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Frida Kahlo is considered one of Mexico's greatest artists. She was born on July 6, 1907 in Coyocoan, Mexico City, Mexico. Her father was a German descendant and photographer. He immigrated to Mexico where he met and married her mother. Her mother was half Amerindian and half Spanish. Frida Kahlo had three sisters.

Frida Kahlo had poor health. She contracted polio at the age of 6 and had to be bedridden for nine months. This disease caused her right leg and foot to grow much thinner than her left one. She limped after she recovered from polio. She had been wearing long skirts to cover that for the rest of her life. Her father encouraged her to do lots of sports to help her recover. She had kept a very close relationship with her father for her whole life. Her health condition had been worsening in 1950. She became bedridden for the next nine month and had to stay in hospital and had several surgeries. But with great persistence, Frida Kahlo continued to work and paint.

Frida Kahlo attended the renowned National Preparatory School in Mexico City in the year of 1922. There are only thirty-five female students enrolled in that school and she soon became famous for her outspokenness and bravery. At this school she first met the famous Mexican muralist Diego Rivera for the first time. In the same year, Kahlo joined a gang of students who shared similar political and intellectual views. She fell in love with the leader Alejandro Gomez Arias. On a September afternoon when she traveled with Gomez Arias on a bus the tragic accident happened. Frida Kahlo was seriously injured. The accident left her in a great deal of pain, both physically and physiologically. She had to wear full-body cast for three months. To kill the time and alleviate the pain, she started painting and finished her first self-portrait the following year.

Frida Κahlo and Diego Rivera got married twice. She asked him to evaluate her work and he encouraged her. Kahlo and Rivera had been separated a few times but they always went back together. Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera's marriage is not a usual one. They had been keeping separate homes and studios for all those years.

Ø  In 1932, Kahlo added more realistic and surrealistic components in her painting style. Frida said she never considered herself as a Surrealist “until André Breton came to Mexico and told me I was one”. She also wrote, “Really I do not know whether my paintings are surrealist or not”. In 1938, she had an exhibition at New York City gallery. She sold some of her paintings and got two commissions. The next year, Kahlo was invited by Andre Breton and went to Paris. Her works were exhibited. In the year of 1953, she had a solo exhibition in Mexico.

About one week after her 47th birthday, Frida Kahlo passed away at her beloved Blue House, her family’s home.

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Born in Coyoacán in 1907, Kahlo is known for her resplendent imagery and unapologetic individualism. Animals and plants, along with her body, pain and spirituality, became signature themes of her unique visual language. She painted many eerie portraits, still lives and spiritual scenes - but it is her mesmerizing self-portraits which first caught people's attention, and continued to captivate after her death.

Such work is groundbreaking because it turned self-portraiture inward - especially at a time when women often inhabited art only as men saw them. Kahlo insisted her personal experience mattered, and boldly documented the circumstances of her body, beliefs and every day life. These are often conveyed through symbols, which can be as sensuous as they are gruesome: from giant floating flowers and undulating landscapes, to transplanted body parts, skulls and billowing clouds of demons. Click here for an online archive of her art, then listen to this radio documentary about her life and work. You can also access Kahlo's life in her own words, through her published diary and journal sketches.

A closer look at her reality reveals the stuff of dreams brought to life. Kahlo split her time between her deep blue childhood home, La Casa Azul (which you can now visit as a museum dedicated to her life and work) and her modern studio in Mexico City, which was connected by a bridge to her husband's quarters, the painter Diego Rivera. Today, their connected studios is also a museum, and known as an architectural wonder. At home, Kahlo was often accompanied by her numerous wild pets including deers, birds and monkeys - all of which played a role in her art.

Along with her artistic commitments, she held uncompromising political beliefs. She had a deep affinity with Mexicanidad, a movement which celebrated indigenous culture after the Revolution. Click here to view a short documentary about the relationship of political revolution to the development of Mexican art at this time.

Kahlo also expressed her nationalism in her daily life. She frequently wore traditional Tehuana dress, and dedicated herself to the study of Mexican traditions and spirituality. .She was also was a devotee of Karl Marx, who appears in several of her paintings, and a fierce member of the Mexican Communist party.

It was at a Communist gathering that she met Rivera. Their tempestuous relationship was marked by infidelity on both sides - Kahlo was openly bisexual - and the two divorced in 1939...only to remarry a year later. Rivera features prominently in Kahlo's work, appearing in person in more realistic portraits as well in the wild forms like a giant baby, or as Kahlo's third eye. Read extracts of her beautiful tribute to Rivera here.

Over the past few years, fans have flocked to her colorful biography, style and legacy.. The trend for Kahlo merchandise and fascination with her life has been termed "Frida-mania", and has sometimes been criticized for simplifying her life and appropriating her unique and complex vision. This article argues for the value of looking at her identity and work in all its complexity - from her experience as a woman with disabilities, to her relationship with her country's history and heritage and her radical political views.

In Kahlo's work, there are no simple answers or singular truths about a woman who became an icon Rather she explores a blazing desire to survive on her own terms alongside some of the rawest visual depictions of despair. By mining her reality for multiple meanings, she provided us with an extraordinary body of work - and an insight into the contents of her soul.

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Frida Kahlo: The woman behind the legend - Iseult Gillespie

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In 1925, Frida Kahlo was on her way home from school in Mexico City when the bus she was riding collided with a streetcar. She suffered near-fatal injuries and her disability became a major theme in her paintings. Over the course of her life, she would establish herself as the creator and muse behind extraordinary pieces of art.

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This painting was completed shortly after her divorce with Diego Rivera. It shows Frida's two different personalities. One is the traditional Frida in Tehuana costume, with a broken heart, sitting next to an independent, modern dressed Frida. In Frida's diary, she wrote about this painting and said it originated from her memory of an imaginary childhood friend. Later she admitted it expressed her desperation and loneliness with the separation from Diego. In this painting, the two Frida’s are holding hands. They both have visible hearts and the heart of the traditional Frida is cut and torn open. In 1947, this painting was acquired by the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes in Mexico City. The purchase price was 4,000 Pesos, the highest price that Frida was ever paid for a painting during her lifetime.

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This self-portrait was painted during the end of 1939 to the beginning of 1940.

·         This table is a symbol of Frida's sense of broken family from the divorce.

·         The painting was displayed in the "International Exhibition of Surrealism".

·         In the painting Frida herself is surrounded by all the objects which accompany her.

·         On one side one can see her sister Cristina's two children, which is a reflection of her desire to have her own children.

Frida started working on this painting as an expression of her despair and loneliness. The blood is dripping in the Wounded Table, 1940 as it was dripping on Frida's Tehuana skirt in The Two Frida’s .
In this painting, the table has human legs and its surface is bleeding on the few knots. This table is a symbol of Frida's sense of broken family from the divorce. There are several objects around the table. In the center was Frida herself, surrounded by all the objects who accompanies her. On one side is her sister Cristina's two children, which is a reflection of her desire to have her own children. On the other side is a deer, one of her favorite pets and she uses them as her surrogate children. Sitting right next to her is a Nayarit figure. The tall Judas figure is considered as Diego Rivera, who plays the role of the betrayal. Frida elongated the arm of the idol that sits on her left. And, perhaps to emphasize her link with pre-Columbian culture, she made the idol's arm continuous with her own. The clay skeleton, with its pelvic bone tied to a chair to keep it upright, lifts a lock of her long hair in the coiled spring that forms his forearm. He seems intimately linked with Frida, as well."
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The Wounded Deer was painted in 1946 by Frida Kahlo. It portrays a young deer with the head of herself and was fatally wounded by a bunch of arrows. The wounds are a reflection of her suffering after the unsuccessful operation that was supposed to let her free of her physical pain but instead it made worse her emotional pain as well. In the same year she gave it to her friend Lina and Arcady Boitler as a wedding gift, so that they will have something to remember her. This is one of Frida Kahlo's most famous paintings, and definitely one of the best in a lot of people's lists.

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Viva la vida, watermelons is the last painting that Frida Kahlo portrayed in 1954, a surprising lighthearted end to her tragic story. The painting portrays 7 watermelons in different shapes, the central one has the words "long live life" written on it, something that might be considered ironic because of the short and harsh life she had. A lot of people think that the choice of watermelons is symbolic as they have hard shells and sweet interior like Frida because her experiences had toughened her. Even though nobody is sure of what Viva la vida wants to show everybody can agree that it is a true masterpiece.

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Frida Kahlo painted this portrait in about 1944 shortly after she had a spinal surgery to rectify continued problems that resulted from a serious traffic accident at the age of 18 .Frida expressed her suffering in the most straightforward and horrifying  way. In this painting  Frida looks pretty and strong and her style is singular .Her nails are stuck in her face and her whole body and she has a split in her torso that it looks like  an earthquake slot. In the background there is a land with dark graves .In the beginning she paints herself naked , but after she covered her down part up with something like a hospital blanket. A broken column is set in place of her spine and is mounted to be on the verge of collapsing into rubble. Penetrating from loins to chin, the column looks phallic. Although her body is contented by the torso, she is conveying a message of spiritual triumph even if she wanted to saw her pain. Finally, she looks straight ahead and is challenging both herself and her audience to face her situation.

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"My painting carries with it the message of pain"

Because Frida had gone through difficult years from an early age due to the accident. She wanted to paint the events in which she had gone through difficult psychological times and she had been saddened.

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"There have been two great accidents in my life. One was the trolley and the other was Diego. Diego was by far the worst."
Frida characterizes Diego as an accident because he cheated on her and made her feel bad.

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"Feet, what do I need you for when I have wings to fly?"

This quote, written by Frida Kahlo, embraces the idea of her paintings being her escape from the harsh reality. They give her motivation to continue fighting, and instead of walking she flies with her imaginary wings reflecting that her life is in her own hands.

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"I never paint dreams or nightmares, I paint my reality"

Out of all her quotes this one is the most tragic as it reveals the meanings of all her paintings that were driven by negative emotions. In other words, saying that her own life is depicted in those paintings, and the surreality of them doesn't have to do with dark thoughts but rather her sad but inspirational life.

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"I hope the exit is joyful and I hope never to return"

Her last and one of her most famous quotes. This quote expresses the sadness and trauma of her life, she doesn't beg for her life to be longer nor does she care that she hadn't had a great life; she just wants to move on hoping there was something better in store for her in the afterlife.

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Frida Kahlo: 8 works - Google Arts & Culture

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A slideshow of artworks auto-selected from multiple collections

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The presence of more politically-charged imagery within Kahlo's work was the artist trying to "serve the Party" and "benefit the Revolution". In this painting, we see Frida embracing the Utopian belief that she, and everyone else in the world, can be freed from pain and suffering and saved by the political convictions of Marxism.

Here we see Kahlo in a leather corset standing in front of a divided background, with half of it representing good things and peace, and the other crowded with symbols of evil and destruction. Alongside the two hands of Marxism that cure her, one of the most interesting parts of the painting is the red book she holds, which is the red book of Marxism. Fully supported in her ideology, we see Kahlo get rid of her crutches, alluding to the "giving health to the ill" part of the painting's title.

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The Hidden Meanings In Frida Kahlo's Paintings - Google Arts & Culture

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Explore the wonderful details included in the artist's works with the help of Art Camera

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Página no encontrada | Museo Frida Kahlo

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AVISO DE PRIVACIDAD Y MANEJO DE DATOS PERSONALES DEL SITIO DEL MUSEO FRIDA KAHLO

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Frida Kahlo had a tragic, traumatizing story but at the same time it is inspiring as it tells a story of a broken woman standing still and coming on top with every problem she faces. This story is a great reminder that you will only benefit from not giving up as she did because now she is praised all over the world because of her amazing paintings and her fascinating story. All these make Frida Kahlo one of the greatest artists to ever live.