Biography

At age 6, Frida was stricken with polio, which caused her right leg to appear much thinner than the other. It was to remain that way permanently. When Frida entered high school she was a tomboy full of mischief who became the ringleader of a rebellious group of mainly boys that continually caused trouble in the National Preparatory School . This group pulled many pranks , mainly on professors. It was also in the National Preparatory School that Frida first came in contact with her future husband, the famous Mexican muralist, Diego Rivera. He was commissioned to paint a mural in the school's auditorium.

On September 17, 1925 , at about age 18, Frida Kahlo was riding the city bus with her boyfriend, Alejandro Gomez Arias, when the bus crashed and turned over in the road. Alejandro escaped serious injury but Kahlo suffered a broken spinal column, a broken collarbone, broken ribs, a broken pelvis, and 11 fractures in her right leg. In addition her right foot was dislocated and crushed, and her shoulder was out of joint. For a month, Frida was forced to stay flat on her back, encased in a plaster cast and enclosed in a boxlike structure.

Frida's enormous strength and will to live allowed her to survive and make a remarkable recovery. She wrote during in 1927 to Alejandro, “ They're going to change my cast for the third time, this time to keep me immobilized without being able to walk for two or three months, until my spine knits together perfectly, and I don't know if afterwards they'll have to operate on me…when you come back you're really going to be in for a shock when you see how horrible I am with this apparatus. Afterward, I'm going to be a thousand times worse, so you can just imagine: after having been lying down for a month and another month with two different devices, and now two months flat on my back put in a coating of plaster, then six months again with a lighter apparatus so I can walk…Is that enough to drive a person crazy, or not?”

Diego Rivera loved Frida's work and was her greatest admirer. Frida, in turn, was Diego's most trusted critic. Throughout their marriage, Diego had several affairs with other women, including Frida's sister, Christina. Frida said to a friend, “I have suffered two serious accidents in my life, one in which a streetcar ran over me…The other accident was Diego.”

Frida let out all of her emotions on a canvas. She painted her anger and hurt over her stormy marriage and painful miscarriages.

Upon her return to Mexico , Diego burst Kahlo's hopes for happiness by asking for a divorce. Her life was to continue to be one of physical and emotional suffering. The couple remarried in 1940, but Kahlo was never the same. She returned to the house of her childhood, Casa Azul in Coyoacan, making her studio there instead of next to Rivera's in San Angel. She worked and lived in Casa Azul for the rest of her life.

During the same year as her exhibition, Frida had to have her right leg amputated below the knee due to a gangrene infection. This caused her to become deeply depressed and suicidal. On July 13, 1954 , Frida died. No official autopsy was done but suicide was rumored. Her last words in her diary read "I hope the leaving is joyful and I hope never to return".

Her paintings attracted the attention of the artist Diego Rivera, whom she later married, divorced, and re-married. The couple's marriage was very unstable and difficult. Rivera was said to have battered Kahlo in fits of rage. When they first married, he was 42, 6 ft 1 in. (1.86 m) tall, and 300 pounds (136 kg); she was 22, 5'3", and 98 pounds. Kahlo once stated, "I suffered two grave accidents in my life. One involved a bus... the other accident is Diego."

Kahlo died on July 13, 1954 , of a pulmonary embolism. Her ashes are placed in a pre-Columbian urn which is on display in her former home La Casa Azul in Coyoacán, which has been turned into a museum containing a number of her works.