My Favorite Artists and Their Art: Frida Kahlo

Frida Kahlo was an extraordinary woman, whose life was full of tragedy, love, politics, but most importantly art. Kahlo remains a unique figure in art history since she, unlike so many other female artists, developed her own style that became uniquely associated with her. Whether creating symbolist portraits of herself or surreal montages of everyday life, her works have a primitive emotional quality and an insight that is unrivaled by many of her peers, including her artist husband and mentor Diego Rivera. Kahlo's paintings are lush, sensuous masterpieces that expose the hopes and heartbreaks she experienced.

The Love Embrace of the Universe, the Earth (Mexico), Diego, Me, and Senor Xolotl (1949)
























Frida and the Miscarriage (1936)





























Sun and Life (1947)

















My Grandparents, My Parents, and I (1936)


















Moses (1945)

















Magnolias (1945)















Two Nudes in the Forest (1939)

















What the Water Gave Me (1938)


























The Two Fridas (1939)





















The Broken Column (1944)


























The Flower of Life (1944)




























The Bride Frightened at Seeing Life Opened (1943)

My Favorite Artists and Their Art: Salvador Dalí

It's hard to describe the works of Salvador Dalí. He is an iconoclastic and controversial figure in the art world. Yet he's much more than that. Dalí's work holds a number of influences and inspirations that set him apart from other artists and make his works almost impossible to categorize. At first glance, he appears to be a surrealist, a modernist, a cubist, and a dadaist. But his paintings, collages, and bizarre three-dimensional works of art also owe much to classical and Renaissance masterpieces. Many critics and art lovers have dismissed Dalí because he was either too eccentric, too commercial, or because they simply failed to understand the pure talent and genius of his creations. On a personal level, I've always been attracted to these images, because they seem to have been born in dreams and were then expressed in a way that we could all experience them as vividly as Dalí himself.

The Persistence of Memory (1931)
















Raphaelesque Head Exploding (1951)



























Apparition of Face and Fruit Dish on a Beach (1938)
















The Metamorphosis of Narcissus (1937)














The Enigma of Desire (1929)
















The Dream (1931)





















The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory (1952-1954)
















Cubist Self-Portrait (1923)




























The Ants (1929)














Figure at the Window (1925)




























The Visage of War (1940)