FRIDA KAHLO

Frida Kahlo by Nikolas Murray who took some of the finest portraits of Kahlo

“Take a lover who looks at you like maybe you are a bourbon biscuit.” 

― Frida Kahlo

(Frida had many lovers, including photographer Nikolas Muray, artist Isamu Noguchi, fellow artist photographer and muse Tina Moddoti, singer Josephine Baker and painter Diego Rivera who she married twice)

Many people know Frida Kahlo for being a wonderful painter known for her magic realism, colourful depictions of Mexican art and for being a uniquely beautiful woman. (She also knew how to sport a unibrow) but rarely when we’re taught about Frida are we told that she was diagnosed with Spina Bifida as a child. She also contracted polio as a child, which made her even weaker. But she was still as active as she could be. She even boxed. But things couldn’t seem to go right health wise for her. She was all set to start medical school until she got in a terrible car accident on her 18th birthday leaving her in pain and with terrible medical problems for the rest of her life. She left a huge Impact on this world despite only living 47 years. She was an “unabashed” bisexual, her motto was “make love, take a bath, make love again,”. She married the painter Diego Rivera despite his being twenty years her senior and already having two common law ‘wives’. Both were unfaithful throughout their relationship Rivera even began an affair with Frida’s sister Christina

Throughout her life Frida hid her leg deformities under skirts, she underwent 35 surgeries after the accident at 18. She didn’t originally want to be a painter, she originally wanted to be a doctor, but after the accident she decided that wasn’t the path. She is known as the master of self portraits. “I paint myself because I am so often alone and because I am the subject I know best.“ Frida’s painting is the first works by a 20th century Mexican-artist to be purchased by a big internationally well known museum. She is one of the most well known female painters. She knew herself inside and out, she was so secure with herself.

A note for Murray