Frida Kahlo artist study

I remember learning about Frida Kahlo in high school. I forget exactly where I learned about her, if it was part of history class or maybe just a random thing I learned, but the big things I took away from learning about her: she really liked her uni-brow and she painted a lot of self-portraits. Fast forward a few decades and I’m homeschooling and I planned out our high school history lessons trying to figure out which Modern Artists to cover. I forgot to include Frida Kahlo, thankfully when we had our Mexico Unit in our geography lessons, I covered her and Diego Rivera. So I did get in a last-minute Frida Kahlo artist study.

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Frida Kahlo artist study resources

Frida Kahlo is a rather popular artist, so our library had several books about her, and some about her and her husband together, and one about a model used by both her and her husband.

Frida Kahlo booklist

• Me, Frida– this book explores while she lived in San Fransisco, since we were focusing on Mexico, I didn’t use this book really
• Frida Kahlo-a super simplified version of her life, like this book also has a board book version
• Frida Kahlo: the artist who painted herself– It was checked out when we studied, but from what I can see it looks decent
• I am Frida Kahlo– Another book geared more for early elementary, but it’s also part of a series
• Frida– This one we did read and it stood out because of the unusual artwork

Frida Kahlo video we used

Frida Kahlo is a fairly popular artist so there are quite a few different videos you could use. I watched several of them and ultimately decided I liked this particular Frida Kahlo lesson first because the project was best, and mostly focused on her style.

Art supplies: index card, crayons, Sharpie

Our Frida Kahlo artist study lesson

After reading a few of those books, we got to watching the Frida Kahlo video, and making our own.

There was a lot of joking as we put together our self-portraits.

Then there was even more joking as we tried to color with the crayons I was able to find, and then as the skill level was not always conducive to what we wanted it to look like.

There may have also been a fair amount of grumbling from The Artist about the supplies I gave them, and just the general art style.

I get it, her art style isn’t my favorite either. There’s a reason I forgot to include her in my Modern artists lessons.

Of course, it could also be because I’m fairly indifferent to 20th-century artists.

Of course, there was also a lot of laughing about HOW certain family members decided to illustrate themselves. Like Batman decided to make himself bald, and then Superman thought it would be hilarious to make himself blue. Why blue?

I don’t know. Teens are weird.

That’s our Frida Kahlo unit. It’s nice and simple, and got the kids looking at some art we might not have looked at on our own.

Random other art history lessons

• Diego Rivera art history lesson
• Chagall art history lesson
• Pablo Picasso art history lesson
• Raphael art history lesson
• Rousseau art history lesson