Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair
Frida Kahlo
Mexican, 1907–1954
1940
An oil-on-canvas self-portrait in which Frida Kahlo, newly shorn, sits in a man’s suit to stage a deliberate reworking of her appearance and identity after a personal rupture.
What strikes you is her calm, unflinching gaze framed by a cropped haircut and a tailored suit, the bright yellow chair and red floor littered with long dark locks of hair, and the small handwritten musical line and lyric above that turn a private act into a theatrical statement.
By turning the cutting of her hair and a change of dress into a public self-portrait, Kahlo challenged gendered expectations and expanded self-portraiture’s capacity to make intimate psychological and political experience visible in modern art.
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
15 3/4 x 11" (40 x 27.9 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Gift of Edgar Kaufmann, Jr.
Accession
3.1943
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
