Frida Kahol

Frida Kahol was born in The Blue House on July 6, 1907 on the outskirts of Mexico City. She had three sisters and two half sisters from her father’s first marriage. Frida was very close to her father. At the age of six she contracted polio which left one leg smaller than the other. When she was eighteen she was riding on a bus when it crashed into a trolley car. She suffered a broken spinal column, broken collarbone, ribs, a broken pelvis, eleven fractures in her right leg and a handrail pierced her abdomen and uterus making it impossible to have children. She underwent more than thirty surgeries. Eventually she recovered and began to walk again.

When Frida was twenty two she married an artist named Diego Rivera. Her mother disapproved of the marriage. It was not a happy marriage and they both had extramarital affairs. Kahol was also bisexual, which her husband tolerated, but the affairs with other men made him very jealous. Eventually the marriage ended in divorce. They remarried in 1940, but the marriage was just as bad as before.

After the accident, Frida devoted her time to painting. Over the course of her life Frida created more than 200 paintings, 55 of those were self-portraits. She painted self-portraits because she was often alone. Frida had many sad times in her life and she expressed it through her art. She said “I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality.” She was also influenced by Mexican culture and that is why she used such bright colors. Some of her work included monkeys because she portrayed them as protective symbols. She also included Christian and Jewish themes in some of her paintings. The Frame was the first work of art by a 20th century Mexican artist purchased by an internationally renowned museum. In the early 1980s, after the artistic movement in Mexico known as Neomexicanismo began, Kahol’s work became very popular. Before that she was remembered as Diego Rivera’s wife.

Frida Kahlo died July 13,1954.