Who Did Frida Kahlo Marry?

Frida Kahlo married the Mexican muralist Diego Rivera twice. The first wedding was a civil ceremony at the town hall of Coyoacán, her hometown near Mexico City, on August 21, 1929. She was 22, and he was about twenty years older. They divorced in November 1939 and remarried on December 8, 1940.

For Kahlo it was a first marriage. Rivera, married twice before, was taking his third wife.

Photograph of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera in 1932
Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, 1932.

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Between the divorce and the second wedding lay a little more than a year, and the two stayed in touch. In 1940, while they were still legally apart, Frida left Diego a short note that began "Diego my love."

He was then in San Francisco, painting a fresco 75 feet long in front of visitors on Treasure Island, an artificial island in the bay that was hosting a world's fair. She asked him to remember that once he finished it, "we will be together forever once and for all."

A warning from the bride's father

Photograph of Frida Kahlo taken by her father, the photographer Guillermo Kahlo
Frida Kahlo, photographed by her father, Guillermo Kahlo.

The first doubts about this marriage came from the bride's own family. On the day of the 1929 wedding, Frida's father, the photographer Guillermo Kahlo, had a warning for the groom…


What You'll Discover

  • Which betrayal cut deepest.

  • Who moved into her family home.

  • Which painting she made in 1939.

  • Where they remarried.


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