-
Frida Kahlo
(Picture for Biography) -
Period: to
Biography
Frida Kahlo was a famous Mexican artist who is most known for her self-portraits with symbolisms of self-identity, the human body, and death. -
Frida Contracts Polio
Frida suffered from polio which made her have a slightly crooked right foot. In order to endure her chronic ailment, she started doing art to be more engaged during her recovery. -
Period: to
Surrealism
An artistic cultural movement that started to rise in Europe after World War I in which artists, filmmakers, and writers used abstract and unreal imagery to release the unconscious mind's imagination. Frida was considered a surrealist artist. -
Traffic Accident
Frida Kahlo was involved in a bus accident when she was traveling to school and had to undergo more than 30 operations throughout her life. During the months at the hospital being bedridden, she started to paint again. -
Marrying Diego Rivera
After joining the Mexican Communist Party and marrying Rivera, Kahlo changed her painting style into her new interest in Mexican folk art. She also started changing her attire into a more traditional Mexican wife which she would eventually be known for. -
Tragic Miscarriage and Family Death
During her time traveling in the United States, Frida suffered a miscarriage in Detroit and later received the news that her mother had passed away. The awful events in her life inspired her to make illustrations to demonstrate her pain including "In Ford Hospital" and "My Birth". -
First Exhibition
Near the end of the year 1933, Kahlo and her husband returned to Mexico. There she met a surrealist André Breton who supported her work and helped in entering her art into her first solo exhibition which was successful. The Louvre Museum in France soon got ahold of her work which made her the first 20th-century Mexican artist to be included in the collection. -
Eventual Divorce
After many extramarital affairs between Frida and Rivera, the couple divorced in 1939. In the same year, She started to paint her experiences and crafted more famous works such as "The Two Fridas." -
Period: to
Declining Health
Frida later reconciled with Rivera a year later and moved to her childhood home. She continued to paint self-portraits of herself for which she is famous and underwent numerous surgeries. Despite her health, she insisted on going into her first solo exhibition in Mexico even while bedridden in 1953. -
Frida Painting while bedridden
(Picture for Declining Health) -
Frida Kahlo Museum
After the death of Frida Kahlo, her husband decided to make her childhood home into a museum solely dedicated to her. Frida's artwork which expressed her many experiences slowly grew her reputation into being one of the best-known artists of the 20th century.