Frida Kahlo: A Guide to Frida Kahlo’s Life and Artworks

Frida Kahlo, born Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón, was a Mexican artist who often used Mexican culture to fuel and inspire many of her introspective self-portraits and surrealist works. Kahlo lived a turbulent life, suffering from chronic pain caused by disease and injury. She also endured emotional distress from her failed relationships, which were strained by jealousy and infidelity. Her husband, muralist Diego Rivera often had affairs with other women, which led Kahlo, in turn, to begin having her own extramarital affairs. However, Kahlo was able to find success through her art and create a lasting legacy that persisted long after her death. Her family home in Coyoacán, dubbed La Casa Azul (the Blue House), eventually became the Frida Kahlo Museum (Museo Frida Kahlo).

Frida Kahlo is one of the most influential artists in modern history. From an early age, Kahlo dealt with chronic pain, an affliction that would follow her through much of her extraordinary life. Here is a brief overview of the incredible life of Frida Kahlo:

• Early life: Frida Kahlo was born outside Mexico City in July 1907. Her father, Guillermo Kahlo, was a German immigrant and photographer. Kahlo’s mother, Matilde Calderón y González, was from Oaxaca (her father was a native Mexican and her mother was of Spanish descent). Kahlo, who suffered from polio as a child, was exposed to art early on in her childhood, receiving illustration lessons from her father’s friend.
• Life-changing accident: In 1925, at the age of 18, Frida was in a near-fatal bus accident that left her with an impaled pelvis and uterus and several broken bones. Kahlo would deal with the chronic pain and infertility resulting from the accident for the rest of her life. She had to wear plaster corsets (which she hand-painted while in bed) to help support her weakened spine. Alejandro Gómez Arias, her boyfriend at the time—who was also on the bus and only suffered minor injuries—did not visit her during her recovery. She often found herself alone, which made her turn to painting.
• Marriage and politics: In 1927, Kahlo officially joined the Mexican Communist Party (she had already dedicated herself to the Communist youth at age 13 due to emotions spurred on by the Mexican Revolution). She was reintroduced to Diego Rivera, a Mexican muralist and painter she met as a teenager five years before. In 1929, she married Rivera, who was 20 years her senior. Kahlo began to lean more into the indigenous aspects of her Mexican heritage, often wearing the culture’s traditional peasant clothing to emphasize her anti-colonialist views.
• Search for home: By 1931, she and Rivera moved to San Francisco, where he worked on a series of murals before returning to Mexico for the summer. The couple would return to New York City in the fall for Rivera’s retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Kahlo and Rivera also briefly spent time in Detroit, where Kahlo suffered pregnancy complications, resulting in a failed abortion and eventual miscarriage. Kahlo pressed Rivera to return to Mexico City despite his wish to stay in the United States, and shortly after, he pursued an affair with her younger sister Cristina. Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera eventually reconciled and together petitioned the government to grant asylum to former Soviet leader Leon Trotsky and his wife, Natalia Sedova.
• Exhibitions: Kahlo would sell many paintings in her lifetime, but her work was often overlooked by those who placed her in her husband’s shadow. In 1938, art dealer Julien Levy invited Kahlo to hold her first solo exhibition at his gallery in Manhattan, attended by artists Georgia O’Keeffe and Isamu Noguchi, and author Clare Boothe Luce.
• Chronic health issues: Despite a failed exhibition in Paris in 1939, Kahlo continued to find success in the United States, although she struggled more with various health problems. She underwent several surgeries, including an unsuccessful bone graft, and suffered from bronchopneumonia and infection. Her right leg was amputated due to gangrene.
• Death: In 1954, Kahlo fell severely ill after participating in a demonstration against the CIA invasion of Guatemala with Rivera. She passed away a few days later. Her cause of death was listed as a pulmonary embolism.

Frida Kahlo found inspiration through folk art and her own culture. Some defining characteristics of Kahlo’s work include:

1. 1. Surrealism: Surrealist André Breton described Kahlo’s work as surrealist (more specifically, a “ribbon around a bomb”), though Kahlo herself disagreed with this label, stating that she simply painted her own reality.
2. 2. Symbolism: Kahlo often used animal imagery (like monkeys and hummingbirds) to convey her emotional state. She also used religious imagery, including Christian and Judaism themes throughout many of her works.
3. 3. Political views: Kahlo included artifacts, fruit, and birds native to Mexico in her work as a political statement of independence and Mexican nationalism.
4. 4. Eroticism: Many of Kahlo’s earlier works included veiled sexual imagery, though she opted not to hide these themes in her later works. In Still Life With a Parrot and Flag (1951), Kahlo makes an overt reference to the female anatomy, depicting a fruit resembling a vagina with a Mexican flag painted inside.

Kahlo would go on to create around 200 paintings, many of which were either still-lifes or self-portraits. Some well-known works of Kahlo include:

1. 1. Henry Ford Hospital (1932): In this painting, Kahlo is depicted bleeding in a bed with her heart exposed, with red ribbons connecting her to six images (including a fetus and a snail). Some scholars interpret this imagery as Kahlo dealing with her miscarriage and infertility.
2. 2. The Two Fridas (1939): The imagery features two Fridas: one dressed in a European-style gown with her heart cut out, and the other in a modern Mexican-dress with the heart placed over her chest. Scholars interpret this painting as another representation of Kahlo’s feelings following her separation from Diego Rivera.
3. 3. Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird (1940): One of Kahlo’s most recognized self-portraits, this painting depicts a monkey and a black cat sitting above either shoulder, with a lifeless hummingbird attached to the necklace of thorns she wears. Scholars say this painting reflects her emotional state following her divorce from Diego Rivera. The thorns cut into her neck, but her expression is stoic, representing Kahlo’s ability to endure the pain.
4. 4. The Broken Column (1944): This oil painting was done after Kahlo’s spinal surgery and depicts Kahlo standing amidst a cracked, barren landscape, with her nude body split and an Ionic column in place of her spine. A metal corset holds together her broken body, seemingly representing Kahlo’s feelings toward her physical form after years of pain and suffering due to childhood polio and the tragic bus accident.

Frida Kahlo had a significant influence on art and culture. She helped bring Latin-American culture to the art scene and a more fearless depiction of women in art. Kahlo’s openness about gender and sexuality has made her an icon in LGBTQ+ communities and inspired a series of creative self-portraiture from many artists of color worldwide. She has profoundly impacted contemporary artists like Julio Salgado, a gay, Mexican-born artist and activist, and Camile Fontenele de Miranda, a Brazilian photographer who was most inspired by Kahlo’s The Broken Column.

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