Who is Frida Kahlo?

Frida Kahlo was an artist from Mexico who is most famous for painting bright and colourful pictures, especially of herself.

Kahlo was born in Mexico in 1907. She grew up learning all about her Mexican heritage from her mother. She loved to wear brightly coloured clothes that were a part of her culture and showed that she was proud of where she came from.

When she was only six years old, she was very sick with a virus called polio. It made her so ill that she had to stay in bed for nine months. The illness stopped her right leg from growing properly and she needed to wear special shoes to stop her from limping. Some of the other children teased her so she covered her legs up with long skirts.

Frida’s father helped her to feel more confident and to make her leg stronger by encouraging her to swim and play sports. He was also a photographer, and her love for art began when she helped him to develop his pictures in his studio.

Kahlo was a very clever student who dreamed of being a doctor when she grew up. But, when she was eighteen, she was involved in an accident. It left her very badly injured and, again, she was forced to stay in bed for a long time. She even had to wear a full body cast so that she could heal. But this meant that she couldn’t move! Can you imagine being trapped in bed for three whole months? What do you think you would do to stop getting bored?

Well, for Frida Kahlo, while she was recovering, her parents made a special easel so she could paint pictures lying down. They also fixed a mirror above her bed so that she could

see herself and paint portraits of her own face. These were the first of the many self-portraits that she painted through her life.

Self-portraits made Frida Kahlo feel powerful. The accident meant that she needed lots of operations and would be in pain for the rest of her life. And she could not be a doctor anymore. But Kahlo used her talent to express herself and show that she wasn’t limited by her injuries. Her self-portraits gave her control over her own body and allowed her to choose how the world saw her. Have you ever created a self-portrait? How did it feel to make a picture of your own face?

In Self-portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird (1940) Kahlo painted herself looking straight out of the picture. Strong eye contact, right? In this painting, she shows

herself surrounded by nature and symbolism from Mexican culture. In Mexican folklore the hummingbird around her neck is a symbol of good luck in love. There is also a spider monkey on her shoulder and a dragonfly above her head. If you painted your own self portrait, would you include any animals? Which ones?

No way! Kahlo painted lots of different things and she used her art to tell stories about her life and the country she came from. She also used her pictures to talk about politics and issues she cared about.

You can see a great example of this in My Dress Hangs There (1933). She painted it while she was staying in New York City. It shows a traditional Mexican Tehuana dress hanging in the middle of some very famous symbols of America. Look closely and you can spot some strange (and messy!) details. What do you think about the overflowing rubbish bin, open toilet and burning building? What do you think she was trying to say? Do you think she was enjoying her time in America, or trying to make a point about how she felt?

Today, Frida Kahlo is one of the most recognisable artists in the world. You can find her portaits on t-shirts, mugs and bags that people buy because they are fans of her and her work, or just because they think the image looks good. She worked right up until she died in 1954 and, after her death, her work became even more popular. Her childhood home, known as La Casa Azul (The Blue House) is a museum now, and is filled with her art and some of her belongings. It’s painted a bright, brilliant blue. People come to visit it from all over the world to see the unstoppable strength and creativity in her paintings.