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The Life & Art of Frida Kahlo. Mysterious, yet romantic. Agonizing, yet poetic. Such describes the paintings of the late Mexican painter Frida Kahlo. Born in Mexico City on July 6, 1907, Kahlo is recognized as the premiere female artist of modern Mexico.

Museums throughout the world are paying homage to her vivacious life with retrospective exhibits and events. In Mexico City, Casa Azul, the cobalt blue home where she was born and died, is now the Frida Kahlo Museum, and is filled with her paintings, original furnishings and clothing.

Kahlo’s unforgettable oils are filled with vibrant colors and images inspired by Mexican folklore and its people. She immersed herself with Mexican culture, donned traditional tiered dresses and Mexican stone jewelry. The artist decorated her home with Mexican artwork. The love of her homeland was so intense that she couldn’t wait to return whenever she traveled to other countries. 

Her paintings also embrace skulls, nails and bloody elements which are borne out of her lifetime of physical suffering. When she was six, polio struck, leaving her with one leg shorter than the other. At i8, Kahlo was involved in a horrible bus accident that crushed most of her bones, her spine and permanently disfigured her right foot. She underwent painful surgeries which required plenty of bed rest. It was during this time when she was in a torso cast that her father gave her a set of oil paints and her mother custom ordered a bed easel. Bent on getting well and securing a future in the art world, the feisty, bedridden Kahlo began to paint self portraits, still lifes and creations that ranged from the whimsical to the shocking and surreal. People were amazed when she emerged a month later, able to walk.

In 1928, Kahlo met the love of her life, famed Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, and they married a year later. Throughout their tumultuous marriage they were known as the elephant and dove, for the 300-pound, 6-foot-tall Rivera towered over her five-foot-three-inch, 98-pound frame.

It was the latter half of Kahlo’s career where her work was given the artistic nod with solo exhibitions in galleries in the United States and Europe. Subsequently, Mexico finally recognized her genius. The Galeria Arte Contemporaneo in Mexico City sponsored her first solo exhibition in her home country in i954. By now, she was too weak to move due to her deteriorating health, but Kahlo was determined to attend. She came to the opening and celebrated while lying in her four-poster bed. Within months, the long suffering artist was struck with pneumonia and died peacefully in her sleep. During the course of her short 47 years, Kahlo only managed to sell work primarily to close friends, but today her work is revered worldwide. In Mexico, Kahlo’s originals can be found in the Museum Dolores Olmedo Patino, the Frida Kahlo Museum and the Museum of Modern Art to name a few.