Frida Kahlo, a painter known for her painful and passionate self-portraits, is celebrated for her representation of Mexican and indigenous culture as well as depictions of the female experience in her paintings. Throughout her life, she had been disabled from childhood polio and a near-fatal bus accident that led her to focus on painting during her recovery. 

Among several paintings depicting Kahlo’s pain and suffering in the hospital, “The Wounded Deer” (1946) does not use any medical or anatomical imagery to portray her experiences with surgery. Kahlo had undergone a surgical operation in New York for her severe back pain, but it had been unsuccessful. This painting portrays Kahlo as a young deer shot with 9 arrows and bleeding in a rotting and cracked environment. On the lower left corner, she writes “Carma”, meaning “destiny” or “fate”. 

Various interpretations can be drawn from this painting. Frida Kahlo portrays her pain literally with the arrows along her back, with the arrows in her chest depicting chest pain or emotional pain. In nearly every self-portrait, Kahlo paints herself expressionless, as if hiding or maintaining composure despite the vibrant and vivid surrealism in the rest of her paintings. “The Wounded Deer” is no different, with Kahlo using the deer and the rotting forest to express her inner turmoil rather than her face. 

The deer in this painting is also struck with fear, but helpless. Her human head replaces the deer head, as if showing a distinction between her mind and body. While the painting was done right after her surgery, its symbolism also expresses Kahlo’s belief about her life as a whole. “Carma” is written intentionally, perhaps telling the audience that she is destined to be the wounded deer. The lightning in the sky and dead forest shows us her fear and hopelessness, when she has no control over her body and the pain that she is feeling from it. 

Frida Kahlo’s artwork stands out from the surrealist movement as deeply personal and sometimes disturbing.“The Wounded Deer” without context allows viewers to project their own experiences of pain onto the deer, and with context allows viewers to feel deeply connected to Kahlo’s pain and depression.

Learn more about Frida Kahlo and her paintings on https://www.fridakahlo.org/. 

Feature Image Credits: Photo by Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash

Body Image Credits: Kahlo, Frida. The Wounded Deer. 1946, Banco de México Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, D.F. 

Contributing Writer: Serena Phung