Frida Kahlo

Frida Kahlo , 1907-54, Mexican painter, b. Coyoacán. As a result of an accident at age 15, Kahlo turned her attention from a medical career to painting. Drawing on her personal experiences, her works are often shocking in their stark portrayal of pain and the harsh lives of women. Fifty-five of her 143 paintings are self-portraits incorporating a personal symbolism complete with graphic anatomical references. She was also influenced by indigenous Mexican culture, aspects of which she portrayed in bright colors, with a mixture of realism and symbolism. Her paintings attracted the attention of the artist Diego Rivera , whom she later married. Although Kahlo's work is sometimes classified as surrealist and she did exhibit several times with European surrealists, she herself disputed the label. Her preoccupation with female themes and the figurative candor with which she expressed them made her something of a feminist cult figure in the last decades of the 20th cent. Some of her work is exhibited at the Frida Kahlo Museum, situated in her birthplace and subsequent home in suburban Mexico City.

Bibliography: See The Diary of Frida Kahlo (1995), ed. by S. M. Lowe, and The Letters of Frida Kahlo (1995), ed. by M. Zamora; H. Herrera, Frida (1983); S. M. Lowe, Frida Kahlo (1991); M. Zamora, Frida Kahlo (1991); H. Herrera, Frida Kahlo: The Paintings (1991).

Kahlo, Frida (1907–54). Mexican painter. In 1925, at a time when she was preparing to enter medical school, she suffered appalling injuries in a traffic accident, leaving her a permanent semi-invalid, often in severe pain. During her convalescence she began painting portraits of herself and others. She remained her own favourite model and her art was usually directly autobiographical. In 1928 she married Mexico's most famous artist, Diego Rivera, who was twice her age and twice her size. Their relationship was often strained, but it lasted to her death, through various separations, divorce and remarriage (1939–41), and infidelities on both sides (one of her lovers was Leon Trotsky, who was assassinated in 1940 while living in Mexico City). Kahlo was mainly self-taught as a painter. She was influenced by Rivera, but more by Mexican folk art, and her work has a colourful, almost naive vigour, tinged with Surrealist fantasy. Her paintings of her own physical and psychic pain are narcissistic and nightmarish, but also—like her personality—fiery and flamboyant. They were widely shown in Mexico and she had successful exhibitions in Paris and New York in 1938 and 1939 respectively, but during her lifetime she was overshadowed by her husband. Since her death, however, her fame has grown and she has become something of a feminist heroine, admired for her refusal to let great physical suffering crush her spirit or interfere with her art and her left-wing political activities. Her house in the suburb of Coyoacán, Mexico City, was opened as a museum dedicated to her in 1958.

Kahlo, Frida (b Mexico City, 6 July 1907; d Mexico City, 13 July 1954). Mexican painter. In 1925, when she was still at school, she suffered appalling injuries in a traffic accident, leaving her a permanent semi-invalid, often in severe pain. During her convalescence she began painting portraits of herself and others. She remained her own favourite model and her art was usually directly autobiographical: ‘I paint myself because I am so often alone and because I am the subject I know best.’ In 1928 she married Mexico's most famous artist, Diego Rivera, who was twice her age and twice her size. Their relationship was often strained, but it lasted to her death, through various separations, divorce and remarriage (1939–40), and infidelities on both sides (one of her lovers was Leon Trotsky, who was assassinated while living in Mexico City in 1940). Kahlo was mainly self-taught as a painter. She was influenced by Rivera, but more by Mexican folk art, and her work has a colourful, almost naive vigour, tinged with Surrealist fantasy. Her paintings of her own physical and psychic pain are narcissistic and nightmarish, but also—like her personality—fiery and flamboyant. They were widely shown in Mexico and she had successful exhibitions in Paris and New York in 1938 and 1939 respectively, but during her lifetime she was overshadowed by her husband. Since her death, however, her fame has grown and she has become something of a feminist heroine, admired for her refusal to let great physical suffering crush her spirit or interfere with her art and her left-wing political activities. Her house in the suburb of Coyoacán, Mexico City, was opened as a museum dedicated to her in 1958.