Frida Kahlo: Brush of Anguish

This edition is a pretty good overview of Frida's life with some outstanding colorful reproductions of her works. There is also a very satisfying collection of photographs, both in black and white and color, to cure the voyeur in you to see Frida as she really lived. For example, if you enlarge the back cover shot here you can see the cigarette in her left hand that she was apparently usually without. If you thought it was only the pain of her life that resulted in very few photographs of her smiling think again. The results of her heavy smoking habit produced a poor set of teeth that were blackened and not very flaterring; hence the rare smiling picture. The book has some rare photographs, including one of her laughing and her hideous teeth. The text is easy to follow and gives a whirlwind tour of Frida's life, complete with recollections by friends and other anecdotes. Included is a chronology, list of illustrations and a selected bibliography. My big complaint about this book, and it may you serve you if you are able to read Spanish, is that it is a short version of the original. I have run down a copy of the original Spanish book, "Frida: El Pincel de la Angustia" and it is highly recommended over this translated version. I cannot over state this recommendation . This version is almost like an abridged text by comparison. Case in point, the original has nearly four times as many pages! The abundance of pages is not filler either as it has many more photographs, paintings and more importantly, text. If you hunt around you can find the original at an affordable price. All in all this is a good addition, but not edition, to your library on Mexcian Art or personal Frida Kahlo book collection.

This book is recommended for the reproductions of her work. Zamora gives a nice and thoughtful description of the painter's life. I just finished Kate Braverman's fictional account of the life of Kahlo on her last day--and I highly recommend it! The prose alone transforms Kahlo's paintings into a highly intelligent novel, and uses as a catalyst, one of our most important painter's work as an inspirational canvas for one of our most important writers.

I had no idea who Frida was, untill I saw some of her slides in my self portrait class and that led me to read more about her.This book is an excellent biography of Frida and has an amazing account of her tragic life and how it transformed her personality, not to mention her paintings and especially her self portraits.The book covers her major art work and the flow of the book is coincided with her life. You can see what was happening at a particular juncture in her life and what kind of work she was producing.

This is a good book for those people who are interested in a short biography on one of Mexico's most respected and well known icons. Zamora's book not only gives a brief vivd account on Frida's life but also illustrates some of her famous work. The one down side I found to this book is that Zamora does not talk about in more detail some of Frida's paintings which are shown like "Four Inhabitants in Mexico City," but all in all this is a good book which I found very interesting.

Frida Kahlo is my favorite artist, so of course I love this book. Other reasons I love it: the pictures, which show Frida's exquisite beauty, the paintings (not any I haven't seen, though I still love seeing them), and the story, which told some things I did not know. Although I really like this book, it was not very in-depth. I already knew most of the information that was in it.