Who is Frida Kahlo?

Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈfɾiða ˈkalo]; 6 July 1907 – 13 July 1954) was a Mexican painter known for her many portraits, self-portraits, and works inspired by the natural world and artifacts of Mexico. Inspired by the country’s popular culture, she employed a naïve folk art style to examine questions of identity, postcolonialism, gender, class, and race in Mexican society. Her paintings often had mighty autobiographical elements and mixed realism with fantasy. In complement to belonging to the post-revolutionary Mexicayotl movement, which sought to define a Mexican identity, Kahlo has been described as a surrealist or magical realist. She is known for painting very nearly her experience of chronic pain.

Born to a German father and a mestiza mother, Kahlo spent most of her childhood and adult life at La Casa Azul, her family house in Coyoacán – now publicly accessible as the Frida Kahlo Museum. Although she was disabled by polio as a child, Kahlo had been a promising student headed for medical assistant professor until she suffered a bus accident at the age of 18, which caused her lifelong throbbing and medical problems. During her recovery, she returned to her childhood inclusion in art in the proclaim of the idea of becoming an artist.

Kahlo’s interests in politics and art led her to connect the Mexican Communist Party in 1927, through which she met fellow Mexican artiste Diego Rivera. The couple married in 1929, and spent the late 1920s and in advance 1930s travelling in Mexico and the United States together. During this time, she developed her artistic style, drawing her main inspiration from Mexican folk culture, and painted mostly little self-portraits which mixed elements from pre-Columbian and Catholic beliefs. Her paintings raised the fascination of Surrealist player André Breton, who contracted 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 choice in Paris in 1939. While the French exhibition was less successful, the Louvre purchased a painting from Kahlo, The Frame, making her the first Mexican player to be featured in their collection. Throughout the 1940s, Kahlo participated in exhibitions in Mexico and the United States and worked as an art teacher. She taught at the Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado (“La Esmeralda“) and was a founding aficionada of the Seminario de Cultura Mexicana. Kahlo’s always-fragile health began to stop in the similar decade. She had her first solo exhibition in Mexico in 1953, shortly previously her death in 1954 at the age of 47.

Kahlo’s appear in as an artist remained relatively mysterious until the late 1970s, when her work was rediscovered by art historians and diplomatic activists. By the yet to be 1990s, she had become not abandoned a ascribed figure in art history, but after that regarded as an icon for Chicanos, the feminism doings and the LGBTQ+ movement. Kahlo’s be active has been highly praised internationally as emblematic of Mexican national and native traditions and by feminists for what is seen as its prickly depiction of the female experience and form.