Home STYLE NEWS FS Colour Series: Biking Red inspired by Frida Kahlo's Mexican Heat
FS Colour Series: Biking Red inspired by Frida Kahlo's Mexican Heat
May 22, 2020 by Rosie Lesso 2143 0
Pitahayas /Frida Kahlo / 1938
Colouring flowers, ribbons, veins and pulsing hearts, the iridescent crimson in BIKING RED Linen is the lifeblood of Frida Kahlo's paintings. Echoing the tinge of red in the Mexican flag, this shade came to represent many forces in Frida Kahlo's deeply introspective paintings, but a unifying theme was a love for her native Mexico, which she bound tight into the core of her art.
Born to half-German, half-Mexican parents in 1907, Kahlo grew up as one of four sisters in the famous 'Blue House', or 'Casa Azul.' The Mexican Revolution ravaged her early childhood years with horrific violence, but collective suffering was replaced with personal agony when she contracted a severe case of polio aged just 6 years old. The illness left her bedridden for nearly a year, while her right foot and leg stayed thinner and smaller than the left for the rest of her life, which she would later choose to hide with long, brilliantly coloured Mexican skirts.
FS BIKING RED Softened 100% Linen
As an adolescent Kahlo initially planned to become a doctor, focussing in school on biology, zoology and anatomy, earning knowledge that would play out in her paintings as an adult. Bright, sociable and driven, she also became involved with various left-wing political groups who protested against the violence of the revolution, fighting for her beloved Mexico with a powerful patriotism. But a near-fatal bus accident tore apart early ambitions, leaving irreversible damage to her spinal cord and womb from which she would never truly recover. While convalescing in her parent's house, boredom led Kahlo to take up drawing and she discovered the powerful catharsis of channelling inner emotions and frustrations onto paper and canvas.
In the years that followed Kahlo met and fell in love with the Mexican artist Diego Rivera – though their relationship was tumultuous, they both had a profound impact on each other's art and life. Weaving in and out of Diego's life, Kahlo adopted traditional Mexican clothing, wearing distinctive long skirts and huge floral headdresses in joyously vibrant colours that would transform her into a cultural icon. She wove this look into her deeply intimate self-portraits, merging style and art into one.
Tree of Hope / Frida Kahlo / Frida Kahlo / 1946
Throughout the later 1930s Kahlo made a series of paintings featuring monkeys, including the enigmatic Self-Portrait with Monkey, 1938. Crimson ribbons weave and swirl through Kahlo's long, dark hair, lending her an exotic, seductive femininity, echoed in her trademark red lips. This trait is undercut with references to stereotypical masculinity, including heavy brows and facial hair, nodding towards Kahlo's ambiguous attitudes about gender. In the later Self Portrait Dedicated to Dr Eloesser, 1940, made in tribute to her lifelong friend and physician, Kahlo becomes a Biblical martyr encircled by a thorny choker in a bleak and inhospitable landscape, but her dazzling red lips emerge from a sea of murky greens, a symbol of her bold and unflinching defiance in the face of suffering.
Tree of Hope, 1946 brings blazing hot crimson from Kahlo's lips pouring out like liquid lava across her entire dress. Various motifs in the painting nod towards the recurring spinal surgery the artist had to undergo for much of her adult life, as well as the debilitating back brace she often wore to aid her recovery. But against a dry, barren landscape her red dress is a dazzling beacon of strength and hope, engulfing the painting with a burning, radiant optimism. In The Love Embrace of the Universe, Earth (Mexico), and Señor Xolotl, 1949, Kahlo's brilliant red becomes a symbol of everlasting maternal love as she embraces an infantile Rivera on her lap. Though she was unable to have children, her role in Diego's life became close to that of a mother, as she explained in her journal, "At every moment he is my child, my child born every moment." She also places herself deeply rooted into the Mexican earth, springing forth with a burst of coloured light like a blooming tropical flower.
The Love Embrace of the Universe, Earth (Mexico), and Señor Xolotl / Frida Kahlo / 1949
Viva la Vida, 1954 is the last painting Kahlo ever made – a final ode to the riotous brilliance of crimson red. The hard, waxy skin of mottled green watermelons is sliced open to reveal the juicy vibrancy inside, a fitting ode to the passionate and unstoppable spirit of Kahlo.
FS BIKING RED Softened 100% Linen comes in Midweight
Rosie Lesso
Other posts by Rosie Lesso
FS Colour Series: Spice inspired by Peter Paul Rubens' Blazing Fire
Fabric in the shade of SPICE Linen became billowing plumes of fire in the hands of Flemish master Peter Paul Rubens, bursting out of the darkness like sparks of light. Leader in the Baroque style, Rubens' canvases were charged with emotive, sensual energy and movement, as theatrically staged figures are engulfed in epic swathes of…
FS Colour Series: ELEPHANT Inspired by Albert Bierstadt's Distant Mountains
Albert Bierstadt's dreamy landscapes convey the unspoilt wilderness of the 19th century American outback, conveying the awe-inducing wonder of sharp cliffs, huge skies and cavernous valleys with soft colours and hazy atmospheric light. Refined shades of bluish-grey like that of ELEPHANT Linen stain distant, craggy mountains and heavily laden storm clouds with quietly brewing drama,…
FS Colour Series: Power Pink Inspired by Willem De Kooning's Daring Bravado
Fresh, ripe pinks like that of POWER PINK Linen streak across many of Willem De Kooning's paintings, creating shockingly bright shards of colour amidst his frenetic expressionist visions. Leader in the American Abstract Expressionist school throughout the 1950s and 1960s, De Kooning's paintings were often based on women, painted with flurried passages of pink in…
FS Colour Series: Honey Blossom Inspired by Jean Honore Fragonard's Flirtatious Pink
HONEY BLOSSOM Linen's sumptuous pink flutters through Jean-Honore Fragonard's decadent Rococo scenes, tinting ruffled skirts, diaphanous veils and the blushing cheeks of hopeful young suitors. Nestled amongst cool, watery greens and dusty blues, this colour brings the fresh, peachy glow of spring and summer into his works of art. But it also symbolises the blossoming…
FS Colour Series: Egyptian Yellow Inspired by Pablo Picasso's Luminous Gold
One of the greatest colourists of all time, Pablo Picasso brought radiant yellows like that of EGYPTIAN YELLOW linen into many of his most famous artworks, infusing into them a golden, glowing light. Born in Spain before relocating to France, Picasso remained patriotic to his home country throughout his career, and he would have been…