1907—1954,
Mexican painter, b. Coyoacán.
As a result of an accident at age 15, Kahlo turned her
attention from a medical career to painting. Drawing on her
personal experiences, her works are often shocking in their
stark portrayal of pain and the harsh lives of women.
Fifty-five of her 143 paintings are self-portraits
incorporating a personal symbolism complete with graphic
anatomical references. She was also influenced by indigenous
Mexican culture, aspects of which she portrayed in bright
colors, with a mixture of realism and symbolism. Her
paintings attracted the attention of the artist Diego
Rivera, whom she later married. Although Kahlo's work is
sometimes classified as surrealist and she did exhibit
several times with European surrealists, she herself
disputed the label. Her preoccupation with female themes and
the figurative candor with which she expressed them made her
something of a feminist cult figure in the last decades of
the 20th cent. Some of her work is exhibited at the Frida
Kahlo Museum, situated in her birthplace and subsequent home
in suburban Mexico City.
Bibliography
See The Diary of Frida Kahlo (1995), ed. by S. M.
Lowe, and The Letters of Frida Kahlo (1995), ed. by
M. Zamora; H. Herrera, Frida (1983); S. M. Lowe,
Frida Kahlo (1991); M. Zamora, Frida Kahlo
(1991); H. Herrera, Frida Kahlo: The Paintings
(1991).