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Kahlo, Frida Biography
(1907-1954)
Mexican painter, who produced mostly small, highly personal self-portraits
using elements of fantasy and a style inspired by native popular art. Kahlo was
born in Coyoacán, Mexico, near Mexico City. While a student at Mexico
City's National Preparatory School in 1925, Frida Kahlo sustained severe
injuries in a bus accident. During her recuperation, Kahlo taught herself to
paint. After three years she took some of her first paintings to the famous
Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, who encouraged her to continue her work. Kahlo
and Rivera married in 1929.
Influenced by Rivera's work, Kahlo adopted his use of broad, simplified color
areas and a deliberately naive style in her oil paintings. Like Rivera, she
wanted her paintings to affirm her Mexican identity, and she frequently used
subject matter from Mexican archaeology and folk art.
Kahlo primarily depicted her personal experience. She frequently focused on
the painful aspects of her life, using graphic imagery to convey her meaning.
The turbulence of her marriage is shown in the weeping and physically injured
self-portraits she painted when she felt rejected by Rivera. Frida Kahlo
portrayed her physical disintegration, the result of the bus accident, in such
works as The Broken Column, in which she wears a metal brace and her body is
open to reveal a broken column in place of her spine.
Frida Kahlo’s famous paintings include:
- Dona Rosita Morillo
- Friuts of the Earth
- Flower of Life
- My Dress Hangs There
- Self-Portrait
- Self-Portrait with Monkey
- The Bride Frightened at Seeing Life Opened
- Self-Portrait
- The Love Embrace of the Universe, the Earth
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