Frida Kahlo de Rivera Famous Paintings and Self-Portraits, An Mexican Painter

Frida Kahlo de Rivera (born Magdalena Carmen Frieda Kahlo y Calderón; July 6, 1907 — July 13, 1954) was a Mexican painter, born in Coyoacán, who is best known for her self-portraits.

Kahlo’s life began and ended in Mexico City, in her home known as the Blue House. She gave her birth date as July 7, 1910, but her birth certificate shows July 6, 1907. Kahlo had allegedly wanted the year of her birth to coincide with the year of the beginning of the Mexican revolution so that her life would begin with the birth of modern Mexico. Her work has been celebrated in Mexico as emblematic of national and indigenous tradition, and by feminists for its uncompromising depiction of the female experience and form.

Mexican culture and Amerindian cultural tradition are important in her work, which has been sometimes characterized as Naïve art or folk art. Her work has also been described as “surrealist”, and in 1938 André Breton, principal initiator of the surrealist movement, described Kahlo’s art as a “ribbon around a bomb”.

Kahlo had a volatile marriage with the famous Mexican artist Diego Rivera. She suffered lifelong health problems. Many of her health problems were the result of a traffic accident she survived as a teenager. Recovering from her injuries isolated her from other people and this isolation influenced her works, many of which are self-portraits of one sort or another. Kahlo suggested, “I paint myself because I am so often alone and because I am the subject I know best.” She also stated, “I was born a bitch. I was born a painter.

Aside from the 1939 acquisition by the Louvre, Kahlo’s work was not widely acclaimed until decades after her death. Often she was remembered only as Diego Rivera’s wife. It was not until the end of of the 1970s and the early 1980s, when the artistic style in Mexico known as Neomexicanismo began, that she became well-known to the public. It was during this time that artists such as Kahlo, Abraham Ángel, Ángel Zárraga, and others gained recognition and Jesus Helguera’s classical calendar paintings became famous.