Continuing with our fortnightly artist study I recently hosted a session to look at the work of Frida Kahlo. I love Frida Kahlo’s work and Em has a real interest in Frida; I even stitched her a portrait of Frida for her birthday last year.
Why Frida Kahlo?
Frida Kahlo is interesting for lots of reasons; she wasn’t especially celebrated during her lifetime and was often referred to as Deigo Rivera’s wife; failing to recognise her for her own talents.
She is also interesting because she overcame significant difficulties and also didn’t care much about her appearance; instead choosing to celebrate herself. She was also passionate about her Mexican heritage and this shines through her artwork. She is also well known for her self-portrait work.
Materials Needed
For this session I provided each child with a range of printouts should they wish to make their own pack of information.
- Famous Artist Research Brochure (from TpT)
- Famous Artist Colouring Pages (from TpT)
- Famous Artist Paper Dolls (From TpT)
One of my friends ran the activity for this session and for this the children needed:
- Photgraph of themselves
- A4 acetate
- Sharpies
How I ran the Session
As with my previous studies, I started by telling the children about Frida. I also brought to their attention that she is often far more well known for her appearance rather than her artwork – I demonstrated this by showing her image from a number of books (for older children you could look at how female artists are subjected to a different gaze than their male counterparts).
I then told the children about Frida Kahlo, talking about her childhood and early life and her life as an artist. I talked about her passion for all things Mexicana and why this was, as well as talking about the influences on her artwork. As has so often been the theme during our studies, the artists are often influenced by war and in Frida Kahlo’s case this was the Mexican Civil War.
We then went on to look at some of Frida’s work and chatted about what we thought about it; what we thought she was trying to demonstrate and whether we liked it or not.
It was interesting what the children took from the artwork and which they liked or liked less. I had hoped to show the children the online tour of Frida’s Casa Azul but annoyingly the website was down during the session. I did however share the link afterwards. I think it is a great way to see the colour of the area Frida was surrounded by as well as seeing some of her artwork on the wall (note how small some of it is!)
Art Activity
A friend ran this art activity. She talked to the children about a piece of Frida’s work called The Frame. The children then used their photograph with the acetate over the top to create their own framed self-portrait. This was a fun way to recreate Frida’s artwork.
The children were also supplied with some scratch art frames to decorate with a picture inside which I know my three really enjoyed doing.
I did run a Frida Kahlo session about 18-24 months ago and for that one the children drew their own self portraits and we had a portrait gallery where we had to decide who was matched to which image.
Follow up with my own children
With my own children, we have followed this up by adding to our artist project book and adding Kahlo to the world map we are building. We talked again about her work and completed the artist study papers we have been working on.
Frida Kahlo was also mentioned in Em’s Storytime magazine this month and the children enjoyed listening to the story as they completed a colour by number from the magazine. We also read a few books which outline her life.
Other artist studies can be found below.
interesting stuff