Frida Kahlo

Biography

Kahlo's painting began as survival — a mirror rigged above a sickbed — and became a language for pain, identity and Mexicanidad unlike anything in modern art. Dismissed in her lifetime as Diego Rivera's wife, she was reclaimed from the 1970s onward as a feminist and cultural icon, outselling almost every Latin American artist since.

Mexican painter celebrated for self-portraits that channelled pain, identity and Mexican folk culture; her fame grew enormously after her death.

Known for

Self-portraits blending Mexican folk culture and surreal intensity.

Notable works & defining projects

• The Two Fridas
• The Broken Column
• Diego and I

Notable achievements

• Her 1949 painting Diego and I set a record price for a Latin American artwork when sold in 2021
• First Mexican artist collected by the Louvre (1939 purchase of Frame)
• Her home, La Casa Azul, is now the Frida Kahlo Museum in Mexico City

Timeline

1. 1925Aged 18, gravely injured when a bus collided with a streetcar
2. 1939The Louvre bought her painting Frame — its first work by a Mexican artist
3. 1954Died at La Casa Azul, the home that is now her museum

Did you know?

• She began painting seriously while bedridden recovering from the 1925 bus accident that fractured her spine and pelvis
• She attended her first Mexican solo exhibition in 1953 carried in on her four-poster bed