Frida Kahlo is undoubtedly a Latina icon. The Mexican surrealist painter is well known around the world for her stunning autobiographical art, including heart-wrenching paintings depicting her physical ailments, miscarriages, and identity struggles. You know her as a revolutionary, one of the first women to fully express herself through art, a feminist putting women's issues at the forefront of her work [1]. But while Frida's impact and reach seems to grow by the minute — there's now a beauty line inspired by her at CVS [2] and even an amazing action figure [3] — there is more to Frida you should know. Straight ahead find 17 interesting tidbits about your idol.
- Her full name was a little longer: Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón.
- She was born at La Caza Azul in Mexico City on July 6, 1907, the same place where she passed away on July 13, 1954.
- Her father was a German photographer [5].
- She had three sisters: Matilde, Adriana, and Cristina.
- When she was 6, she contracted polio.
- On September 17, 1925, while on a bus with her then boyfriend Alejandro Gómez Arias, she was in an accident. A steel pole went through her hip and she was left with multiple broken bones, including her pelvis, ribs, spinal column, and collarbone.
- She started painting in 1925 [6] after the accident.
- Frida was part of the Young Communist League and the Mexican Communist Party.
- Mexican painter Diego Rivera, 20 years older than Frida, left his second wife for her and the two married in 1929.
- Frida's parents called the couple "the elephant and the dove." [7]
- Frida lived in San Francisco for a year, while Diego worked on a project.
- When Soviet communist Leon Trotsky moved to Mexico with political asylum, he stayed with Frida and Diego at La Casa Azul.
- While living in Paris in 1939, she befriended Pablo Picasso. [8]
- Though Frida and Diego were supportive of each other's art, their fights and Diego's infidelity (including an affair with Frida's sister, Cristina) led to their divorce in 1939 [9]. One year later, they remarried, though they led pretty separate lives from then on.
- In 1950, she spent nine months in the hospital because of gangrene on her left foot.
- Three years later, while bed-ridden, she took an ambulance to one of her exhibits. She spent the night in a four-poster bed in the middle of the gallery [10].
- Sadly, her physical pain led Frida to depression and suicidal thoughts. It is rumored her death was a suicide, though official word says the cause of death was pulmonary embolism.
