Women’s rights are facing increased legislation in the United States. Here are 8 pivotal artworks about women’s autonomy and sexuality.

Cover photo: Henry Ford Hospital (The Flying Bed), oil on metal, by Frida Kahlo (1932). Courtesy of Google.

Even in this #MeToo era, women’s rights are still under attack. Activists are fighting all over the world, for the LGBT community, Black lives, women’s control over their own bodies and sexuality. Just recently, 8 states have passed new anti-abortion bills. Here are 8 pivotal artworks about women’s autonomy and sexuality.

WARNING: The following article mentions miscarriage and abortion.

Henry Ford Hospital (The Flying Bed) — Frida Kahlo (1932)

Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) was a Mexican artist who blurred the lines between realism and surrealism. She emphasized her pride in her indigenous Mexican culture. Kahlo is known for her vibrant and personal self-portraits.

In 1922, Khalo attended high school at the National Preparatory School in Mexico City. There, she met Diego Rivera who painted a mural for the school’s auditorium. The two would have a passionate and tumultuous relationship.

Following a debilitating bus accident in 1925, Kahlo was confined to a hospital bed, and taught herself to paint. She had to undergo over 30 surgeries. Painting became Kahlo’s primary connection to the world, and it helped Kahlo process her pain.

Kahlo and Rivera married in 1929 and the two proceeded to travel the United States, visiting cities where Rivera had been commissioned to paint murals. Khalo was pregnant at the time. This was not Kahlo’s first attempt to have a child. She had terminated at least one prior pregnancy due to her health concerns. In Detroit, Kahlo chose to have an abortion, as doctors warned she wouldn’t survive labor. “I aborted in the blinking of an eye,” Frida wrote to her friend Dr. Leo Eloesser.

Kahlo completed one of her most harrowing paintings, Henry Ford Hospital (The Flying Bed), soon after. Kahlo appears small and isolated in a field, lying on a stained hospital bed. The city of Detroit sits on the horizon, where Rivera had been painting, featuring the River Rouge Plant of the Ford Motor Company.

Kahlo is attached by string — reminiscent of umbilical cords — to six objects: (clockwise) a male fetus, a snail, a pelvic bone, an orchid given to her by Diego, a machine, and an orthopedic cast. The snail suggests the slow and torturous pace of the abortion. The pink orthopedic cast represents Kahlo’s past surgeries, supported by the pelvic bone in the diagonal corner.

Kahlo sheds a tear, devoted to the loss of her child. It was after this excruciating event that Kahlo finally accepted she would never be a mother, likely due to her bus accident and frail health. She wrote to Dr. Eloesser, “I had so looked forward to having a little Dieguito that I cried a lot, but it’s over, there is nothing else that can be done except to bear it.”

The abortion set Kahlo on the path to becoming a great artist. Art historian Victor Zamudio Taylor explains, “In Detroit, Frida Kahlo, for the first time, consciously decides that she will paint about herself, and that she will paint the most private and painful aspects of herself.”

She began to refer to herself as a professional painter, it became one of the most important parts of her life. “Painting completed my life. I lost three children … Painting replaced all of that,” Kahlo reflected. She would go on to paint some of the most memorable and vulnerable self-portraits in art history.

Frida Kahlo passed away in 1954, in her home. She is one of the best known artists of the 20th century and her home — La Casa Azul — now serves as a museum dedicated to her life thanks to her love Diego Rivera. Kahlo remains one of the most important and celebrated Mexican artists today.