Frida Kahlo
Mexican painterKnown for her intense, brilliantly coloured self-portraits
Early Years / Family Life
Frida Kahlo was the third of four daughters of Guillemo and Matilda Kahlo. Guillemo was a photographer and of Hungarian and German descent. Matilda, a devout Catholic, was Spanish and Native American. The Mexican Revolution began in 1910 when Kahlo was three years old. In her writings, she recalled that her mother would send her and her sisters inside as gunfire sounded in the streets of her hometown, which was extremely poor at the time. Men would occasionally leap over the walls into her backyard and her mother would sometimes prepare a meal for the hungry revolutionaries. Later, Kahlo would claim that she was born in 1910 so people would directly associate her with the revolution.Education
1922 / Preparatoria (National Preparatory School) – most prestigious school in MexicoInfluences
Mexican folk art and cultureThemes in Artwork
Self portraits“I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone, because I am the person I know best.”
Timeline
- 1097 / born on July 6 in Mexico City, Mexico
- 1913 / contracted polio, leaves her with a limp
- 1922 / meets future husband at Preparatoria where he is painting a mural
- 1925 / bus accident, injuries to right leg and pelvis, leaves her unable to have children
- 1926 / paints first self portrait
- 1929 / marries Rivera Diego in August
- 1930 / the couple travels to San Francisco
- 1932 / suffers miscarriage in Detroit, MI
- 1935 / the couple returns to Mexico where Diego has an affair with Kahlo’s sister
- 1937 / Diego helps Leon Trotsky and his wife move to Mexico after he was kicked out of the Soviet Union by Stalin
- 1937 / Kahlo has an affair with Leon Trotsky
- 1939 / the Trotsky's move out of Kahlo's house
- 1939 / separates from Diego, they divorce in early 1940
- 1940 / participated in the International Exhibition of Surrealism in Mexico City
- 1941 / remarries Diego
- 1943 / appointed a professor of painting at La Esmeralda, the Education Ministry’s School of Fine Arts
- 1944 / Kahlo’s health declines, undergoes the first of many operations on spine and foot
- 1950 / enters hospital in Mexico City, where she remains for a year
- 1953 / first solo exhibition in Mexico at the Galeria de Arte Contemporaneo in the Zona Rosa
- 1954 / threatened by gangrene, has right leg amputated below the knee
- 1954 / dies at the age of 47
Examples of Work
Self-Portrait / 1940 / Oil on Masonite / 59.8 x 40 cm
The Two Fridas / 1939 / Oil on canvas / 170 x 170 cm
The Broken Column / 1944 / Oil on Masonite / 38.6 x 31 cm