What Happened to Frida Kahlo?
What happened to Frida Kahlo was a catastrophic accident in 1925, when she was 18. A streetcar crushed the wooden bus she was riding, and a steel handrail went through her body, breaking her spine, pelvis and leg. She lived in pain for the rest of her life, and it turned her into a painter.
Almost everything about Frida, her art, her marriage, her early death, traces back to that one afternoon.
Here is what actually happened, and what it cost her.
The accident at a glance
When: September 1925, a streetcar hit her bus.
The injury: a handrail through her pelvis, with her spine, ribs and leg broken.
The aftermath: around thirty surgeries and lifelong pain.
The turn: she started painting while trapped in bed.
The final toll: her right leg was amputated in 1953.
The day of the accident
On a September afternoon in 1925, Frida was riding home from school on a wooden bus with her boyfriend.
A streetcar slammed into the bus and tore it apart. A metal handrail entered her hip and came out the other side. In one of the strangest details, a packet of gold powder carried by another passenger burst open and covered her bleeding body in golden dust. A bystander pulled the rail out of her by hand.
What it broke
The list of injuries is hard to believe she survived.
Her spine was broken in three places, her pelvis crushed, her collarbone and ribs fractured, her right leg broken in eleven places and her foot dislocated. Doctors did not expect her to live through the night.
Months in a plaster cast
She did live, but recovery meant months flat on her back, encased in plaster.
To fight the boredom and the pain, she began to paint. Her parents fixed a mirror above the bed and a special easel she could reach lying down. That is the moment the painter Frida Kahlo was born, out of a body that could barely move. It is why she made so many self portraits.
A lifetime of operations
The accident never really ended. It kept demanding more of her.
Over the years she had around thirty operations, wore countless casts and braces, and was often bedridden for long stretches. The injuries also meant she could never carry a pregnancy to term, a grief she painted as openly as the physical pain.
The toll it took across her life is laid out in 24 rare photos.
The final toll
Decades of damage caught up with her. In 1953 her right leg, ravaged by gangrene, was amputated below the knee.
She sank into depression and declined quickly after that, dying the next year. Her final year and the questions around her death are here: how Frida Kahlo died.
FAQ about what happened to Frida Kahlo
What happened to her? A streetcar crushed her bus in 1925 and a handrail pierced her body.
How old was she? 18.
How many surgeries did she have? Around thirty over her life.
Did the accident make her a painter? Yes. She began painting while recovering in bed.
Could she have children? No. The injuries made carrying a pregnancy impossible.
The two accidents of her life
Frida once said she had suffered two great accidents in her life.
One was the streetcar. The other, she said, was Diego. The full life around both is in Frida Kahlo: The Complete Story.