Frida Kahlo's 'The Broken Column' is portraying an image of her life and her experiences. Even though Frida Kahlo was thought to be a surrealist, she painted the reality that portrayed her mental and physical pain. Andre Breton, a surrealist poet, once actually remarked that Kahlo was a surrealist, but Kahlo denied arguing that she only painted her reality and her experiences of life. Although Kahlo was aware of the surrealist movement, she did not necessarily get involved with it. Kahlo's paintings were actually highly personal self-portraits that revealed the most painful aspects of her life.
             The most significant event in Kahlo's life was the most tragic one as well. At the age of eighteen, she was involved in a serious bus accident that not only changed her for the duration but also changed her life; her body was almost ruined. Both her spinal column and pelvis were broken in three places. Not capable of leaving her bed, and without many options to pass her time, Kahlo began painting; this was her only way of revealing her thoughts and exploring her innermost painful feelings, memories, and experiences. Kahlo spent the next three years of her life, as she was unable to move, painting and portraying the reality of her life; how it had changed, and how helpless and incomplete she felt. One of the paintings that represented her feelings was 'The Broken Column.'
             Edvard Munch's 'Evening on Karl Johan' is a strange piece. It represents a feeling of anxiety. A strange thing about Munch is that he uses 'private' symbolism through his artworks. "Munch's symbolic image, finally free from represent faithfully and banally reality, it visualizes through its expressive tension the tragic essence hidden behind the surface of things of the world" (Noto Campanella, F., e Tibaldi, G. (1989) Psicologia e psicopatologia dell'espressionismo. Edvard Munch. Milano, Raffaello Cortina Editore.) Symbolism develops for Munch an expressive and emotion...