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Amanda Krause

AP Art History

Mrs. Quimby

January 18, 2019

“‘The Two Fridas’ (#140) versus ‘Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Central Park’

(#143)”

The painting The Two Fridas by Frida Kahlo was painted in 1939 with oil on canvas and

is 67 in by 67 in. It is a double self-portrait and is a surrealist piece. It depicts two Fridas holding

hands and sitting on a bench with a stormy gray and black background. The Frida on the right

wears a modern European dress and holds a locket with Diego Rivera’s picture inside, who she

was married to until this painting was released, the year she got divorced from him. Her heart is

visible in her chest and wraps around her neck, connecting her to the Frida on the left. She wears

a white colonial dress with accessories that reference different periods in Mexican history. Her

heart is broken and blood drips onto her dress while her hand rests on top of a hemostat. Kahlo

lived as an artist during a period when many women were living in the domestic sphere and

expressed themes of beauty and social expectations in her self-portraits. She painted about two

hundred works of art, mainly self-portraits. Many of them expose human anatomy due to the

thirty two operations she had after a childhood accident, leaving her unable to have children. As

a way to cope with her surgeries, she began to paint. The themes illustrated in this piece

represent her culturally mixed heritage, the reality of her medical conditions, and the repression

of women. The Frida on the left symbolizes the “unloved” Frida and her white dress expresses a

theme of peasant women. The Frida on the right symbolizes the woman Diego Rivera loved and

wanted to marry. The painting was originally meant to celebrate the marriage between her and
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Diego, but the loose grasp of their hands symbolizes her doubts about Diego’s fidelity. The use

of the double self-portrait represents resilience.

The painting Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Central Park by Diego Rivera

was painted in 1947 as a mural, is 4.8 m by 15 m, and is a surrealist piece. The use of a mural

was famous in Mexican history as it was originally used for propaganda under the post-

revolution government. Artists began to use it for their own purposes to highlight the

“nightmares” under the political idealism that existed in the country. The piece depicts hundreds

of characters from 400 years of Mexican history gathered together in Mexico’s largest park.

Rivera creates a scene of contrasting historical figures such as Hernán Cortés, Sor Juana, and

Porfirio Díaz. In the middle stand Rivera, Frida Kahlo, José Guadalupe Posada (a printmaker),

and La Catrina. “Catrina” was a nickname for an upper-class woman who dressed in European

clothing. This character became famous in one of Posada’s paintings as she was created to

critique the Mexican elite. In this painting, she holds Rivera’s hand while her other arm is held

by Posada to unite the two painters. Frida rests one hand on Rivera’s shoulders while the other

holds a Yin Yang object. The left side of the painting shows the conquest and colonization of

Mexico, the center shows the fight for independence and the revolution, and the right side shows

modern achievements. The center also depicts citizens in their Sunday best, representing the

bourgeois life in 1895. The Yin Yang object symbolizes the couple’s complex relationship.

Frida’s hand on her husband’s shoulder represents his influence on her. While Rivera was

painting this, Frida was sick so his small height in the painting may symbolize his feelings of

helplessness. The area to the left of the balloons symbolizes the conquest and religious

intolerance during the colonial era to give way to the hope for a democratic nation. The area past

the bandstand on the right of the piece represents how the battles of the revolution gave way to a
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society where land and liberty became a reality. This piece mainly functioned to remind the

viewer that the struggles and glory of four centuries of Mexican history are due to the

participation of Mexicans from all groups of society.

Both pieces of art are similar in their form and what they represent. They are both oil on

canvas and are painted using the surrealist style. Both pieces also function to show Mexican

history and the story of their independence, especially seen in Rivera’s painting, as well as other

parts of their culture, as can be seen in the dresses both Fridas wear.