Who Was Frida Kahlo?

Frida Kahlo was a Mexican painter who is best known for her self-portraits and folk art-influenced paintings. She was born on July 6, 1907 in Coyoacán, Mexico and died on July 13, 1954 at the age of 47. Kahlo’s father, Guillermo Kahlo was a German immigrant who immigrated to Mexico with his family when he was 16 years old. Her mother Matilde Calderón y González was from a wealthy Spanish family who owned a dry goods store in San Juan de los Lagos. Kahlo had three sisters: Cristina, Margarita and Matilde. Kahlo contracted polio at the age of six which left her with lifelong disability. Kahlo was a student at the National Preparatory School where she met Diego Rivera who became one of her greatest influences as an artist. In 1929, Kahlo and Rivera married but divorced in 1939 after having two children together: Diego and María Luisa Rivera Nelson. While they were married they lived together in New York where she studied at Art Students League of New York under Stuart Davis and Harry Sternberg. She also studied with Hans Hofmann who encouraged her to paint more from nature rather than from memory or imagination like many artists did. But there’s another man who played a role in her life: Leon Trotsky. He was an exiled Russian revolutionary who escaped from prison in Siberia and found refuge in Kahlo’s home in Coyoacán, Mexico City, during the 1930s. While there, he fell in love with Kahlo—and she with him. In 1925 Kahlo was seriously injured in a bus accident in Mexico City. She suffered fractures to her spinal column and pelvis as well as injuries to her reproductive system that left her unable to bear children. She underwent more than 30 surgeries as a result of the accident but never fully recovered from those injuries or surgeries. Her art career began around this time, when she started writing poetry and painting self-portraits depicting herself in various stages of recovery from her injuries.