Where Was Frida Kahlo From?

Frida Kahlo was from Mexico. She was born on July 6, 1907, in the Casa Azul, the Blue House, in Coyoacán, then a village on the southern edge of Mexico City. She died in the same house in 1954.

Her father was a German immigrant and her mother was Mexican. Apart from a few years in the United States in the early 1930s and a trip to Paris in 1939, she spent her life in her own country.

Frida Kahlo photographed by her father Guillermo Kahlo: she stands with arms crossed in a dark shawl, hair pinned up
Guillermo Kahlo, Frida Kahlo, 1932. Photograph by her father.

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One detail of her origins did change over time: her year of birth. Later in life Frida began giving it as 1910, three years after the date in the record.

It was a small edit, and she made others like it. She told a story about her father that the family papers do not support, and she wore the clothes of a region she was not born in, in cities from New York to Paris.

The birth year she moved to 1910

Self-portrait photograph of Guillermo Kahlo, the German-born photographer and father of Frida
Guillermo Kahlo, Self-portrait. Photograph.

Frida did not pick 1910 at random. In the fall of that year an event began in Mexico that would change the country for the rest of her life, and claiming 1910 tied her own birth to it.


What You'll Discover

  • Who her father really was.

  • What happened to her in Detroit.

  • Where her costume came from.

  • What became of the Blue House.


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