Editor’s Note: This article was originally published during the Covid Era. These writers and photographers deserve to have their work showcased again. 

Original Publication Date: April 2, 2020

To me personally, Frida is the most iconic Mexican figures I know, she is also a woman ahead of her time not only was she a woman she was also disabled, an artist, a feminist, a political advocate and a woman of color.

Fridas artwork is recognized all around the world for her raw self-portraits.  Frida was truly one of a kind and its sad to know that she is mainly known for her unibrow, but she is more than a feature on her face of the many self-portraits she created, she was a deep thinker who had struggles and triumphs that are as any human might endure. Below are fun facts to know about our Featured Artist.

• As a child Frida suffered from poor health resulting in her being diagnosed with polio by the age of six. Frida was left bedridden for three months and polio caused her right leg to grow thinner compared to her left leg. She would hide her legs by wearing long skirts for the rest of her life.
• Frida never intended to have art be a career, she was always more interested in science, more specifically medicine. However, her compulsion to paint, her need to paint was too strong.
• By the age of eighteen in 1925, Frida’s life would change forever when she was involved in a bus accident. The bus collided with a streetcar while Frida was riding on the bus. The impact of the car left Frida impaled with the bus railing coming through her hip and exiting through her pelvis. This accident would leave Frida in a full body cast for three months; this would be the beginning of Frida’s art career more specifically the beginning of her iconic self-portraits.
• in 1928 she would join the Mexican communist party where she would reunite with Diego Rivera who she had previously met at her school because he was working on a mural known as “The Creation”. She had previously predicted that she would one day marry him while she attended school before the accident.

• In 1929 Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera would get married and this would begin another chapter in Frida’s art career. In the beginning, Frida and Diego were madly in love, she told Diego “I love you more than my own skin” but when Diego had an Infidelity with Frida’s sister Cristina the relationship would quickly spoil.

• After getting married to Diego she moved with him to San Francisco. In 1932 Frida painted ‘Henry Ford Hospital’ one of her more popular paintings that express her despair in her first miscarriage.
• In 1937 Frida has her first solo exhibit in Mexico and a year after that she had her first solo exhibit in the United States. In 1939 Frida would become the first twentieth-century Mexican artist to be included in the Louvers Museum collection
• That same year Frida would divorce her husband, Diego Rivera. A year after Frida divorced Diego, she became very ill and was convinced that by marrying Diego she would get better, and so she remarried Diego.
• Frida was an openly bisexual woman. Frida Kahlo had been with many women in her time, notably, she was with Josephine Baker, Josephine was an entertainer who dropped out of school at the age of twelve and became a street child. Frida and Josephine have no written record of when they met but they had many similarities such as they were both unable to have children, they put their lives in danger due to their political roles and they wouldn’t let men pity them. Frida would not accept money from Diego and Josephine was never afraid to leave sour relationships or abusive ones. Other notable women Frida openly had sexual relations with were Georgia O’Keeffe, Dolores Del Rio, and Paulette Goddard and Jacqueline Lamba.
• A week before Frida’s birthday, she was seen once. On July 13, 1954, Frida passed away though her death is highly debated, some say she really did die from natural causes and others are convinced that she committed suicide due to love letters that expressed raw, distraught emotions that went public years after Frida’s death.