The analysis of the painting

'The Wounded Deer’: Frida Kahlo's wounded heart

This painting called 'the wounded deer' is one of Frida Kahlo's most famous paintings. According to the Flickr , Frida expresses the disappointment which followed the operation on her spine in New York in 1946, and which she had optimistically hoped would cure her of her back pain.'(https://www.flickr.com/photos/. 28433765@N07/4308193235/)In this painting, Frida expressed her feelings, her pains by drawing a deer in a forest. What I meant by that, her pains were shown by the wounds and the numb expression.

To begin with, the deer is not actually a deer, it is  a hybrid of a deer and human. According to the portraits of Frida Kahlo, this deer has a head of her face. To be more specific, this deer represents part of herself. As we can see, the deer with Frida's face is shot by nine arrows, and it is lying on the ground.There are four arrows near the heart of the deer, and five arrows on its body. An arrow shoots its heart , and the deer is bleeding. From my point of view, this represents that Frida was heartbroken. However, even if many arrows shot the deer, its expression shows its calmness and equanimity. This is a weird thing of this painting; this probably means the deer, which represents Frida Kahlo, is numb that it cannot feel any pain. This exactly shows how painful she was at that time, maybe the wounds hurt a lot so that she couldn’t feel painful, which explains her numb expression.

The deer is the main content of the painting. However, the scene is very important as well. Take a close look to the painting; the deer is in a forest with damaged trees around, the trees have no leaves on them. There is a broken stick in front of the deer. Perhaps, a lightening just happened. The interesting thing is that this stick has leaves on it, unlike other trees. If these trees symbolize the hope, the meaning of the stick is that the final hope has shattered. Then, the, background is a beautiful blue ocean. However, it can be seen that there is a huge cloud above the ocean. From my point of view, it looks like a tornado just came or the tornado is coming. Owing to that tornado is always destructive in daily life; this may represent the difficulties in Frida’s life.

At last, the comparison of the foreground and the background is so intense. To be more specific, the foreground is covered with dark colors. The trees are painted in dark green and black,and the deer is painted in brown. There is only one bright part of the foreground, which is the place the stick lies on. That area is painted in a lighter green. To compare, the background, which is the ocean part is brighter. Frida Kahlo use blue and white with a little black to depict the scene in the sea. The ocean part seems big and wide where as the foreground make people feel narrow. This method emphasizes the narrowness of the foreground. The painting indicates that the deer is trapped in the wood even though the freedom is close to it, and it is shot by arrows, which implies that Frida's mind was mentally restricted at that time.

To sum up, this painting was a way for Frida Kahlo to express her pain. She used a subtle way to show what she was suffering. However, the strange combination of the deer and the human’s head captured viewers’ attention.  Generally speaking, this painting left viewers’ many mysteries to guess.