life and death". He said he would sacrifice his entire fortune to defeat Bush "if someone guaranteed it". Soros gave $3 million to the Center for American Progress, $2.5 million to MoveOn.org, and $20 million to America Coming Together. These groups worked to support Democrats in the 2004 election. On September 28, 2004, he dedicated more money to the campaign and kicked off his own multistate tour with a speech, "Why We Must Not Re-elect President Bush", delivered at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. The online transcript of this speech received many views after Dick Cheney accidentally referred to FactCheck.org as "factcheck.com" in the vice presidential debate, causing the owner of that domain to redirect all traffic to Soros's site.


title: George Soros

text: His 2003 book, "The Bubble of American Supremacy", was a forthright critique of the Bush administration's "War on Terror" as misconceived and counterproductive, and a polemic against the re-election of Bush. He explains the title in the closing chapter by pointing out the parallels in this political context with the self-reinforcing reflexive processes that generate bubbles in stock prices.


title: George Soros

text: When Soros was asked in 2006 about his statement in "The Age of Fallibility" that "the main obstacle to a stable and just world order is the United States", he responded that "it happens to coincide with the prevailing opinion in the world. And I think that's rather shocking for Americans to hear. The United States sets the agenda for the world. And the rest of the world has to respond to that agenda. By declaring a 'war on terror' after September 11, we set the wrong agenda for the world ... When you wage war, you inevitably create innocent victims."


title: George Soros

text: In 2017, Soros described Donald Trump as a con man, and predicted Trump would fail because he believed Trump's ideas were self-contradictory. Soros also said he believed Trump was preparing for a trade war and expected financial markets to do poorly.


title: George Soros

text: In October 2011, Soros drafted an open letter entitled "As concerned Europeans we urge Eurozone leaders to unite", in which he calls for a stronger economic government for Europe using federal means (Common EU treasury, common fiscal supervision, etc.) and warns against the danger of nationalistic solutions to the economic crisis. The letter was co-signed by Javier Solana, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Andrew Duff, Emma Bonino, Massimo D'Alema, and Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga.


title: George Soros

text: Soros criticized Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his handling of the European migrant crisis in 2015: "His plan treats the protection of national borders as the objective and the refugees as an obstacle. Our plan treats the protection of refugees as the objective and national borders as the obstacle."


title: George Soros

text: Soros expected that Brexit would fail and the Premiership of Theresa May would last only a short time.<ref name="Guardian20/01/2017">George Soros: Theresa May won't last and Donald Trump is 'would-be dictator' "The Guardian"</ref> Soros is opposed to Brexit and donated £400,000 to the anti-Brexit 'Best for Britain' group. Soros also hosted a dinner for Conservative donors at his London home to encourage them to follow his lead. Soros's Open Society Foundations also donated a total of £303,000 to two pro-EU organizations, the European Movement UK and Scientists for EU, and a center-right think-tank, Bright Blue.


title: George Soros

text: In 2018, Soros highlighted that Europe faces major challenges related to immigration, austerity, and nations leaving the EU. He holds that Europe is facing an existential crisis, in view of the rise of populism, the refugee crisis and a growing rift between Europe and the United States. Soros has also stated that "the euro has many unresolved problems" which "must not be allowed to destroy the European Union". He advocated replacing the notion of a multi-speed Europe by the aim of a "multi-track Europe" that would allow member states a wider variety of choices.


title: George Soros

text: In view of the possibility of a further increase of the number of refugees from Africa to Europe, Soros proposes that the European Union devise a "Marshall Plan for Africa" (see "Marshall Plan"), fostering education and employment in Africa in order to reduce emigration.


title: George Soros

text: Soros has expressed concern about the growth of Chinese economic and political power, saying, "China has risen very rapidly by looking out for its own interests ... They have now got to accept responsibility for world order and the interests of other people as well." Regarding the political gridlock in America, he said, "Today, China has not only a more vigorous economy but actually a better functioning government than the United States." In July 2015, Soros stated that a "strategic partnership between the US and China could prevent the evolution of two power blocks that may be drawn into military conflict". In January 2016, during an interview at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Soros stated that "[a] hard landing is practically unavoidable". Chinese state media responded by stating "Soros' challenge to the RMB and Hong Kong dollar are doomed to fail, without any doubt."


title: George Soros

text: In January 2019, Soros used his annual speech at the World Economic Forum, in Davos, to label Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and President of China, as the "most dangerous opponent of open societies", saying: "China is not the only authoritarian regime in the world but it is the wealthiest, strongest and technologically most advanced". He also urged the United States not to allow the Chinese technology companies Huawei and ZTE to dominate the 5G telecommunications market as this would present an "unacceptable security risk for the rest of the world". Soros also criticized the newest form of China's Big Brother-like system of mass surveillance called the Social Credit System, saying it would give Xi "total control" over the people of China." Additionally, Soros is very critical of American companies that ignore Chinese human rights violations for business reasons, for example slamming BlackRock's decision to invest big in China as detrimental to worldwide democracy and US national security.


title: George Soros

text: In May 2014, Soros told CNN's Fareed Zakaria: "I set up a foundation in Ukraine before Ukraine became independent from Russia. And the foundation has been functioning ever since and played an important part in events now."


title: George Soros

text: In January 2015, he said that "Europe needs to wake up and recognize that it is under attack from Russia" and urged Western countries to expand economic sanctions against Russia for its support of separatists in eastern Ukraine.


title: George Soros

text: In July 2015, Soros stated that Putin's annexation of Crimea was a challenge to the "prevailing world order," specifically the European Union. He hypothesized that Putin wants to "destabilize all of Ukraine by precipitating a financial and political collapse for which he can disclaim responsibility, while avoiding occupation of a part of eastern Ukraine, which would then depend on Russia for economic support." In November 2015, Russia banned the Open Society Foundations (OSF) and the Open Society Institute (OSI)—two pro-democracy charities founded by Soros—stating they posed a "threat to the foundations of the constitutional system of the Russian Federation and the security of the state." In January 2016, 53 books related to Soros's "Renewal of Humanitarian Education" program were withdrawn at the Vorkuta Mining and Economic College in the Komi Republic, with 427 additional books seized for shredding. A Russian intergovernmental letter released in December 2015 stated that Soros's charities were "forming a perverted perception of history and making ideological directives, alien to Russian ideology, popular". Most of these books were published with funds donated by Soros's charities.


title: George Soros

text: In May 2022, Soros stated that the Russian invasion of Ukraine may be the start of "a third world war" and that Putin must be defeated "as soon as possible". He also stated that "Other issues that concern all of humanity -- fighting pandemics and climate change, avoiding nuclear war, maintaining global institutions -- have had to take a back seat to that struggle. That's why I say civilization may not survive."


title: George Soros

text: , "Forbes" magazine listed Soros as the 162nd richest person in the world, with a net worth of $8.3 billion. He has also donated 64% of his original fortune, and distributed more than $15 billion through his Open Society Foundations (an international grantmaking network that supports advancing justice, education, public health and independent media). Forbes has called him the most generous giver (when measured as a percentage of net worth).


title: George Soros

text: Soros has been active as a philanthropist since the 1970s, when he began providing funds to help black students attend the University of Cape Town in apartheid South Africa, and began funding dissident movements behind the Iron Curtain.


title: George Soros

text: Soros's philanthropic funding includes efforts to promote non-violent democratization in the post-Soviet states. These efforts, mostly in Central and Eastern Europe, occur primarily through the Open Society Foundations (originally Open Society Institute or OSI) and national Soros Foundations, which sometimes go under other names (such as the Stefan Batory Foundation in Poland). As of 2003, PBS estimated that he had given away a total of $4 billion. The OSI says it has spent about $500 million annually in recent years.


title: George Soros

text: In 2003, former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker wrote in the foreword of Soros's book "The Alchemy of Finance":


title: George Soros

text: George Soros has made his mark as an enormously successful speculator, wise enough to largely withdraw when still way ahead of the game. The bulk of his enormous winnings is now devoted to encouraging transitional and emerging nations to become "open societies", open not only in the sense of freedom of commerce but—more important—tolerant of new ideas and different modes of thinking and behavior.


title: George Soros

text: "Time" magazine in 2007 cited two specific projects—$100 million toward Internet infrastructure for regional Russian universities, and $50 million for the Millennium Promise to eradicate extreme poverty in Africa—noting that Soros had given $742 million to projects in the U.S., and given away a total of more than $7 billion.


title: George Soros

text: Other notable projects have included aid to scientists and universities throughout central and eastern Europe, help to civilians during the siege of Sarajevo, and Transparency International. Soros also pledged an endowment of €420 million to the Central European University (CEU).


title: George Soros

text: According to "National Review Online" the Open Society Institute gave $20,000 in September 2002 to the Defense Committee of Lynne Stewart, the lawyer who has defended controversial, poor, and often unpopular defendants in court and was sentenced to 2 years in prison for "providing material support for a terrorist conspiracy" via a press conference for a client. An OSI spokeswoman said "it appeared to us at that time that there was a right-to-counsel issue worthy of our support" but claimed later requests for support were declined.


title: George Soros

text: In September 2006, Soros pledged $50 million to the Millennium Promise, led by economist Jeffrey Sachs to provide educational, agricultural, and medical aid to help villages in Africa enduring poverty. "The New York Times" termed this endeavor a "departure" for Soros whose philanthropic focus had been on fostering democracy and good government, but Soros noted that most poverty resulted from bad governance.


title: George Soros

text: Soros played a role in the peaceful transition from communism to democracy in Hungary (1984–89) and provided a substantial endowment to Central European University in Budapest. The Open Society Foundations has active programs in more than 60 countries around the world with total expenditures currently averaging approximately $600 million a year.


title: George Soros

text: On October 17, 2017, it was announced that Soros had transferred $18 billion to the Open Society Foundations.


title: George Soros

text: In October 2018, Soros donated $2 million to the Wikimedia Foundation via the Wikimedia Endowment program.


title: George Soros

text: In July 2020, Soros's Foundations announced plans to give $220 million in grants for racial justice groups, criminal justice reform and civic engagement.


title: George Soros

text: Soros has been married three times and divorced twice. In 1960, he married Annaliese Witschak (born January 3, 1934). Annaliese was an ethnic German immigrant, who had been orphaned during the war. Although she was not Jewish, she was well-liked by Soros's parents as she had also experienced the privation and displacement brought about by World War II. They divorced in 1983. They had three children:


title: George Soros

text: In 2008, Soros met Tamiko Bolton; they married September 21, 2013. Bolton is the daughter of a Japanese-American nurse and a retired naval commander, Robert Bolton. She was raised in California, earned an MBA from the University of Miami, and runs an Internet-based dietary supplement and vitamin-sales company.


title: George Soros

text: Soros's older brother Paul Soros, a private investor and philanthropist, died on June 15, 2013. Also an engineer, Paul headed Soros Associates and established the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowships for Young Americans. He was married to Daisy Soros (née Schlenger), who, like her husband, was a Hungarian Jewish immigrant, and with whom he had two sons, Peter and Jeffrey. Peter Soros was married to the former Flora Fraser, a daughter of Lady Antonia Fraser and the late Sir Hugh Fraser and a stepdaughter of the late 2005 Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter. Fraser and Soros separated in 2009.


title: George Soros

text: In 2005, Soros was a minority partner in a group that tried to buy the Washington Nationals, a Major League baseball team. Some Republican lawmakers suggested that they might move to revoke Major League Baseball's antitrust exemption if Soros bought the team. In 2008, Soros's name was associated with AS Roma, an Italian association football team, but the club was not sold. Soros was a financial backer of Washington Soccer L.P., the group that owned the operating rights to Major League Soccer club D.C. United when the league was founded in 1995, but the group lost these rights in 2000. On August 21, 2012, BBC reported SEC filings showing Soros acquired roughly a 1.9 percent stake in English football club Manchester United through the purchase of 3.1 million of the club's Class-A shares.


title: George Soros

text: Soros received honorary doctoral degrees from the New School for Social Research (New York), the University of Oxford in 1980, the Corvinus University of Budapest, and Yale University in 1991. He received an honorary degree in economics from the University of Bologna in 1995.


title: George Soros

text: In 2008, Soros was inducted into Institutional Investors Alpha's Hedge Fund Manager Hall of Fame along with Alfred Jones, Bruce Kovner, David Swensen, Jack Nash, James Simons, Julian Roberston, Kenneth Griffin, Leon Levy, Louis Bacon, Michael Steinhardt, Paul Tudor Jones, Seth Klarman and Steven A. Cohen.


title: George Soros

text: In January 2014, Soros was ranked number 1 in LCH Investments list of top 20 managers having posting gains of almost $42 billion since the launch of his Quantum Endowment Fund in 1973.


title: George Soros

text: In July 2017, Soros was elected an Honorary Fellow of the British Academy (HonFBA), the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and social sciences.


title: George Soros

text: Soros was the "Financial Times" Person of the Year for 2018, with the "FT" describing him as "a standard bearer for liberal democracy, an idea under siege from populists".


title: George Soros

text: In April 2019, Soros was awarded the Ridenhour Prize for Courage. In his acceptance address Soros said: "In my native Hungary, the government of [Prime Minister] Viktor Orbán has turned me into the super villain of an alleged plot to destroy the supposed Christian identity of the Hungarian nation... [I] donate the prize money associated with this award to the "Hungarian Spectrum", an online English-language publication that provides daily updates on Hungarian politics. It renders an important service by exposing to the world [in English] what Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is telling his own people [in Hungarian]. It ["Hungarian Spectrum"] deserves to be better known and supported."


title: 2014 FIFA World Cup

text: The 2014 FIFA World Cup was the 20th FIFA World Cup, the quadrennial world championship for men's national football teams organised by FIFA. It took place in Brazil from 12 June to 13 July 2014, after the country was awarded the hosting rights in 2007. It was the second time that Brazil staged the competition, the first being in 1950, and the fifth time that it was held in South America.


title: 2014 FIFA World Cup

text: 31 national teams advanced through qualification competitions to join the host nation in the final tournament (with Bosnia and Herzegovina as the only debutant). A total of 64 matches were played in 12 venues located in as many host cities across Brazil. For the first time at a World Cup finals, match officials used goal-line technology, as well as vanishing spray for free kicks. FIFA Fan Fests in each host city gathered a total of 5 million people, and the country received 1 million visitors from 202 countries. Every World Cup-winning team since the first tournament in 1930 – Argentina, Brazil, England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Uruguay – qualified for this tournament, for the last time to date. Spain, the defending champions, were eliminated at the group stage, along with England and Italy. Uruguay were eliminated in the round of 16, and France exited in the quarter-finals. Host nation Brazil, who had won the 2013 FIFA Confederations Cup, lost to Germany 7–1 in the semi-finals and eventually finished in fourth place.


title: 2014 FIFA World Cup

text: In the final, Germany defeated Argentina 1–0 after extra time thanks to a Mario Götze half-volley in the 113th minute of the final to win the tournament and secure the country's fourth world title, the first after German reunification in 1990, when as West Germany they also beat Argentina by the same score in 90 minutes in the World Cup final. Germany became the first European team to win a World Cup staged in the Americas, and this result marked the third consecutive title won by a European team, after Italy in 2006 and Spain in 2010.


title: 2014 FIFA World Cup

text: In March 2003, FIFA announced that the tournament would be held in South America for the first time since 1978, in line with its policy at the time of rotating the right to host the World Cup among different confederations. With the 2010 FIFA World Cup hosted in South Africa, it would be the second consecutive World Cup outside Europe, which was a first for the tournament. It was also second in the Southern Hemisphere. Only Brazil and Colombia formally declared their candidacy but, after the withdrawal of the latter from the process, Brazil was officially elected as host nation unopposed on 30 October 2007.


title: 2014 FIFA World Cup

text: Following qualification matches played between June 2011 and November 2013, the following 32 teams – shown with their last pre-tournament FIFA world ranking – qualified for the final tournament. Twenty-four of these teams were returning participants from the 2010 World Cup. Bosnia and Herzegovina were the only team with no previous appearance at the World Cup finals. Colombia qualified for the World Cup after 16 years of absence, while Belgium and Russia both returned after 12 years. Paraguay failed to qualify for the first time since 1994. This was also the first World Cup for 32 years that did not feature a representative from the Nordic countries. The highest ranked team not to qualify was Ukraine (ranked 16th), while the lowest ranked team that did qualify was Australia (ranked 62nd).


title: 2014 FIFA World Cup

text: As of 2022, this was the last time Chile, Ivory Coast, Greece, Italy, Honduras, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Algeria qualified for the World Cup finals, and the last time Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Tunisia, Senegal, Denmark, Poland, and Serbia failed to qualify. This was also the most recent World Cup finals to feature every prior winning team.


title: 2014 FIFA World Cup

text: The 32 participating teams were drawn into eight groups. In preparation for this, the teams were organised into four pots with the seven highest-ranked teams joining host nation Brazil in the seeded pot. As with the previous tournaments, FIFA aimed to create groups which maximised geographic separation and therefore the unseeded teams were arranged into pots based on geographic considerations. The draw took place on 6 December 2013 at the Costa do Sauípe resort in Bahia, during which the teams were drawn by various past World Cup-winning players. Under the draw procedure, one randomly drawn team – Italy – was firstly relocated from Pot 4 to Pot 2 to create four equal pots of eight teams.


title: 2014 FIFA World Cup

text: In March 2013, FIFA published a list of 52 prospective referees, each paired, on the basis of nationality, with two assistant referees, from all six football confederations for the tournament. On 14 January 2014, the FIFA Referees Committee appointed 25 referee trios and eight support duos representing 43 countries for the tournament.


title: 2014 FIFA World Cup

text: Yuichi Nishimura from Japan acted as referee in the opening match whereas Nicola Rizzoli from Italy acted as referee in the final.


title: 2014 FIFA World Cup

text: As with the 2010 tournament, each team's squad consisted of 23 players (three of whom must be goalkeepers). Each participating national association had to confirm their final 23-player squad no later than 10 days before the start of the tournament. Teams were permitted to make late replacements in the event of serious injury, at any time up to 24 hours before their first game. During a match, all remaining squad members not named in the starting team were available to be one of the three permitted substitutions (provided the player was not serving a suspension).


title: 2014 FIFA World Cup

text: 12 venues (seven new and five renovated) in twelve cities were selected for the tournament. The venues covered all the main regions of Brazil and created more evenly distributed hosting than the 1950 finals in Brazil. Consequently, the tournament required long-distance travel for teams. During the World Cup, Brazilian cities were also home to the participating teams at 32 separate base camps, as well as staging official fan fests where supporters could view the games.


title: 2014 FIFA World Cup

text: The most used stadiums were the Maracanã and Brasilia, which hosted seven matches each. The least-used venues were in Cuiabá, Manaus, Natal, and Curitiba, which hosted four matches each; as the four smallest stadiums in use at the tournament, they did not host any knockout round matches.


title: 2014 FIFA World Cup

text: Base camps were used by the 32 national squads to stay and train before and during the World Cup tournament. On 31 January 2014, FIFA announced the base camps for each participating team, having earlier circulated a brochure of 84 prospective locations. Most teams opted to stay in the Southeast Region of Brazil, with only eight teams choosing other regions; five teams (Croatia, Germany, Ghana, Greece and Switzerland) opted to stay in the Northeast Region and three teams (Ecuador, South Korea and Spain) opted to stay in the South Region. None opted to stay in the North Region or the Central-West Region. Campo Bahia, the base camp of the eventual champion Germany, attracted much interest.


title: 2014 FIFA World Cup

text: For a third consecutive World Cup tournament, FIFA staged FIFA Fan Fests in each of the 12 host cities throughout the competition. Prominent examples were the Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro, which already held a Fan Fest in 2010, and São Paulo's Vale do Anhangabaú. The first official event took place on Iracema Beach, in Fortaleza, on 8 June 2014.


title: 2014 FIFA World Cup

text: In order to avoid ghost goals, the 2014 World Cup introduced goal-line technology following successful trials at among others 2013 Confederations Cup. The chosen Goal Control system featured 14 high speed cameras, 7 directed to each of the goals. Data were sent to the central image-processing centre, where a virtual representation of the ball was output on a widescreen to confirm the goal. The referee was equipped with a watch which vibrated and displayed a signal upon a goal. France's second goal in their group game against Honduras was the first time goal-line technology was needed to confirm that a goal should be given.


title: 2014 FIFA World Cup

text: Following successful trials, FIFA approved the use of vanishing spray by the referees for the first time at a World Cup Finals. The water-based spray, which disappears within minutes of application, can be used to mark a ten-yard line for the defending team during a free kick and also to draw where the ball is to be placed for a free kick.


title: 2014 FIFA World Cup

text: The Adidas Brazuca was the official match ball of the 2014 FIFA World Cup and was supplied by Forward Sports of Sialkot, Pakistan. Adidas created a new design of ball after criticisms of the Adidas Jabulani used in the previous World Cup. The number of panels was reduced to six, with the panels being thermally bonded. This created a ball with increased consistency and aerodynamics compared to its predecessor. Furthermore, Adidas underwent an extensive testing process lasting more than two years to produce a ball that would meet the approval of football professionals.


title: 2014 FIFA World Cup

text: Due to the relatively high ambient temperatures in Brazil, particularly at the northern venues, cooling breaks for the players were introduced. Breaks could take place at the referee's discretion after the 30th minute of each half if the Wet Bulb Globe Temperature exceeded ; the breaks would last 3 minutes, with this time made up by an extended period of stoppage time at the end of the half.


title: 2014 FIFA World Cup

text: The first cooling break in a World Cup play took place during the 32nd minute of the match between the Netherlands and Mexico in the round of 16. At the start of the match, FIFA listed the temperature at with 68% humidity.


title: 2014 FIFA World Cup

text: The biological passport was introduced in the FIFA World Cup starting in 2014. Blood and urine samples collected from all players before the competition, and from two players per team per match, were analysed by the Swiss Laboratory for Doping Analyses. FIFA reported that 91.5% of the players taking part in the tournament were tested before the start of the competition and none tested positive. However, FIFA was criticised for how it conducted doping tests.


title: 2014 FIFA World Cup

text: The first round, or group stage, was a competition between the 32 teams divided among eight groups of four, where each group engaged in a round-robin tournament within itself. The two highest ranked teams in each group advanced to the knockout stage. Teams were awarded three points for a win and one for a draw. When comparing teams in a group over-all result came before head-to-head.


title: 2014 FIFA World Cup

text: In the knockout stage there were four rounds (round of 16, quarter-finals, semi-finals, and the final), with each eliminating the losers. The two semi-final losers competed in a third place play-off. For any match in the knockout stage, a draw after 90 minutes of regulation time was followed by two 15 minute periods of extra time to determine a winner. If the teams were still tied, a penalty shoot-out was held to determine a winner.


title: 2014 FIFA World Cup

text: The match schedule was announced on 20 October 2011 with the kick-off times being confirmed on 27 September 2012; after the final draw, the kick-off times of seven matches were adjusted by FIFA. The competition was organised so that teams that played each other in the group stage could not meet again during the knockout phase until the final (or the 3rd place match).


title: 2014 FIFA World Cup

text: The group stage began on 12 June, with the host nation competing in the opening game as has been the format since the 2006 tournament. The opening game was preceded by an opening ceremony that began at 15:15 local time.


title: 2014 FIFA World Cup

text: On 12 June 2014, the 20th edition of the FIFA World Cup began with the opening ceremony at Arena de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil. The event saw 660 dancers take to the stadium and perform in a ceremony which celebrated the nature of the country and its love of football. Following the dancers native singer Claudia Leitte emerged on centre stage to perform for the crowd. She was later joined by Cuban-American rapper Pitbull, and American singer Jennifer Lopez to perform the tournament's official song "We Are One (Ole Ola)" which had been released as an official single on 8 April 2014. Following the ceremony, the opening match was played, which saw the hosts come from behind to beat Croatia 3–1.


title: 2014 FIFA World Cup

text: The group stage of the cup took place in Brazil from 12 June 2014 to 26 June 2014: each team played three games. The group stage was notable for a scarcity of draws and a large number of goals. The first drawn (and goalless) match did not occur until the 13th match of the tournament, between Iran and Nigeria: a drought longer than any World Cup since 1930. The group stage produced a total of 136 goals (an average of 2.83 goals per match), nine fewer than were scored during the entire 2010 tournament. This is the largest number of goals in the group stage since the 32-team system was implemented in 1998 and the largest average in a group stage since 1958. World Cup holders Spain were eliminated after only two games, the quickest exit for the defending champions since Italy's from the 1950 tournament. Spain also became the fourth nation to be eliminated in the first round while holding the World Cup crown, the first one being Italy in 1950 (and again in 2010), Brazil in 1966, and France in 2002. For the first time, two teams from Africa advanced to the second round, a feat that would be repeated in the 2022 tournament.


title: 2014 FIFA World Cup

text: All the group winners advanced into the quarter-finals. They included four teams from UEFA, three from CONMEBOL, and one from CONCACAF. Of the eight matches, five required extra-time, and two of these required penalty shoot-outs; this was the first time penalty shoot-outs occurred in more than one game in a round of 16. The goal average per game in the round of 16 was 2.25, a drop of 0.58 goals per game from the group stage. The eight teams to win in the round of 16 included four former champions (Brazil, Germany, Argentina and France), a three-time runner-up (Netherlands), and two first-time quarter-finalists (Colombia and Costa Rica). Belgium reached the quarter-finals for the first time since 1986.


title: 2014 FIFA World Cup

text: With a 1–0 victory over France, Germany set a World Cup record with four consecutive semi-final appearances. Brazil beat Colombia 2–1, but Brazil's Neymar was injured and missed the rest of the competition. Argentina reached the final four for the first time since 1990 after a 1–0 win over Belgium. The Netherlands reached the semi-finals for the second consecutive tournament, after overcoming Costa Rica in a penalty shoot-out following a 0–0 draw at the end of extra time, with goalkeeper Tim Krul having been substituted on for the shoot-out and saving two penalties.


title: 2014 FIFA World Cup

text: Germany qualified for the final for the eighth time with an historic 7–1 win over Brazil – the biggest defeat in Brazilian football since 1920. Miroslav Klose's goal in this match was his 16th throughout all World Cups, breaking the record he had previously shared with Ronaldo. Klose set another record by becoming the first player to appear in four World Cup semi-finals. Argentina reached their first final since 1990, and their fifth overall, after overcoming the Netherlands in a penalty shoot-out following a 0–0 draw at the end of extra time.


title: 2014 FIFA World Cup

text: The Netherlands defeated Brazil 3–0 to secure third place, the first for the Dutch team in their history. Overall, Brazil conceded 14 goals in the tournament; this was the most by a team at any single World Cup since 1986, and the most by a host nation in history, although their fourth-place finish still represented Brazil's best result in a World Cup since their last win in 2002.


title: 2014 FIFA World Cup

text: This marked the first time that teams from the same continent had won three consecutive World Cups (following Italy in 2006 and Spain in 2010). It was also the first time that a European nation had won the World Cup in the Americas. On aggregate Europe then had 11 victories, to South America's nine.


title: 2014 FIFA World Cup

text: In total, 171 goals were scored by a record 121 players, with five credited as own goals. Goals scored from penalty shoot-outs are not counted.


title: 2014 FIFA World Cup

text: The most notable disciplinary case was that of Uruguayan striker Luis Suárez, who was suspended for nine international matches and banned from taking part in any football-related activity (including entering any stadium) for four months, following a biting incident on Italian defender Giorgio Chiellini. He was also fined CHF100,000. After an appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, Suárez was later allowed to participate in training and friendly matches with new club Barcelona.


title: 2014 FIFA World Cup

text: The members of the Technical Study Group, the committee that decided which players won the awards, were led by FIFA's head of the Technical Division Jean-Paul Brigger and featured:


title: 2014 FIFA World Cup

text: There were changes to the voting procedure for awards for the 2014 edition: while in 2010 accredited media were allowed to vote for the Golden Ball award, in 2014 only the Technical Study Group could select the outcome.


title: 2014 FIFA World Cup

text: As was the case during the 2010 edition, FIFA released an All-Star Team based on the Castrol performance index in its official website.


title: 2014 FIFA World Cup

text: The total prize money on offer for the tournament was confirmed by FIFA as US$576 million (including payments of $70 million to domestic clubs and $100 million as player insurances), a 37 percent increase from the amount allocated in the 2010 tournament. Before the tournament, each of the 32 entrants received $1.5 million for preparation costs. At the tournament, the prize money was distributed as follows:


title: 2014 FIFA World Cup

text: Per statistical convention in football, matches decided in extra time are counted as wins and losses, while matches decided by penalty shoot-outs are counted as draws.


title: 2014 FIFA World Cup

text: Costs of the tournament totalled $11.6 billion, making it the most expensive World Cup to date, until surpassed by 2018 FIFA World Cup which cost an estimated $14.2 billion. FIFA was expected to spend US$2 billion on staging the finals, with its greatest single expense being the US$576 million prize money pot.


title: 2014 FIFA World Cup

text: Although organisers originally estimated costs of US$1.1 billion, a reported US$3.6 billion was ultimately spent on stadium works. Five of the chosen host cities had brand new venues built specifically for the World Cup, while the Estádio Nacional Mané Garrincha in the capital Brasília was demolished and rebuilt, with the remaining six being extensively renovated.


title: 2014 FIFA World Cup

text: An additional R$3 billion (US$1.3 billion, €960 million, £780 million at June 2014 rates) was earmarked by the Brazilian government for investment in infrastructure works and projects for use during the 2014 World Cup and beyond. However, the failed completion of many of the proposed works provoked discontent among some Brazilians.


title: 2014 FIFA World Cup

text: The Brazilian government pledged US$900 million to be invested into security forces and that the tournament would be "one of the most protected sports events in history."


title: 2014 FIFA World Cup

text: The marketing of the 2014 FIFA World Cup included sale of tickets, support from sponsors and promotion through events that utilise the symbols and songs of the tournament. Popular merchandise included items featuring the official mascot as well as an official video game that has been developed by EA Sports. As a partner of the German Football Association, part of German major airline Lufthansa's fleet was branded "Fanhansa" for the time being. Branded planes flew the German national team, media representatives and football fans to Brazil.


title: 2014 FIFA World Cup

text: The sponsors of the 2014 World Cup are divided into three categories: FIFA Partners, FIFA World Cup Sponsors and National Supporters.


title: 2014 FIFA World Cup

text: The official song of the tournament was "We Are One (Ole Ola)" with vocals from Pitbull, Jennifer Lopez and Claudia Leitte.


title: 2014 FIFA World Cup

text: For a fourth consecutive FIFA World Cup Finals, the coverage was provided by HBS (Host Broadcast Services), a subsidiary of Infront Sports & Media. Sony was selected as the official equipment provider and built 12 bespoke high definition production 40-foot-long containers, one for each tournament venue, to house the extensive amount of equipment required. Each match utilised 37 standard camera plans, including Aerial and Cablecam, two Ultramotion cameras and dedicated cameras for interviews. The official tournament film, as well as three matches, will be filmed with ultra high definition technology (4K resolution), following a successful trial at the 2013 FIFA Confederations Cup.


title: 2014 FIFA World Cup

text: The broadcasting rights – covering television, radio, internet and mobile coverage – for the tournament were sold to media companies in each individual territory either directly by FIFA, or through licensed companies or organisations such as the European Broadcasting Union, Organización de Televisión Iberoamericana, International Media Content, Dentsu and RS International Broadcasting & Sports Management. The sale of these rights accounted for an estimated 60% of FIFA's income from staging a World Cup. The International Broadcast Centre was situated at the Riocentro in the Barra da Tijuca neighbourhood of Rio de Janeiro.


title: 2014 FIFA World Cup

text: Worldwide, several games qualified as the most-watched sporting events in their country in 2014, including 42.9 million people in Brazil for the opening game between Brazil and Croatia, the 34.1 million in Japan who saw their team play Ivory Coast, and 34.7 million in Germany who saw their national team win the World Cup against Argentina, while the 24.7 million viewers during the game between the US and Portugal is joint with the 2010 final as the most-watched football game in the United States. According to FIFA, over 1 billion people tuned in worldwide to watch the final between Germany and Argentina.


title: 2014 FIFA World Cup

text: The 2014 FIFA World Cup generated various controversies, including demonstrations, some of which took place even before the tournament started. Furthermore, there were various issues with safety, including the death of eight workers and a fire during construction, breaches into stadiums, an unstable makeshift staircase at the Maracanã Stadium, a monorail collapse, and the collapse of an unfinished overpass in Belo Horizonte. The houses of thousands of families living in Rio de Janeiro’s slums were cleared for redevelopments for the World Cup in spite of protests and resistance. Favela do Metrô, near the Maracanã Stadium, was completely destroyed as a result, having previously housed 700 families in 2010.


title: 2014 FIFA World Cup

text: Prior to the opening ceremony of the 2013 FIFA Confederations Cup staged in Brazil, demonstrations took place outside the venue, organised by people unhappy with the amount of public money spent to enable the hosting of the FIFA World Cup. Both the Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff and FIFA president Sepp Blatter were heavily booed as they were announced to give their speeches at the 2013 tournament's opening, which resulted in FIFA announcing that the 2014 FIFA World Cup opening ceremony would not feature any speeches. Further protests took place during the Confederations Cup as well as prior to and during the World Cup.


title: 2014 FIFA World Cup

text: At the Group B match between Spain and Chile, around 100 Chilean supporters who had gathered outside Maracanã Stadium forced their way into the stadium and caused damage to the media centre. Military police reported that 85 Chileans were detained during the events, while others reached the stands. Earlier, about 20 Argentinians made a similar breach during Argentina's Group F game against Bosnia and Herzegovina at the same stadium.


title: 2014 FIFA World Cup

text: On 3 July 2014, an overpass under construction in Belo Horizonte as part of the World Cup infrastructure projects collapsed onto a busy carriageway below, leaving two people dead and 22 others injured.


title: 2014 FIFA World Cup

text: During the tournament, FIFA received significant criticism for the way head injuries are handled during matches. Two incidents in particular attracted the most attention. First, in a group stage match, after Uruguayan defender Álvaro Pereira received a blow to the head, he lay unconscious. The Uruguayan doctor signaled for the player to be substituted, but he returned to the match. The incident drew criticism from the professional players' union FIFPro, and from Michel D'Hooghe, a member of the FIFA executive board and chairman of its medical committee.


title: 2014 FIFA World Cup

text: Second, in the Final, German midfielder Christoph Kramer received a blow to the head from a collision in the 14th minute, but returned to the match before collapsing in the 31st minute. During that time, Kramer was disoriented and confused, and asked the referee Nicola Rizzoli whether the match he was playing in was the World Cup Final.


title: Frida Kahlo

text: 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 artifacts of Mexico. Inspired by the country's popular culture, she employed a naïve folk art style to explore questions of identity, postcolonialism, 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" movement, which sought to define a Mexican identity, Kahlo has been described as a surrealist or magical realist. She is known for painting about her experience of chronic pain.


title: Frida Kahlo

text: Born to a German father and a "mestiza" mother, Kahlo spent most of her childhood and adult life at La Casa Azul, her family home in Coyoacán – now publicly accessible as the Frida Kahlo Museum. Although she was disabled by polio as a child, Kahlo had been a promising student headed for medical school until being injured in a bus accident at the age of 18, which caused her lifelong pain and medical problems. During her recovery, she returned to her childhood interest in art with the idea of becoming an artist.


title: Frida Kahlo

text: Kahlo's interests in politics and art led her to join the Mexican Communist Party in 1927, through which she met fellow Mexican artist Diego Rivera. The couple married in 1929 and spent the late 1920s and early 1930s travelling in Mexico and the United States together. During this time, she developed her artistic style, drawing her main inspiration from Mexican folk culture, and painted mostly small self-portraits that mixed elements from pre-Columbian and Catholic beliefs. Her paintings raised the interest of Surrealist artist André Breton, who arranged for Kahlo's first solo exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York in 1938; the exhibition was a success and was followed by another in Paris in 1939. While the French exhibition was less successful, the Louvre purchased a painting from Kahlo, "The Frame", making her the first Mexican artist to be featured in their collection. Throughout the 1940s, Kahlo participated in exhibitions in Mexico and the United States and worked as an art teacher. She taught at the Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado (""La Esmeralda"") and was a founding member of the "Seminario de Cultura Mexicana". Kahlo's always-fragile health began to decline in the same decade. She had her first solo exhibition in Mexico in 1953, shortly before her death in 1954 at the age of 47.


title: Frida Kahlo

text: Kahlo's work as an artist remained relatively unknown until the late 1970s, when her work was rediscovered by art historians and political activists. By the early 1990s, not only had she become a recognized figure in art history, but she was also regarded as an icon for Chicanos, the feminism movement, and the LGBTQ+ community. Kahlo's work has been celebrated internationally as emblematic of Mexican national and indigenous traditions and by feminists for what is seen as its uncompromising depiction of the female experience and form.


title: Frida Kahlo

text: Kahlo enjoyed art from an early age, receiving drawing instruction from printmaker Fernando Fernández (who was her father's friend) and filling notebooks with sketches. In 1925, she began to work outside of school to help her family. After briefly working as a stenographer, she became a paid engraving apprentice for Fernández. He was impressed by her talent, although she did not consider art as a career at this time.


title: Frida Kahlo

text: A severe bus accident at the age of 18 left Kahlo in lifelong pain. Confined to bed for three months following the accident, Kahlo began to paint. She started to consider a career as a medical illustrator, as well, which would combine her interests in science and art. Her mother provided her with a specially-made easel, which enabled her to paint in bed, and her father lent her some of his oil paints. She had a mirror placed above the easel, so that she could see herself. Painting became a way for Kahlo to explore questions of identity and existence. She explained, "I paint myself because I am often alone and I am the subject I know best." She later stated that the accident and the isolating recovery period made her desire "to begin again, painting things just as [she] saw them with [her] own eyes and nothing more."


title: Frida Kahlo

text: Most of the paintings Kahlo made during this time were portraits of herself, her sisters, and her schoolfriends. Her early paintings and correspondence show that she drew inspiration especially from European artists, in particular Renaissance masters such as Sandro Botticelli and Bronzino and from "avant-garde" movements such as Neue Sachlichkeit and Cubism.


title: Frida Kahlo

text: On moving to Morelos in 1929 with her husband Rivera, Kahlo was inspired by the city of Cuernavaca where they lived. She changed her artistic style and increasingly drew inspiration from Mexican folk art. Art historian Andrea Kettenmann states that she may have been influenced by Adolfo Best Maugard's treatise on the subject, for she incorporated many of the characteristics that he outlined – for example, the lack of perspective and the combining of elements from pre-Columbian and colonial periods of Mexican art. Her identification with "La Raza", the people of Mexico, and her profound interest in its culture remained important facets of her art throughout the rest of her life.


title: Frida Kahlo

text: When Kahlo and Rivera moved to San Francisco in 1930, Kahlo was introduced to American artists such as Edward Weston, Ralph Stackpole, Timothy L. Pflueger, and Nickolas Muray. The six months spent in San Francisco were a productive period for Kahlo, who further developed the folk art style she had adopted in Cuernavaca. In addition to painting portraits of several new acquaintances, she made "Frieda and Diego Rivera" (1931), a double portrait based on their wedding photograph, and "The Portrait of Luther Burbank" (1931), which depicted the eponymous horticulturist as a hybrid between a human and a plant. Although she still publicly presented herself as simply Rivera's spouse rather than as an artist, she participated for the first time in an exhibition, when "Frieda and Diego Rivera" was included in the Sixth Annual Exhibition of the San Francisco Society of Women Artists in the Palace of the Legion of Honor.


title: Frida Kahlo

text: On moving to Detroit with Rivera, Kahlo experienced numerous health problems related to a failed pregnancy. Despite these health problems, as well as her dislike for the capitalist culture of the United States, Kahlo's time in the city was beneficial for her artistic expression. She experimented with different techniques, such as etching and frescos, and her paintings began to show a stronger narrative style. She also began placing emphasis on the themes of "terror, suffering, wounds, and pain". Despite the popularity of the mural in Mexican art at the time, she adopted a diametrically opposed medium, votive images or "retablos", religious paintings made on small metal sheets by amateur artists to thank saints for their blessings during a calamity. Amongst the works she made in the "retablo" manner in Detroit are "Henry Ford Hospital" (1932), "My Birth" (1932), and "Self-Portrait on the Border of Mexico and the United States" (1932). While none of Kahlo's works were featured in exhibitions in Detroit, she gave an interview to the "Detroit News" on her art; the article was condescendingly titled "Wife of the Master Mural Painter Gleefully Dabbles in Works of Art".


title: Frida Kahlo

text: Upon returning to Mexico City in 1934 Kahlo made no new paintings, and only two in the following year, due to health complications. In 1937 and 1938, however, Kahlo's artistic career was extremely productive, following her divorce and then reconciliation with Rivera. She painted more "than she had done in all her eight previous years of marriage", creating such works as "My Nurse and I" (1937), "Memory, the Heart" (1937), "Four Inhabitants of Mexico" (1938), and "What the Water Gave Me" (1938). Although she was still unsure about her work, the National Autonomous University of Mexico exhibited some of her paintings in early 1938. She made her first significant sale in the summer of 1938 when film star and art collector Edward G. Robinson purchased four paintings at $200 each. Even greater recognition followed when French Surrealist André Breton visited Rivera in April 1938. He was impressed by Kahlo, immediately claiming her as a surrealist and describing her work as "a ribbon around a bomb". He not only promised to arrange for her paintings to be exhibited in Paris but also wrote to his friend and art dealer, Julien Levy, who invited her to hold her first solo exhibition at his gallery on the East 57th Street in Manhattan.


title: Frida Kahlo

text: In October, Kahlo traveled alone to New York, where her colorful Mexican dress "caused a sensation" and made her seen as "the height of exotica". The exhibition opening in November was attended by famous figures such as Georgia O'Keeffe and Clare Boothe Luce and received much positive attention in the press, although many critics adopted a condescending tone in their reviews. For example, "Time" wrote that "Little Frida's pictures ... had the daintiness of miniatures, the vivid reds, and yellows of Mexican tradition and the playfully bloody fancy of an unsentimental child". Despite the Great Depression, Kahlo sold half of the 25 paintings presented in the exhibition. She also received commissions from A. Conger Goodyear, then the president of the MoMA, and Clare Boothe Luce, for whom she painted a portrait of Luce's friend, socialite Dorothy Hale, who had committed suicide by jumping from her apartment building. During the three months she spent in New York, Kahlo painted very little, instead focusing on enjoying the city to the extent that her fragile health allowed. She also had several affairs, continuing the one with Nickolas Muray and engaging in ones with Levy and Edgar Kaufmann, Jr.


title: Frida Kahlo

text: In January 1939, Kahlo sailed to Paris to follow up on André Breton's invitation to stage an exhibition of her work. When she arrived, she found that he had not cleared her paintings from the customs and no longer even owned a gallery. With the aid of Marcel Duchamp, she was able to arrange for an exhibition at the Renou et Colle Gallery. Further problems arose when the gallery refused to show all but two of Kahlo's paintings, considering them too shocking for audiences, and Breton insisted that they be shown alongside photographs by Manuel Alvarez Bravo, pre-Columbian sculptures, 18th- and 19th-century Mexican portraits, and what she considered "junk": sugar skulls, toys, and other items he had bought from Mexican markets.


title: Frida Kahlo

text: The exhibition opened in March, but received much less attention than she had received in the United States, partly due to the looming Second World War, and made a loss financially, which led Kahlo to cancel a planned exhibition in London. Regardless, the Louvre purchased "The Frame", making her the first Mexican artist to be featured in their collection. She was also warmly received by other Parisian artists, such as Pablo Picasso and Joan Miró, as well as the fashion world, with designer Elsa Schiaparelli designing a dress inspired by her and "Vogue Paris" featuring her on its pages. However, her overall opinion of Paris and the Surrealists remained negative; in a letter to Muray, she called them "this bunch of coocoo lunatics and very stupid surrealists" who "are so crazy 'intellectual' and rotten that I can't even stand them anymore".


title: Frida Kahlo

text: In the United States, Kahlo's paintings continued to raise interest. In 1941, her works were featured at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, and, in the following year, she participated in two high-profile exhibitions in New York, the "Twentieth-Century Portraits" exhibition at the MoMA and the Surrealists' "First Papers of Surrealism" exhibition. In 1943, she was included in the "Mexican Art Today" exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and "Women Artists" at Peggy Guggenheim's The Art of This Century gallery in New York.


title: Frida Kahlo

text: Kahlo gained more appreciation for her art in Mexico as well. She became a founding member of the Seminario de Cultura Mexicana, a group of twenty-five artists commissioned by the Ministry of Public Education in 1942 to spread public knowledge of Mexican culture. As a member, she took part in planning exhibitions and attended a conference on art. In Mexico City, her paintings were featured in two exhibitions on Mexican art that were staged at the English-language Benjamin Franklin Library in 1943 and 1944. She was invited to participate in "Salon de la Flor", an exhibition presented at the annual flower exposition. An article by Rivera on Kahlo's art was also published in the journal published by the Seminario de Cultura Mexicana.


title: Frida Kahlo

text: In 1943, Kahlo accepted a teaching position at the recently reformed, nationalistic Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado "La Esmeralda." She encouraged her students to treat her in an informal and non-hierarchical way and taught them to appreciate Mexican popular culture and folk art and to derive their subjects from the street. When her health problems made it difficult for her to commute to the school in Mexico City, she began to hold her lessons at La Casa Azul. Four of her students – Fanny Rabel, Arturo García Bustos, Guillermo Monroy, and Arturo Estrada – became devotees, and were referred to as "Los Fridos" for their enthusiasm. Kahlo secured three mural commissions for herself and her students. In 1944, they painted La Rosita, a "pulqueria" in Coyoacán. In 1945, the government commissioned them to paint murals for a Coyoacán launderette as part of a national scheme to help poor women who made their living as laundresses. The same year, the group created murals for Posada del Sol, a hotel in Mexico City. However, it was destroyed soon after completion as the hotel's owner did not like it.


title: Frida Kahlo

text: Kahlo struggled to make a living from her art until the mid to late 1940s, as she refused to adapt her style to suit her clients' wishes. She received two commissions from the Mexican government in the early 1940s. She did not complete the first one, possibly due to her dislike of the subject, and the second commission was rejected by the commissioning body. Nevertheless, she had regular private clients, such as engineer Eduardo Morillo Safa, who ordered more than thirty portraits of family members over the decade. Her financial situation improved when she received a 5000-peso national prize for her painting "Moses" (1945) in 1946 and when "The Two Fridas" was purchased by the Museo de Arte Moderno in 1947. According to art historian Andrea Kettenmann, by the mid-1940s, her paintings were "featured in the majority of group exhibitions in Mexico". Further, Martha Zamora wrote that she could "sell whatever she was currently painting; sometimes incomplete pictures were purchased right off the easel".


title: Frida Kahlo

text: Even as Kahlo was gaining recognition in Mexico, her health was declining rapidly, and an attempted surgery to support her spine failed. Her paintings from this period include "Broken Column" (1944), "Without Hope" (1945), "Tree of Hope, Stand Fast" (1946), and "The Wounded Deer" (1946), reflecting her poor physical state. During her last years, Kahlo was mostly confined to the Casa Azul. She painted mostly still lifes, portraying fruit and flowers with political symbols such as flags or doves. She was concerned about being able to portray her political convictions, stating that "I have a great restlessness about my paintings. Mainly because I want to make it useful to the revolutionary communist movement... until now I have managed simply an honest expression of my own self ... I must struggle with all my strength to ensure that the little positive my health allows me to do also benefits the Revolution, the only real reason to live." She also altered her painting style: her brushstrokes, previously delicate and careful, were now hastier, her use of color more brash, and the overall style more intense and feverish.


title: Frida Kahlo

text: Photographer Lola Alvarez Bravo understood that Kahlo did not have much longer to live, and thus staged her first solo exhibition in Mexico at the Galería Arte Contemporaneo in April 1953. Though Kahlo was initially not due to attend the opening, as her doctors had prescribed bed rest for her, she ordered her four-poster bed to be moved from her home to the gallery. To the surprise of the guests, she arrived in an ambulance and was carried on a stretcher to the bed, where she stayed for the duration of the party. The exhibition was a notable cultural event in Mexico and also received attention in mainstream press around the world. The same year, the Tate Gallery's exhibition on Mexican art in London featured five of her paintings.


title: Frida Kahlo

text: In 1954, Kahlo was again hospitalized in April and May. That spring, she resumed painting after a one-year interval. Her last paintings include the political "Marxism Will Give Health to the Sick" (c. 1954) and "Frida and Stalin" (c. 1954) and the still-life "Viva La Vida" (1954).


title: Frida Kahlo

text: Estimates vary on how many paintings Kahlo made during her life, with figures ranging from fewer than 150 to around 200. Her earliest paintings, which she made in the mid-1920s, show influence from Renaissance masters and European avant-garde artists such as Amedeo Modigliani. Towards the end of the decade, Kahlo derived more inspiration from Mexican folk art, drawn to its elements of "fantasy, naivety, and fascination with violence and death". The style she developed mixed reality with surrealistic elements and often depicted pain and death.


title: Frida Kahlo

text: One of Kahlo's earliest champions was Surrealist artist André Breton, who claimed her as part of the movement as an artist who had supposedly developed her style "in "total ignorance" of the ideas that motivated the activities of my friends and myself". This was echoed by Bertram D. Wolfe, who wrote that Kahlo's was a "sort of 'naïve' Surrealism, which she invented for herself". Although Breton regarded her as mostly a feminine force within the Surrealist movement, Kahlo brought postcolonial questions and themes to the forefront of her brand of Surrealism. Breton also described Kahlo's work as "wonderfully situated at the point of intersection between the political (philosophical) line and the artistic line". While she subsequently participated in Surrealist exhibitions, she stated that she "detest[ed] Surrealism", which to her was "bourgeois art" and not "true art that the people hope from the artist". Some art historians have disagreed whether her work should be classified as belonging to the movement at all. According to Andrea Kettenmann, Kahlo was a symbolist concerned more in portraying her inner experiences. Emma Dexter has argued that, as Kahlo derived her mix of fantasy and reality mainly from Aztec mythology and Mexican culture instead of Surrealism, it is more appropriate to consider her paintings as having more in common with magical realism, also known as New Objectivity. It combined reality and fantasy and employed similar style to Kahlo's, such as flattened perspective, clearly outlined characters and bright colours.