Diego y yo

Abstract

Frida Kahlo’s 1949 painting Diego y yo is the Mexican artist’s final self-portrait bust. This thesis argues for the recognition of the self-portrait as definitive to, what I call, Kahlo’s “early-late style” and as one reason for her shift to still-lifes. The context of the painting revolves around Kahlo’s relationship with her husband Diego Rivera. Their mentor-student relationship is an important facet to understanding motifs in the self-portrait and across Kahlo’s oeuvre as a whole. The artist’s self-portrait includes a superimposed, miniature portrait of Rivera with a third eye in Kahlo’s third eye position. The self-portrait is a culmination of iconography that was only seen in separate contexts previously. My thesis applies a psychoanalytic approach to understand Kahlo’s interactions with herself and the “self” of the portrait. As part of Kahlo’s early-late style, Diego y yo represents a change in her artistic style that is of a new energy of technicality and self-analysis.