How did Georgia O'Keeffe and Frida Kahlo’s relationships with their partners affect their subject matter? Georgia O'Keeffe was married to Alfred...

Both Georgia O’Keeffe and Frida Kahlo had very rocky
relationships with their partners, and it can certainly be argued that the subject
matter of their work was affected by these
relationships.

Much of Frida Kahlo’s work dealt with here
less than flattering feelings about herself and her body.  This self image was partly
caused by an accident that disfigured Frida’s body when she was young, but there is no
doubt that her emotional state was also greatly affected by the fact that her partner,
Diego Rivera, was continuously unfaithful to her.  Many of her paintings deal with her
feelings about her husband and their relationship in a surreal way.  The painting
The Two Fridas can be interpreted as a depiction of Frida trying to
sever herself from the part of her that dearly loves her husband because of the pain and
humiliation involved.  The painting depicts two full body self portraits connected by
veins flowing to two exposed hearts.  The Frida on the right holds a small portrait of
Diego, confirming the above interpretation while the Frida on the left tries to sever
herself by cutting the connecting vein.

It could be argued
that Georgia O’Keeffe’s sexually suggestive Jack-in-the-Pulpit
series of flower details that resemble female genitalia could have been a
reaction to the fact that her partner Alfred Stieglitz used her as the subject for
countless portraits.  Many of these portraits were very revealing and sexual in nature,
and one can’t help but come to the conclusion that O’Keeffe’s flowers were a way of
embracing the beauty and power of the female body after her’s had been put on display by
Steiglitz.

O’Keeffe discovered the beautiful deserts of New
Mexico while searching for a change from her life in New York City with Stieglitz.  The
New Mexico deserts became the subject matter of some of O’Keeffe’s most well known
work.