The Wounded Table
The Wounded Table is an oil painting by Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. Although lost in 1955, three photos of this painting were taken between 1940 and 1944. The painting was first displayed in January 1940 at the International Surrealism Exhibit at Inés Amor's Gallery of Mexican Art in Mexico City, and a replica is currently displayed in the Kunstmuseum Gehrke-Remund, Baden-Baden, Germany. The painting was last exhibited in Warsaw in 1955, after which it disappeared, and is the subject of an ongoing international search.
Description
The painting reflects ongoing themes in Kahlo's work, including Mexicanidad, indigeneity, self-portraiture, and grief/loss. Kahlo is seated at the center of the table where figures previously seen in her painting The Four Inhabitants ''of Mexico City also appear. The table is spattered with blood and framed by a theatrical curtain, providing a stagelike setting, and she is surrounded by a precolumbian Nayarit figurine, a papier-mâché skeleton, two children, and her pet deer Granizo.In The Wounded Table, "Kahlo is no longer a bewildered child but an adult-sized Kahlo sitting at the table." Kahlo bleeds as a martyr for Mexicanidad, she comments on the performative aspects of Mexican identity. It supports Roger Bartr’s analysis of post-revolutionary culture. In The Wounded Table'', Kahlo parodies the stereotypes of mexicanness.