Early Life and Background
Frida Kahlo was born Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón in Coyoacán, Mexico City, on July 6, 1907. She contracted polio at age six, which left her right leg thinner than the left. Her father, Guillermo Kahlo, was a photographer of German and Hungarian descent, and her mother, Matilde Calderón y González, was of Spanish and Indigenous Mexican origin. She later attended the National Preparatory School in Mexico City, one of the few women enrolled there, where she became politically active and joined the Mexican Communist Party. A devastating bus accident in 1925 fractured her spinal column, collarbone, ribs, pelvis, and right leg, leading to lifelong chronic pain and shaping her artistic focus on the body and suffering. Learn more about her early biography.
The accident forced her to reconsider her initial plan to study medicine, and she began painting while recovering in a full-body cast. She used a special easel designed to fit over her bed and a mirror placed above it to create self-portraits, which became a core theme of her work. Her parents provided her with an easel, oil paints, and borrowed an oil painting set from her father. Her early style was influenced by European Renaissance masters and Mexican folk art, and she later cited the Mexican muralists Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros as major influences. Explore her early artwork and influences.
Artistic Career and Legacy
Kahlo's first major exhibition was in 1938 at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York City, where she sold about half of the 25 paintings shown. She became known for her symbolic, often surreal self-portraits that explored identity, postcolonialism, gender, class, and race in Mexican society. Her work blends realism with surrealism and folk art, using vivid colors and Aztec and Catholic symbolism. She produced around 200 paintings, sketches, and drawings, with approximately 143 paintings, 55 of which are self-portraits. Her most famous works include The Two Fridas, Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird, and The Broken Column. View her collection at MoMA.
Kahlo's net worth at the time of her death in 1954 was modest, but her estate and paintings have grown significantly in value. Her self-portrait Roots (1943) sold at auction in 2006 for $5.6 million, setting a record at the time for a Latin American artist. In 2016, her painting Diego and I (1949) sold at Sotheby's for $3.49 million. Her paintings are held by major institutions including the Frida Kahlo Museum in Coyoacán, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. She has become a global cultural icon, with her image licensed by companies for fashion, art, and merchandise, and her life adapted into films, books, and exhibitions worldwide. Read Forbes coverage on her art market impact.
Personal Life and Key Relationships
Kahlo married muralist Diego Rivera in 1929, and they divorced in 1939 before remarrying in 1940. Their relationship was marked by mutual artistic