10 Interesting Frida Kahlo Facts

She wanted her birth to coincide with the beginning of the Mexican Revolution

Frida Kahlo was born on July 6, 1907 in Coyoacan, Mexico City, but she often told people she was born in 1910, 3 years after her actual birth, so that people would directly associate her with the Mexican Revolution that began in 1910. Kahlo became an embodiment of Mexican culture, especially indigenous culture, but she herself wasn't fully Mexican: her father was born Carl Wilhelm Kahlo in Germany, either of Jewish and Hungarian ancestry, as Frida claimed, or from a long line of German Lutherans, as some new research argues. Frida's mother, Matilde Calderon, was of indigenous Mexican and Spanish descent.

Her work 'Roots' set the record for a Latin American Piece of Art

Frida Kahlo was a central figure in the Neomexicanismo Art Movement in Mexico which emerged in the 1970s. Her art has been called folk art due to traditional elements and some call it Surrealist though Kahlo herself said:

They thought I was a Surrealist, but I wasn't. I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality."

In May 2006, her self-portrait Roots sold for US$5.6 million dollars setting an auction record for a Latin American piece of art.

Frida Kahlo's face is on Money

The 500 Mexican peso bill is unique in that it contains two portraits, one on each side. The duo are the famous couple, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, two of the country's most celebrated artists and personalities. The 500 peso bill was released to mark the centennial of the Mexican Revolution and contains the Diego Rivera quote written in tiny script:

It has been said that the revolution does not need art, but that art needs the revolution. That is not true. The revolution needs revolutionary art. ”

She became a painter after a near fatal accident

On September 17th 1925 Frida and her friend Alex was riding in a bus when it crashed into a street trolley car. Recuperation after the bus accident took over a year, during which time Kahlo gave up her pre-med program and began painting. Her father, an artist, lent her his oil pants and brushes, while her mom commissioned a special easel, so that Kahlo could paint in her hospital bed, and had a mirror placed in the canopy, enabling Kahlo's self-portraiture.

She is known as the master of Self-Portraits

In her career, Frida Kahlo created 143 paintings out of which 55 are self-portraits. Kahlo said,

I paint myself because I am so often alone and because I am the subject I know best."

Her self portraits often include interpretations of physical and psychological wounds. Frida Kahlo's self-portraits are considered among the finest ever created. Her most famous self-portrait is perhaps Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird.

Frida's painting is the first work by a 20th-century Mexican artist to be purchased by an internationally renowned museum.

In 1939, the Louvre bought Kahlo's The Frame, making it the first work by a 20th-century Mexican artist to be purchased by an internationally renowned museum. Despite such an accomplishment, Kahlo was still known for most of her life, and the 20th-century, as the wife of Diego Rivera, whom she married in 1929. Since the 1980s, though, Kahlo has been known for her own merit. Several biographies have been written and movies about her life have been made. Her former home, La Casa Azul, is now a museum. The largest exhibit ever of her paintings, held last summer for the 100th anniversary of her birth, broke all attendance records at Mexico's Museum of the Fine Arts Palace, although it was only open for 2 months.

Frida Kahlo was a bisexual

Kahlo's marriage with Rivera was tumultuous with both having multiple affairs. Frida had affairs with both men and women. Rivera even had an affair with Kahlo's younger sister Cristina which infuriated Kahlo. They divorced in 1939 but remarried a year later. Although their second marriage was as troubled as the first, Kahlo remained married to Rivera till her death.

She had an affair with the founder of the Red Army

The founder of Red Army, the famous Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky came to Mexico to receive political asylum from the Soviet Union. He first stayed with Rivera and later had an affair with Kahlo. Kahlo created a painting titled Self-Portrait Dedicated to Leon Trotsky to commemorate her brief affair.

Frida Kahlo is a close friend of American artist Georgia O'Keeffe

The two painters met in December 1931, at the opening of Rivera's big solo exhibition at New York's Museum of Modern Art. According to one of Rivera's assistants, the famed muralist later bragged that his wife had been flirting with O'Keeffe. Frida Kalo writes a few letters to Georgia O'Keeffe - an artistic rock star nearly twice her age, whom she'd befriended while she living in New York.

She became famous a couple of decades after her death

Kahlo died 20 days after her 47th birthday on July 26, 1954. A few days before her death, she wrote in her diary:

I hope the exit is joyful - and I hope never to return - Frida".

Kahlo was moderately successful during her lifetime and it was only several years after her death that her work became widely acclaimed. During her lifetime she was mainly known in Mexico as Rivera's wife, now she is popular worldwide and Rivera is known as her husband.

Two famous movies have been made on her life

Numerous articles, books and documentaries have been made about Kahlo's life and art, including the bestseller Frida: The Biography of Frida Kahlo (1983) by Hayden Herrera. The movie 'Frida, naturaleza viva' was released in 1983 and was a huge success. In 2002 another biographical film 'Frida', in which Salma Hayek plays her role, grossed over $US 50 million and won two Academy Awards.