ABSTRACT
Frida Kahlo used the often traumatic and harrowing iconography of her Mexican heritage to pamt herself and the pain which had become an integral part of her life after, at age eighteen, a streetcar accident left her crippled. As she sought her own roots, she also voiced concern for her country as it struggled for an independent cultural identity. In Kahlo's particular form of Mexicanidad, a romantic nationalism that focused upon traditional art and artifacts uniting all indigenistas regardless of their political stances, she revered Aztec traditions above and beyond those of other pre-Spanish native cultures. The intense interest in her homeland and her use of indigenous Aztec art for themes and symbols make Kahlo's art at once political and cultural. It is probably unfair, even speculatively, to associate Kahlo with the political authoritarianism and artistic didacticism of Stalinism.
