Frida Kahlo Braid painting
This painting Self Portrait with Braid was made by Frida shortly after the new wedding with Rivera, in December 1940. It shows the artist with a hairstyle very similar to the one used by indigenous women in the northern region of the province of Oaxaca and in the Sierra Norte from Puebla.
Her hair is slicked back tightly, a lock braided with a red woolen ribbon that rises above her head like a hairpiece. Her wild hair is difficult to tame, various strands come out irregularly from the braid. The hair cut from one painting reappears in the next collected and braided.
Frida Kahlo with braid
We can interpret this headdress , whose braid constitutes an endless ribbon , as a symbol of the eternal circularity of time , a metaphor further reinforced by the acanthus plant that entangles itself in the nude bust of the artist ( this plant is, due to its persevering growth , an ancient symbol of eternal life ) .
Thus, a year later she recovered Frida Kahlo the femininity that she had rejected and deposed in 1940.
