Frida Kahlo was a Mexican artist who is best known for her self-portraits and her depiction of the female experience. Her work has been celebrated for its honesty and its ability to transcend the personal to speak to larger issues of gender, class, and race.
Kahlo was born in 1907 in Coyoacán, Mexico City. She contracted polio at age six, which left her right leg permanently damaged and deformed. She often used an oversized prosthetic limb when posing for portraits.
In 1925 she married fellow artist Diego Rivera with whom she had a tumultuous relationship that lasted until his death in 1957. The two had an open marriage with both having affairs throughout their marriage. They had one daughter together named Cristina Kahla Rivera who died as an infant in 1932 from tuberculosis.
One of Frida’s most famous works is “The Broken Column,” which depicts a woman standing with one leg raised on a bench while holding a broken column above her head with both hands. The painting represents the artist’s struggle with polio and its effect on her physical body; however, it also speaks more broadly about how women are expected to perform as mothers, wives, and workers even when they are suffering from debilitating physical conditions such as paralysis or chronic pain.
Kahlo’s work is often characterized by pain and suffering, yet it also contains joy, humor and beauty. She was a staunch advocate of women’s rights and racial equality, but she was not an overtly political artist. Rather, she used her art as a way to explore her own identity as a woman and as an artist.
