Kahlo started painting after a bus crash. She was eighteen, on her way home from school in Mexico City, when the bus was hit by a streetcar. A metal handrail pierced her pelvis. Her spinal column was broken in three places. Her collarbone, two ribs, and her right leg were fractured. She spent months in a full body cast, and her mother had a special easel built so she could paint lying down.
Key facts
Biography
She had already been ill. Polio at six left her right leg thinner than her left, a disproportion she hid with long skirts. The bus accident compounded everything. She would have thirty-five operations over her lifetime. Pain was the background condition of her work, though reducing her paintings to autobiography misses what she actually did with the medium.
She married Diego Rivera in 1929[8]. He was twenty years older, already Mexico's most famous muralist, and physically twice her size. Her parents called the marriage a union between an elephant and a dove. They divorced in 1939, remarried in 1940, and continued a relationship that was mutually unfaithful, politically intense, and artistically competitive. Rivera said she was the better painter. He may have been right.
Her paintings are small. Most are self-portraits. They use the visual language of Mexican[8] folk art, ex-votos, and Aztec mythology, combined with a physical directness that makes Surrealism[8] look polite. Andre Breton called her a Surrealist. She disagreed: 'I paint my own reality.' She was right about that too.
She died in 1954[8] at forty-seven. Her diary entry for the last day reads 'I hope the leaving is joyful and I hope never to return.'
Timeline
- 1907Born in Coyoacan, Mexico City
- 1913Contracted polio aged 6; right leg left thinner than the left
- 1925Bus crash aged 18; metal handrail pierced her pelvis. Began painting during recovery.
- 1929Married Diego Rivera aged 22; her parents called it "an elephant and a dove"
- 1938First solo exhibition at Julien Levy Gallery, New York, aged 31
- 1939Painted The Two Fridas aged 32 during divorce from Rivera
- 1953First solo exhibition in Mexico aged 46; arrived by ambulance, attended from her bed
- 1954Died in Coyoacan aged 47. Last diary entry: "I hope the leaving is joyful"
Notable Works
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Frida Kahlo prints
Hand-finished archival prints from Frida Kahlo's body of work.
What the Water Gave Me - Frida Kahlo
From £28.00
Unos Cuantos Piquetitos (A Few Small Nips) - Frida Kahlo
From £25.20
Self-Portrait with Bonito - Frida Kahlo
From £28.00
Self-Portrait with Monkey - Frida Kahlo
From £28.00
Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird - Frida Kahlo
From £28.00
The Broken Column - Frida Kahlo
From £28.00
Where to See Frida Kahlo
10 museums worldwide.
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3 works
Frida Kahlo Museum
Coyoacán, Mexico
The Casa Azul in Coyoacán was Kahlo's birthplace and her home with Diego Rivera. Opened as a museum in 1958, four years after her death, it keeps her studio, wheelchair, corsets and wardrobe in place. The three catalogued paintings sit within rooms she actually lived and worked in.
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3 works
Museo Dolores Olmedo
Mexico City, Mexico
Mexico City's Museo Dolores Olmedo held the largest private Kahlo collection, assembled by the collector Dolores Olmedo across four decades. Only three Kahlos sit in the catalogue, yet The Broken Column (1944) is among them, painted after the spinal surgery that left her in a steel corset.
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3 works
Museum of Modern Art
Midtown Manhattan, United States
New York's Museum of Modern Art bought its first Kahlo in 1938, making MoMA the earliest major American institution to collect her. The holding is small at three works, but places her within the same twentieth-century canon the museum built around Picasso and Matisse.
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1 works
Buffalo AKG Art Museum
Buffalo, United States
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1 works
Harry Ransom Center
Texas, United States
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1 works
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Los Angeles, United States
Related Artists
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See all Frida Kahlo prints →Frequently Asked Questions
Did frida kahlo have children?
Frida Kahlo wrote a letter considering her circumstances, stating that she had no relatives to help her during and after a pregnancy. She also stated that Diego Rivera was very concerned with his work, and children would come in third or fourth place.Did frida kahlo have polio?
Frida Kahlo caught polio at the age of six and was bedbound until she recovered.Frida kahlo art style and technique?
Frida Kahlo cultivated a folk style that reflected her strong interest in the power of naïve Colonial pictures. She also used folk imagery such as ex-votos.How did frida kahlo die?
Frida Kahlo died in 1954[8] at the age of 47.How did frida kahlo paint?
Frida Kahlo loved the company of animals, and many of them made it into her paintings. She included spider monkeys, a hairless dog, parakeets, macaws, and even a fawn in her art.Is frida kahlo still alive?
No, Frida Kahlo died in 1954[8].Was frida kahlo a communist?
Frida Kahlo joined the Communist Party in the 1920s. At that time, the intellectual atmosphere in Mexico was charged with European ideologies, most prominently Marxism tempered with Mexican[8] nationalism.Was frida kahlo disabled?
Frida Kahlo endured intense physical pain throughout her life. In 1925[8], she was impaled on a metal handrail in a collision between a bus and trolley, which broke her spinal column and pelvis.When did frida kahlo start painting?
Frida Kahlo began to draw and paint during her convalescence. She used bright colours and a deliberately naïve style.Where can i see frida kahlo paintings?
Frida Kahlo's works can be seen at Museum of Modern Art[4], Frida Kahlo Museum, Museo Dolores Olmedo, and 2 other museums worldwide.Who was frida kahlo married to?
Frida Kahlo married Diego Rivera. They married in the year that Kahlo painted a work satirising the class divisions in Mexican[8] society.Why did frida kahlo have a unibrow?
The artist's eyebrows made the cult of Kahlo possible. Her eyebrows were the providential condition of her celebrity.
Sources
Editorial draws on the following primary and tertiary references for Frida Kahlo.
- [1] museum Buffalo AKG Art Museum Used for: museum holdings.
- [2] museum National Museum of Women in the Arts Used for: museum holdings.
- [3] museum Museo de Arte Moderno Used for: museum holdings.
- [4] museum Museum of Modern Art Used for: museum holdings.
- [5] museum Harry Ransom Center Used for: museum holdings.
- [6] museum Los Angeles County Museum of Art Used for: museum holdings.
- [7] wikidata Wikidata: Q5588 Used for: identifiers.
- [8] wikipedia Wikipedia: Frida Kahlo Used for: biography, birth dates, death dates, identifiers, movement attribution, nationality.
- [9] book Dorling Kindersley, Artists: Inspiring Stories of the World's Most Creative Minds Used for: biography.
- [10] book Masterpieces of western art : a history of art in 900 individual studies from the Gothic to the present day Used for: biography.
- [11] book Hodge, Susie, 1960- author, The short story of women artists : a pocket guide to movements, works, breakthroughs, & themes Used for: biography.
Editorial overseen by Solis Prints. Sources verified 2026-06-18. Click a source for details, or hover over [N] in the page above to preview.
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