Artists Transformed by Debilitating Illness or Injuries

Written by Teresita Blanco (The Artsy Sister)

The first artist I wanted to talk about is Frida Kahlo. She used to paint for the fun of it. Originally, she was going to be a doctor. One day, her bus crashed. A steel pole pierced right through her. This gave her chronic back pains.

Since she had nothing better to do, she started to paint more. Her style didn’t change much, just her subject matters. She got into symbolism a lot. She also tended to depict skulls often, to show her fear and respect of death.

When her big exhibition opened, she was in too much pain. Her family and friends got her there by carrying her sickbed to the show room. Renoir was a self taught impressionism painter. When he suffered a stroke, he lost the ability to move his painting hand. His wife would tie the brushstroke to his hand.

With their help, he was able to produce more artworks. His final works were more fleshy in nature, and quite orientalist. Chuck Close was a photorealism painter. One day, he got a spinal artery collapse. This caused him to lose movement in his hands and legs.

After much therapy, he was able to regain some degree of mobility. However, he was never able to do photorealism. His later artwork was more impressionistic in nature, using a unique grid type of painting style.

 It looks photorealistic if you stand far away enough. Dali’s traumatic event was the death of his wife Gala. He did not have a good support group. He was pressured to continue painting. So, his works became angry or sad. Due to Parkinson, he was not able to draw in straight lines. You can see the shakiness in the violin paintings.