How this icon of art survived near-death to become a revolutionary figure
Frida Kahlo was one of the most important artists of the 20th century, and her popularity continues to grow. She is the subject of blockbuster exhibitions across the world, her work sells at record-breaking prices, and in almost every museum shop you are likely to find an item of merchandise with her striking face on it. Her raw, intimate and fearless artworks and her life story, marked by disability and a dramatic love life, keep resonating with new audiences. A rebel of her time, she transgressed normative rules about gender, sexuality and artistic genius. Today she is a role model for the feminist movement, LGBTQ+ community, the Chicano Movement, among others.
MAKING OF AN ARTIST
Kahlo was born Magdalena Carmen Frieda Kahlo y Calderon in 1907 to a Hungarian-German Jewish photographer Guillermo (originally Wilhelm before immigrating to Mexico), and mestiza (Spanish and Purépecha) Matilde Calderón de Kahlo. She grew up in the family home Casa Azul (The Blue House) in Coyoacán in Mexico City.
Although her father was a respectable photographer and was part of the intellectual bohemian milieu in Mexico City, it was not on the cards that the young Frida was likely to become an artistic icon, creating over 200 artworks. At the age of six, Frida contracted polio, which damaged her right leg leaving it shorter and thinner than her left. As she continued to grow, the damage created an imbalance in her pelvis and a curvature of her spine. At the age of 15, Frida Kahlo was one of 35 girls out of 2,000 students who were accepted to the very prestigious Escuela Nacional Preparatoria with the plan to study medicine.
Only three years later, she was part of a near-fatal bus accident on her way home from school – a tramcar drove into the bus, where she was a passenger. An iron handrail pierced her left hip and exited through her pelvic outlet. Her clavicle, ribs, spine, elbow and leg were severely fractured and her ankles and shoulders were dislocated. She was not expected to survive, but she did.
However, her dream of becoming a doctor was crushed. While recovering from her many injuries in bed, Frida started to paint. She recalls telling her mother, “I’m still alive and besides I have something to live for, and that something is painting.” Unable to move, her mother fixed an easel and a mirror to the canopy of her bed and she painted with her right arm while white straps around her chin and head pulled her towards the bed frame. This make-do setup was the unusual beginning of her career as an artist.
During the 1930s Kahlo continued to paint more and more. In 1938 she had the first one-woman show at the prestigious Julien Levy Gallery on New York’s e
