Frida Khalo

Frieda Khalo was born in Mexico in 1910. She is known as one of the most important 20th Century painters, and in 1983 her work was declared the property of the Mexican State. Although born in Mexico, Khalo is of mixed race, as her father was a German photographer, and her mother was a Mexican but of Indian extraction. I find this intriguing as when I see her face it has an unusual combination of two different nationalities.
There were two events in Frida Khalo’s life that was of crucial importance, not just to her as an individual but events, which thrust her into expressing herself through her painting. When she was 18, a bus accident put her into hospital for a year with a smashed spinal cord and fractured pelvis. It was in her sick bed that she started to paint. At twenty-one, she married the world famous Mexican mural artist Diego Rivera. In 1930 they left Mexico for San Francisco, because Diego’s reputation was growing quickly in America. Many of her paintings show her pain b...