In this video, we will question Frida’s relationship with Surrealism and how much it serves her work (or not) to be placed within that category by analysing in depth the painting The Two Fridas exhibited in the Surrealist Exhibition in Mexico in 1940. To help you navigate this video, we recommend you answer the following questions as you watch it.

Why is the painting What the Water Gave Me the reason why people tend to view Frida as a Surrealist artist?
Why did André Breton like it so much?
Why was Frida one of the only women artists in his book on Painting and Surrealism? What do you think was so special about Frida?
Why do you think Breton devoted two paragraphs of his short text about Frida to describe Mexico’s exoticism?
Why was Frida disappointed about her Paris exhibition? Did Breton showcase his true agenda when he chose to exhibit other “exotic” objects alongside Frida’s paintings? Why did he call the show “Mexique”/ Mexico?
What were the positive outcomes of her exhibition in Paris?
Why did she dislike surrealist artists so much? Why do you think she wanted to differentiate from them?
Why is it important to contextualise her divorce to analyse the Two Fridas?
Why did she give such a different origin to her painting in her Diary, away from her initial sorrow about her divorce?
Therefore, why did she exclude Diego from the origin story of her painting?
Why do you think she said this painting originates from her encounter with her best friend? Is this best friend the other Frida that she paints? If that is not the case, who do you think that best friend is?
How did she describe her Tehuana-self? Why did she depict her slouched with her legs open and her heart closed?
Why did she add a picture of Diego at the end of her artery?
How did she portray her Victorian self? Why did she give so much attention to her dress? How did she represent her pose and gaze?
Why are her legs closed and her heart open? Why did she want to break the circuit between her two hearts by cutting her artery?
What are the two iterations of herself she expressed in this painting?
Why do you think I am emphatically opposed to framing her work within the surrealist movement?
Why do you think women and individuals from exotic countries were so attractive to surrealist artists? How did they view them, and how does that category affect them, preventing them from being nothing more than that description?
Why, then, was Breton so obsessed with Frida? Why was she the perfect representation of a surrealist woman for him?
Why is that problematic?
Was her work truly surreal?
Why can I say that her work did not serve to tackle humanity’s repressed unconscious?
Was she a femme-enfant, meaning instinctual, naif or child-like? Why are these concepts problematic?
Why do you think Frida was emphatically opposed to being categorised as a surrealist artist?
What did she propose instead?
Do you think a work like hers existed in art history until that point?
What is her legacy, for you, within art history?