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Frida Kahlo

Also known as: Frida Kahlo; primary name: Kahlo, Frida; other name: Kahlo y Calderón, Magdalena Carmen Frida
Details: individual; painter/draughtsman; Mexican; Female
Life dates: 1907-1954
Biography: Painter, born Mexico City, 6 July 1907; began to paint while recovering in bed from a bus accident in 1925 that left her seriously disabled; made a partial recovery, but was left barren and underwent 32 operations during her lifetime; supported by Diego Rivera, to whom she showed her work in 1929 and was married in the same year; their turbulent relationship is recorded in her self-portraits; painted approximately 200 works; described as a self-invented Surrealist by André Breton in his 1938 introduction for the brochure of the first of three Kahlo exhibitions held during her lifetime; right leg was amputated at the knee because of gangrene 1953 - she turned to drugs and alcohol to relieve her suffering and to Communism for spiritual solace, and several late paintings show Marx and Stalin as gods; they are painted in a loosely brushed style, her earlier miniaturist precision having been sacrificed to drug addiction; died Mexico City, 13 July 1954, probably suicide; international reputation from the 1970s. No work in the BM.