Frida Kahlo

Frida Kahlo de Rivera was born in 1907, in Coyoacán, Mexico. Her birth name was Magdalena Carmen Frieda.

Her father, Wilhem Kahlo, was a german immigrant who changed his name for Guillermo (the spanish equivalent for Wilhem). He had 2 children from a previous marriage. Her mother was a mexican woman, from spanish and indigenous descent. Their marriage was quite unhappy, still Frida was the third of four daughters.

At the break of the Mexican revolution, Frida is three years old and witnesses violent fights in the streets of Mexico City.

At the age of six, she contracted polio, which left her right leg thinner than the left, and it is believed that she also suffered from spina bifida.

In 1925, Kahlo was riding in a bus when the vehicle collided with a trolley car. She suffered serious injuries in the accident, including a broken spinal column, collarbone, ribs, pelvis and right leg, a crushed and dislocated right foot and shoulder. An iron handrail pierced her abdomen and her uterus, which seriously damaged her reproductive ability.

Although she recovered from her injuries and eventually regained her ability to walk, she was plagued by relapses of extreme pain for the remainder of her life. The pain was intense and often left her confined to a hospital or bedridden for months at a time. She underwent as many as thirty-five operations as a result of the accident, mainly on her back, her right leg and her right foot.

After the accident, Kahlo turned her attention away from the study of medicine to begin a full-time painting career. Her self-portraits became a dominant part of her life. She once said, "I paint myself because I am so often alone and because I am the subject I know best.” Her mother had a special easel made for her so she could paint in bed, and her father lent her his box of oil paints and some brushes.

Drawing on personal experiences, including her marriage to Diego Rivera, her miscarriages, and her numerous operations, Kahlo's works often are characterized by their stark portrayals of pain. Of her 143 paintings, 55 are self-portraits which often incorporate symbolic portrayals of physical and psychological wounds. She insisted, "I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality."

She went to France in 1939 and was featured at an exhibition in Paris. The Louvre bought one of her paintings, The Frame.

A few days before Frida Kahlo died, on July 13, 1954, she wrote in her diary: "I hope the exit is joyful — and I hope never to return — Frida". The official cause of death was given as a pulmonary embolism, although some suspected that she died from an overdose that may or may not have been accidental. An autopsy was never performed. She had been very ill throughout the previous year and her right leg had been amputated at the knee, owing to gangrene.

Kahlo's work is remembered for its "pain and passion", and its intense, vibrant colors. It has been celebrated in Mexico as emblematic of national and indigenous tradition, and by feminists for its uncompromising depiction of the female experience and form.