The Tragic Life of Frida Kahlo Told in 24 Rare Photos
You know the icon, but do you know the woman? Discover the pain and passion behind the art through this collection of 24 rare historical images.
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Birth in the Blue House
Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo was born on July 6, 1907 in the Casa Azul, the blue house in Coyoacán. She was the third daughter of Guillermo Kahlo, a German photographer who had immigrated to Mexico, and Matilde Calderón, of mixed Spanish and indigenous ancestry.
Her father was epileptic and melancholic, and found a special connection with Frida among his children. He taught her photography and observation, and had her pose for his family portraits.
Later, Frida would always claim she was born in 1910, the year of the Mexican Revolution, the first rewriting of her personal myth. She wanted her birth to coincide with the birth of modern Mexico.
Frida the Lame
At age six, polio confined her to bed for nine months and left her right leg atrophied, shorter and thinner than the left. The neighborhood children called her “Frida the lame.” Her father, contrary to the conventions of the time, encouraged her to play sports to build her strength: swimming, boxing, wrestling.
It was then that she began wearing the long traditional Mexican skirts to hide her damaged leg. What started as concealment would become her signature: the Tehuana dresses, the shawls, the embroidered petticoats, her disability transformed into a visual identity.
The Cachuchas
At fifteen, Frida enrolled at the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria, Mexico City’s elite preparatory school. She was one of 35 girls admitted among 2,000 boys. Brilliant and rebellious, she joined the “Cachuchas,” a group of intellectuals who discussed politics, literature, and philosophy.
She wanted to become a doctor. It was there that she first saw Diego Rivera, who had come to paint murals in the school’s amphitheater. She was 15, he was 36. She told her friends that one day she would have a child with him.
The Collision
On September 17, 1925, Frida took the bus with her boyfriend Alejandro Gómez Arias. At the corner of Cuauhtémoc and 5 de Mayo, the bus collided with a streetcar. An iron handrail pierced through Frida’s pelvis, her spine broke in three places, her right leg fractured in eleven places, her right foot was crushed, her shoulder dislocated. Doctors didn’t think she would survive.
She remained bedridden for a year in a plaster cast. Her father installed a mirror above her bed and brought her paintbrushes. It was there, immobilized, that she truly began to paint. Her first self-portrait dates from 1926. She would undergo 32 operations throughout her life attempting to repair her broken body.
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