Frida Kahlo

Frida Kahlo (1907–1954) was a Mexican painter whose vivid self-portraits and intensely personal imagery made her one of the most recognizable and studied artists of the 20th century. At 6 she contracted polio; at 18 she survived a bus accident that fractured her spine, pelvis, collarbone, and crushed her right leg — initiating a lifetime of medical procedures (35+ surgeries) and chronic pain. Confined to recovery, she began painting. Her work, often dismissed by the Surrealists as autobiography, is now understood as a precise phenomenological record of her physical and emotional experience. She was deeply involved in Mexican politics and culture, and her turbulent relationship with muralist Diego Rivera defined much of her adult life. Her diary, published posthumously, reveals the full scope of her literary imagination. Frida Kahlo lived 1907 – 1954.