Frida Kahlo: The Complete Story
Frida Kahlo (1907 to 1954) was the Mexican painter who turned a lifetime of pain, heartbreak and politics into the most personal art of the twentieth century, and became a global icon long after her death.
A childhood illness, a horrific accident at eighteen, a stormy marriage to Diego Rivera, an affair with Trotsky and a body slowly falling apart: her life reads like a novel, and she painted nearly all of it.
Here is the whole woman, beyond the flower crown on the tote bags.
Frida in sixty seconds
Lived: 1907 to 1954, in Mexico City, dead at 47.
Defined by: a streetcar accident at 18 that broke her body for life.
Married: the muralist Diego Rivera, twice.
Politics: a committed communist who hosted Leon Trotsky.
Fame: mostly posthumous, exploding decades after she died.
A childhood marked by illness
Frida was born in 1907 in Coyoacan, on the edge of Mexico City. She later claimed 1910 instead, so her life would line up with the start of the Mexican Revolution. More on where Frida Kahlo was from.
At six she caught polio, which left one leg thinner and weaker than the other. She was already a girl who knew about pain and being stared at. The worst was still ahead.
The accident that changed everything
At eighteen, the wooden bus she was riding was hit by a streetcar. A steel handrail went straight through her body.
Her spine, pelvis, ribs, collarbone and leg were shattered. She endured around thirty operations over the rest of her life and was often trapped in plaster casts and bed. The full story is here: what happened to Frida Kahlo.
Diego Rivera, the great love and the great wound
In 1929 she married Diego Rivera, Mexico's most famous muralist, twenty years older and twice her size. Her mother called them the elephant and the dove.
They adored and betrayed each other for the rest of her life. He cheated, including with her own sister. She took lovers of her own. They divorced and then remarried a year later. The whole turbulent marriage is here: who Frida Kahlo married.
Painting from a bed, with a mirror
After the accident, stuck flat on her back, Frida started to paint. Her parents rigged a mirror above her bed and an easel she could use lying down.
That is why so much of her work looks back at us: the only model always available was herself. She made around fifty five self portraits. As she put it, she painted herself because she was so often alone, and because she was the subject she knew best. That line is one of her best quotes.
A communist to the last breath
Frida's politics were not a pose. She was a serious communist, and she and Diego gave shelter to the exiled Soviet leader Leon Trotsky when he fled to Mexico.
She had an affair with him under Diego's nose. She rejoined the Party late in life, and her final public outing was a street protest days before she died. Whether the label truly fit her is here: was Frida Kahlo a communist.
Love beyond Diego
Frida loved men and women, openly for her time.
Her affairs reportedly ranged from the photographer Nickolas Muray to women in her artistic circle. In a marriage full of betrayal on both sides, her bisexuality was simply part of who she was, not a secret she hid.
A body coming apart
The accident kept collecting its debt for thirty years. Her spine failed, infections set in, and in 1953 her right leg was amputated below the knee because of gangrene.
She kept painting through all of it, sometimes strapped upright, sometimes from a wheelchair, her pain turned straight into pictures.
Death, and the joyful exit
Frida died in the Blue House where she was born, in July 1954, at just 47. The official cause was a pulmonary embolism, though some believe she took her own way out.
The house where she was born and died, the Casa Azul, is now her museum. We walk through it room by room here.
Her last diary line read: I hope the exit is joyful, and I hope never to return. The full story of her end is here: how Frida Kahlo died.
Famous only after she was gone
In her lifetime Frida was known partly as Diego Rivera's colorful wife. Her own fame came later.
From the 1970s on, feminists and a new generation claimed her as a symbol of identity, disability and defiance, until her face became one of the most recognized on Earth. Why she struck that chord is here: why Frida Kahlo is famous. She belongs to a long line of women the art world overlooked, told in the old masters were women too.
Her whole dramatic life is told in the tragic life of Frida Kahlo in 24 rare photos.
Common questions about Frida Kahlo
What is Frida Kahlo known for? Her intense self portraits and her dramatic, painful life.
How did she die? A pulmonary embolism in 1954, at 47, though suicide is suspected.
Who did she marry? The muralist Diego Rivera, twice.
Was she a communist? Yes, a committed one who hosted Trotsky.
Why is she so famous now? Her fame grew after her death as a feminist and identity icon.
Was Frida Kahlo bisexual? Yes, she had relationships with both men and women.
Did Frida have children? No. Her injuries made carrying a pregnancy impossible.
Did Frida have polio? Yes, at the age of six, which left one leg weaker.
Why did she have a unibrow? She refused to pluck it and even darkened it in her self portraits.
How tall was Frida? Around 1.6 meters, about five foot three.
The woman who painted her own reality
When the Surrealists tried to claim her, Frida pushed back. She said she never painted dreams. She painted her own reality. The strangest facts about her prove it.
That is the key to her. The leg, the accident, the miscarriages, Diego, the politics, the pain: she did not invent symbols, she reported her life. That honesty is why a woman who sold few paintings while alive now hangs in the mind of half the world.
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