Object Image

Frida Kahlo

Frida Kahlo 1907 - 1954

Born Mexico City, Mexico

Since the late 1970s Frida Kahlo has emerged as one of the foremost twentieth-century practitioners of the art of portraiture. Mexican artist Diego Rivera was an early supporter of her work, and the couple married in 1929. While Rivera worked on large-scale history murals, Kahlo’s work was both intimate in scale and subject matter. These qualities stemmed partly from her lifelong health challenges after a streetcar accident that occurred when she was eighteen. Through her self-portraits she expressed her physical and emotional pain, as well as her fluid identity as a politically engaged, modern, cosmopolitan woman and heir to Mexico’s indigenou...

1933
Oil on canvas
67.2 x 57.0 x 4.1 cm
NPG.2015.136
Image and text © National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, 2024

Where you'll find this

Deepen your knowledge