Frida Kahlo

Frida Kahlo y Calderón (6 July 1907 – 13 July 1954), usually known as Frida Kahlo, was a Mexican painter. She was known for her surreal and very personal works. She was married to Diego Rivera, also a well-known painter.

Frida Kahlo as a child

She was born in Coyoacán, Mexico. She had polio that left her disabled when she was 6 years old and some people think that she may have had spina bifida (a birth defect affecting the development of part of the spine) as well.

She studied medicine and was going to become a doctor.

Because of a traffic accident at age 18 which badly injured her, she had periods of severe pain for the rest of her life. After this accident, Kahlo no longer continued her medical studies but took up painting. She used ideas about things that had happened to her. Her paintings are often shocking in the way they show pain and the harsh lives of women.

Fifty-five of her 143 paintings are self-portraits. She was also influenced by native Mexican culture, shown in bright colors, with a mixture of realism and symbolism. Her paintings attracted the attention of the artist Diego Rivera, whom she later married. 

Today we learned all about the artist Frida Kahlo, how she used painting to help her overcome her own suffering and show women as being strong figures. We used her inspiration of self portraits to come up with our own drawings and paintings for our ID learning journey.

Please see some of our examples below.