Frida Kahlo (1907–1954) was a Mexican painter best known for vivid, deeply personal self-portraits. Born in Coyoacán, she contracted polio as a child and, at 18, was seriously injured in a bus accident. During a long recovery she began to paint, using art to explore pain, identity and the culture of modern Mexico.
In 1929 she married the muralist Diego Rivera. Their partnership was passionate and often turbulent, but it also connected her with artists and thinkers in Mexico and abroad. Kahlo’s works blend realism, symbolism and folk motifs; monkeys, flowers and traditional dress appear alongside striking images of the body. Key paintings include The Two Fridas (1939), The Broken Column (1944) and Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird (1940).
She exhibited internationally from the late 1930s, holding her first solo show in New York and later, in 1953, her only solo exhibition in Mexico, which she famously attended from a bed due to ill health. Kahlo died in 1954. Since the 1970s she has been recognised as a major figure in art and a feminist icon. Her home, the Blue House in Coyoacán, is now the Museo Frida Kahlo.