111 Facts About Frida Kahlo

Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderon was a Mexican painter known for her many portraits, self-portraits, and works inspired by the nature and artifacts of Mexico.

Frida Kahlo is known for painting about her experience of chronic pain.

Frida Kahlo's paintings raised the interest of surrealist artist Andre Breton, who arranged for Kahlo's first solo exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York in 1938; the exhibition was a success and was followed by another in Paris in 1939.

Frida Kahlo taught at the Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado and was a founding member of the Seminario de Cultura Mexicana.

Frida Kahlo had her first solo exhibition in Mexico in 1953, shortly before her death in 1954 at the age of 47.

Frida Kahlo's work has been celebrated internationally as emblematic of Mexican national and indigenous traditions and by feminists for what is seen as its uncompromising depiction of the female experience and form.

Frida Kahlo enjoyed art from an early age, receiving drawing instruction from printmaker Fernando Fernandez and filling notebooks with sketches.

Frida Kahlo was impressed by her talent, although she did not consider art as a career at this time.

Frida Kahlo started to consider a career as a medical illustrator, as well, which would combine her interests in science and art.

Frida Kahlo's mother provided her with a specially-made easel, which enabled her to paint in bed, and her father lent her some of his oil paints.

Frida Kahlo had a mirror placed above the easel, so that she could see herself.

On moving to Morelos in 1929 with her husband Rivera, Frida Kahlo was inspired by the city of Cuernavaca where they lived.

Frida Kahlo changed her artistic style and increasingly drew inspiration from Mexican folk art.

On moving to Detroit with Rivera, Frida Kahlo experienced numerous health problems related to a failed pregnancy.

Frida Kahlo experimented with different techniques, such as etching and frescos, and her paintings began to show a stronger narrative style.

Frida Kahlo began placing emphasis on the themes of "terror, suffering, wounds, and pain".

Frida Kahlo painted more "than she had done in all her eight previous years of marriage", creating such works as My Nurse and I, Memory, the Heart, Four Inhabitants of Mexico, and What the Water Gave Me.

Frida Kahlo made her first significant sale in the summer of 1938 when film star and art collector Edward G Robinson purchased four paintings at $200 each.

Frida Kahlo was impressed by Kahlo, immediately claiming her as a surrealist and describing her work as "a ribbon around a bomb".

Frida Kahlo received commissions from A Conger Goodyear, then the president of the MoMA, and Clare Boothe Luce, for whom she painted a portrait of Luce's friend, socialite Dorothy Hale, who had committed suicide by jumping from her apartment building.

Frida Kahlo had several affairs, continuing the one with Nickolas Muray and engaging in ones with Levy and Edgar Kaufmann, Jr.

In January 1939, Frida Kahlo sailed to Paris to follow up on Andre Breton's invitation to stage an exhibition of her work.

Frida Kahlo was warmly received by other Parisian artists, such as Pablo Picasso and Joan Miro, as well as the fashion world, with designer Elsa Schiaparelli designing a dress inspired by her and Vogue Paris featuring her on its pages.

Frida Kahlo gained more appreciation for her art in Mexico as well.

Frida Kahlo became a founding member of the Seminario de Cultura Mexicana, a group of twenty-five artists commissioned by the Ministry of Public Education in 1942 to spread public knowledge of Mexican culture.

Frida Kahlo was invited to participate in "Salon de la Flor", an exhibition presented at the annual flower exposition.

An article by Rivera on Frida Kahlo's art was published in the journal published by the Seminario de Cultura Mexicana.

In 1943, Frida Kahlo accepted a teaching position at the recently reformed, nationalistic Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado "La Esmeralda".

Frida Kahlo encouraged her students to treat her in an informal and non-hierarchical way and taught them to appreciate Mexican popular culture and folk art and to derive their subjects from the street.

Frida Kahlo secured three mural commissions for herself and her students.

Frida Kahlo struggled to make a living from her art until the mid to late 1940s, as she refused to adapt her style to suit her clients' wishes.

Frida Kahlo received two commissions from the Mexican government in the early 1940s.

Frida Kahlo did not complete the first one, possibly due to her dislike of the subject, and the second commission was rejected by the commissioning body.

Frida Kahlo painted mostly still lifes, portraying fruit and flowers with political symbols such as flags or doves.

In 1954, Frida Kahlo was again hospitalized in April and May That spring, she resumed painting after a one-year interval.

Towards the end of the decade, Frida Kahlo derived more inspiration from Mexican folk art, drawn to its elements of "fantasy, naivety, and fascination with violence and death".

Emma Dexter has argued that, as Frida Kahlo derived her mix of fantasy and reality mainly from Aztec mythology and Mexican culture instead of Surrealism, it is more appropriate to consider her paintings as having more in common with magical realism, known as New Objectivity.

Similarly to many other contemporary Mexican artists, Frida Kahlo was heavily influenced by Mexicanidad, a romantic nationalism that had developed in the aftermath of the revolution.

When Frida Kahlo began her career as an artist in the 1920s, muralists dominated the Mexican art scene.

Frida Kahlo had an extensive collection of approximately 2,000 retablos, which she displayed on the walls of La Casa Azul.

Frida Kahlo concentrated more frequently on this format towards the end of the 1930s, thus reflecting changes in Mexican society.

Out of specific Mexican folk artists, Frida Kahlo was especially influenced by Hermenegildo Bustos, whose works portrayed Mexican culture and peasant life, and Jose Guadalupe Posada, who depicted accidents and crime in satiric manner.

Frida Kahlo derived inspiration from the works of Hieronymus Bosch, whom she called a "man of genius", and Pieter Bruegel the Elder, whose focus on peasant life was similar to her own interest in the Mexican people.

In My Grandparents and I, Frida Kahlo painted herself as a ten-year old, holding a ribbon that grows from an ancient tree that bears the portraits of her grandparents and other ancestors while her left foot is a tree trunk growing out of the ground, reflecting Frida Kahlo's view of humanity's unity with the earth and her own sense of unity with Mexico.

In Mexico, the traditional Spanish values of machismo were widely embraced, but Frida Kahlo was always uncomfortable with machismo.

Many of Frida Kahlo's paintings are concerned with medical imagery, which is presented in terms of pain and hurt, featuring Frida Kahlo bleeding and displaying her open wounds.

Frida Kahlo did not use them only to show her subjective experience but to raise questions about Mexican society and the construction of identity within it, particularly gender, race, and social class.

Historian Liza Bakewell has stated that Frida Kahlo "recognized the conflicts brought on by revolutionary ideology":.

Frida Kahlo often featured her own body in her paintings, presenting it in varying states and disguises: as wounded, broken, as a child, or clothed in different outfits, such as the Tehuana costume, a man's suit, or a European dress.

Frida Kahlo used her body as a metaphor to explore questions on societal roles.

In depicting the female body in graphic manner, Frida Kahlo positioned the viewer in the role of the voyeur, "making it virtually impossible for a viewer not to assume a consciously held position in response".

Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderon was born on 6 July 1907 in Coyoacan, a village on the outskirts of Mexico City.

Frida Kahlo stated that she was born at the family home, La Casa Azul, but according to the official birth registry, the birth took place at the nearby home of her maternal grandmother.

Frida Kahlo's parents were photographer Guillermo Frida Kahlo and Matilde Calderon y Gonzalez, and they were thirty-six and thirty, respectively, when they had her.

Frida Kahlo had two half-sisters from Guillermo's first marriage, Maria Luisa and Margarita, but they were raised in a convent.

Frida Kahlo later described the atmosphere in her childhood home as often "very, very sad".

Frida Kahlo described her mother as "kind, active and intelligent, but calculating, cruel and fanatically religious".

When Frida Kahlo was six years old, she contracted polio, which eventually made her right leg grow shorter and thinner than the left.

Frida Kahlo taught her photography, and she began to help him retouch, develop, and color photographs.

Frida Kahlo was expelled for disobedience and was sent to a vocational teachers school.

In 1922, Frida Kahlo was accepted to the elite National Preparatory School, where she focused on natural sciences with the aim of becoming a physician.

Frida Kahlo performed well academically, was a voracious reader, and became "deeply immersed and seriously committed to Mexican culture, political activism and issues of social justice".

Frida Kahlo fell in love with Alejandro Gomez Arias, the leader of the group and her first love.

Arias and Frida Kahlo were often separated from each other, due to the political instability and violence of the period, so they exchanged passionate love letters.

Frida Kahlo later described the injury as "the way a sword pierces a bull".

Frida Kahlo suffered many injuries: her pelvic bone had been fractured, her abdomen and uterus had been punctured by the rail, her spine was broken in three places, her right leg was broken in eleven places, her right foot was crushed and dislocated, her collarbone was broken, and her shoulder was dislocated.

Frida Kahlo spent a month in hospital and two months recovering at home before being able to return to work.

Frida Kahlo joined the Mexican Communist Party and was introduced to a circle of political activists and artists, including the exiled Cuban communist Julio Antonio Mella and the Italian-American photographer Tina Modotti.

At one of Modotti's parties in June 1928, Frida Kahlo was introduced to Diego Rivera.

Shortly after their introduction in 1928, Frida Kahlo asked him to judge whether her paintings showed enough talent for her to pursue a career as an artist.

Frida Kahlo soon began a relationship with Rivera, who was 21 years her senior and had two common-law wives.

Frida Kahlo's mother opposed the marriage, and both parents referred to it as a "marriage between an elephant and a dove", referring to the couple's differences in size; Rivera was tall and overweight while Kahlo was petite and fragile.

Similar to many other Mexican women artists and intellectuals at the time, Frida Kahlo began wearing traditional indigenous Mexican peasant clothing to emphasize her mestiza ancestry: long and colorful skirts, huipils and rebozos, elaborate headdresses and masses of jewelry.

Frida Kahlo especially favored the dress of women from the allegedly matriarchal society of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, who had come to represent "an authentic and indigenous Mexican cultural heritage" in post-revolutionary Mexico.

The Tehuana outfit allowed Frida Kahlo to express her feminist and anti-colonialist ideals.

Frida Kahlo disliked having to socialize with capitalists such as Henry and Edsel Ford, and was angered that many of the hotels in Detroit refused to accept Jewish guests.

Frida Kahlo's doctor agreed to perform an abortion, but the medication used was ineffective.

Frida Kahlo was deeply ambivalent about having a child and had already undergone an abortion earlier in her marriage to Rivera.

Frida Kahlo was not happy to be back in Mexico and blamed Kahlo for their return.

Frida Kahlo had an affair of her own with American artist Isamu Noguchi.

Frida Kahlo was reconciled with Rivera and Cristina later in 1935 and moved back to San Angel.

Frida Kahlo became a loving aunt to Cristina's children, Isolda and Antonio.

Frida Kahlo resumed her political activities in 1936, joining the Fourth International and becoming a founding member of a solidarity committee to provide aid to the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War.

Frida Kahlo was eager to be reunited with Muray, but he decided to end their affair, as he had met another woman whom he was planning to marry.

Frida Kahlo traveled back to Mexico City, where Rivera requested a divorce from her.

Frida Kahlo adopted a more sophisticated technique, limited the graphic details, and began to produce more quarter-length portraits, which were easier to sell.

Frida Kahlo painted several of her most famous pieces during this period, such as The Two Fridas, Self-portrait with Cropped Hair, The Wounded Table, and Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird.

Frida Kahlo was briefly suspected of being involved, as she knew the murderer, and was arrested and held for two days with her sister Cristina.

Frida Kahlo experienced pain in her legs, the infection on her hand had become chronic, and she was treated for syphilis.

Frida Kahlo enjoyed taking care of the house and its garden, and was kept company by friends, servants, and various pets, including spider monkeys, Xoloitzcuintlis, and parrots.

In 1950, Frida Kahlo spent most of the year in Hospital ABC in Mexico City, where she underwent a new bone graft surgery on her spine.

Frida Kahlo had rejoined the Mexican Communist Party in 1948 and campaigned for peace, for example, by collecting signatures for the Stockholm Appeal.

Frida Kahlo became severely depressed and anxious, and her dependency on painkillers escalated.

Frida Kahlo seemed to anticipate her death, as she spoke about it to visitors and drew skeletons and angels in her diary.

The demonstration worsened her illness, and on the night of 12 July 1954, Frida Kahlo had a high fever and was in extreme pain.

Frida Kahlo had been prescribed a maximum dose of seven pills but had taken eleven.

Frida Kahlo had given Rivera a wedding anniversary present that evening, over a month in advance.

Frida Kahlo's ashes are displayed in a pre-Columbian urn at La Casa Azul, which opened as a museum in 1958.

Frida Kahlo gradually gained more recognition in the late 1970s when feminist scholars began to question the exclusion of female and non-Western artists from the art historical canon and the Chicano Movement lifted her as one of their icons.

The first two books about Frida Kahlo were published in Mexico by Teresa del Conde and Raquel Tibol in 1976 and 1977, respectively, and, in 1977, The Tree of Hope Stands Firm became the first Frida Kahlo painting to be sold in an auction, netting $19,000 at Sotheby's.

Frida Kahlo is considered "one of the most instantly recognizable artists", whose face has been "used with the same regularity, and often with a shared symbolism, as images of Che Guevara or Bob Marley".

Frida Kahlo has become an icon for several minority groups and political movements, such as feminists, the LGBTQ community, and Chicanos.

Edward Sullivan stated that Frida Kahlo is hailed as a hero by so many because she is "someone to validate their own struggle to find their own voice and their own public personalities".

Frida Kahlo's constant remaking of her identity, her construction of a theater of the self are exactly what preoccupy such contemporary artists as Cindy Sherman or Kiki Smith and, on a more popular level, Madonna.

Similarly, Peter Wollen has compared Frida Kahlo's cult-like following to that of Sylvia Plath, whose "unusually complex and contradictory art" has been overshadowed by simplified focus on her life.

Frida Kahlo received several commemorations on the centenary of her birth in 2007, and some on the centenary of the birthyear she attested to, 2010.

Frida Kahlo is the protagonist of three fictional novels, Barbara Mujica's Frida, Slavenka Drakulic's Frida's Bed, and Barbara Kingsolver's The Lacuna.

Frida Kahlo inspired two operas, Robert Xavier Rodriguez's Frida, which premiered at the American Music Theater Festival in Philadelphia in 1991, and Kalevi Aho's Frida y Diego, which premiered at the Helsinki Music Centre in Helsinki, Finland in 2014.

In 2014 Frida Kahlo was one of the inaugural honorees in the Rainbow Honor Walk, a walk of fame in San Francisco's Castro neighborhood noting LGBTQ people who have "made significant contributions in their fields".

Frida Kahlo Way is the home of City College of San Francisco and Archbishop Riordan High School.

In 2019, Frida Kahlo was featured on a mural painted by Rafael Blanco in downtown Reno, Nevada.