Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón was born in Mexico City, Mexico. Her father was a German immigrant, and her mother was Mexican of Spanish and Native American descent, a dual identity that she will later reflect on in her art. When she was 6 years old, she contracted polio, which left her with a limp and chronic pain for the rest of her life. To strengthen her leg, she was encouraged by her parents to play soccer, swim, and wrestle, which at that time were not usual activities for girls.
As a child, Kahlo assisted her father in his photography studio, an experience that helped her develop artistic tendencies and an eye for details. She enrolled at the National Preparatory School at the age of 15, intending to study medicine and not art. She became politically active and joined the Young Communist League. There, she first met the famous painter and her future lover, Diego Rivera, who worked on one of his murals for the school.
At the age of 18, Kahlo was severely injured in a bus accident and went through more than 30 medical operations throughout her life. During her prolonged recovery, she taught herself to paint, practicing self-portraits. One of them was the Self-Portrait Wearing a Velvet Dress.
Three years later, at the age of 21, Kahlo joined the Mexican Communist Party. In one of the Party’s meetings, she once again encountered Rivera and asked him to advise her about pursuing art as a career. The 42 years old artist was supportive of the young painter and encouraged her to develop her work. They got married in the following year, and afterward, Kahlo has changed her painting style, focusing on Mexican folk art, as seen in her work Frieda and Diego Rivera. In the first years of their relationship, Kahlo traveled with Rivera to the US to exhibit his works. During this period, Kahlo had two miscarriages, and she used art to reflect her pain, a taboo topic at the time.
In 1933, the couple returned to Mexico and settled in San Angel, where they lived in separate houses joined by a bridge. Their residence became a gathering place for artists and political activists, including Leon Trotsky and his wife, who were expelled to Mexico.
In 1938, at the age of 31, Kahlo had her first solo exhibition in NYC. In the following year, she lived in Paris for a while, where she exhibited her art and became friends with artists such as Pablo Picasso and Marcel Duchamp. When she came back to Mexico, she divorced Rivera, following numerous affairs of both sides. In that year, Kahlo had painted several of her most famous pieces, including The Two Fridas, in which she depicted herself in twin figures, each one is representing the opposite side of her personality – the one Rivera loved and the one he betrayed. After one year, the couple reconciled and moved to Kahlo’s childhood home in Coyoacán, known as La Casa Azul – the Blue House.
Over time, Kahlo gained popularity, and she displayed her painting in various venues in the US. In 1943, at 36, she was appointed a professor of painting at the Education Ministry’s School of Fine Arts. In her 40s, her health has declined, and she was diagnosed with gangrene in her right foot. She had to go through several operations, including an amputation. She often used drugs and alcohol for relief but never stopped working, painting herself in her physical and mental struggles, as appeared in her work Self-Portrait with Portrait of Dr. Farill. In 1953, at the age of 46, she had her first solo exhibition in Mexico, arriving lying on a bed because of her condition. In the following year, she was hospitalized several more times because of various health issues, but those did not prevent her attend political activities. Less than two weeks before she died, Kahlo had her last public appearance at a demonstration against the overthrow of the president of Guatemala. Kahlo died at the age of 47 in her childhood home in Coyoacán.
For more than three decades, Kahlo had painted 155 paintings, in which she explored subjects of identity, class, postcolonialism, gender, and race. Her work is characterized by autobiographical elements such as physical and mental pain, marriage, miscarriages, Mexican and indigenous culture, and women’s experiences in society and as individuals. Although she achieved success during her life, it was only in the 1970s that she gained fame after being adopted as a feminist icon of female strength and creativity.
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