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	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

Frida Kahlo's (1907-1954) prize-winning^1(p320) painting Moses examines the birth of the hero in myth and legend. Stimulated by Sigmund Freud's Moses and Monotheism,² Kahlo provides her imaginative visual response to Freud's text. Her friend and patron, engineer José Domingo Lavín, had lent her the book to read and, noting her fascination with it, suggested that she paint her interpretation. In explaining the painting to a group of friends, she said that she read the book once and then began to paint her first impression. She told them that the theme was Moses, or the birth of the hero, but that she generalized this in her own way: "What I wanted to express most intensely and clearly was the reason that people need to invent or imagine heroes is because of their pure [unmitigated] fear—fear of life and fear of death."^3(p72)

Frida Kahlo (1907-1954), Mexican. Cover: Moses, 1945. Oil . . . [Full Text of this Article]

James C. Harris, MD