Portrait of My Father, 1951 - by Frida Kahlo

Portrait of My Father, 1951 - by Frida Kahlo
Portrait of My Father, 1951 - by Frida Kahlo

Frida's father is a a professional photographer and an amateur painter and she is very close to him. It was her father who taught her how to use a camera and develop photographs as well as how to retouch the pictures. Maybe due to this early experience Frida always like to pose herself and her subjects like they are in front of camera. Frida's father passed away in 1941 before she painted him a portrait. In this portrait she used the brownish tones to recall the early sepia-toned photographs her father use to take.

Although this portrait was painted 10 years after his death Frida painted her father as a young man. He looks like how he appeared in his wedding pictures of 1898. This is not actually the same as in Frida's memory. After got married her father aged pretty quickly and in Frida's memory he is with gray hair and face with wrinkles. In this portrait he looked away from the viewer and emotionless. His large eyes are filled with intelligence and repeated in the large lens of camera.

The dedication on the scroll at the bottom reads:

I painted my father Wilhelm Kahlo, of Hungarian-German origin, artist-photographer by profession, in character generous, intelligent and fine, valiant because he suffered for sixty years with epilepsy, but never gave up working and fought against Hitler, with adoration, His daughter Frida Kahlo".