With a passionate need to create, artist Frida Kahlo (1907–1954) was born Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón in Mexico City. Her father was a Hungarian-Jewish photographer; her mother, a Mexican of Spanish and Indigenous descent.

Kahlo had polio as a child. A streetcar accident at eighteen broke her spine in three places and shattered her dreams of becoming a doctor. She used paintbrush and canvas to numb the desperate pain and countless surgeries that followed for the rest of her life.

"I am not dead. I am not sick. I am only broken," she said.

Through powerful symbolic imagery and bold colors, Kahlo celebrated life and death, sharing her soul with the world. "They thought I was a Surrealist, but I wasn't. I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality."

Her husband, muralist Diego Rivera, said, "Frida is the only example in the history of art of an artist who tore open her chest and heart to reveal the biological truth of her feelings."

Her striking self-portraits, with their iconic brows and raw emotion, reflect a life lived boldly. "I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone," she explained. "Because I am the person I know best."

With nearly 200 paintings, Frida Kahlo chronicled a life of defiance and depth. She lived on her own terms — bold, unflinching, and full of soul. In 2021, her self-portrait Diego y yo sold for $34.9 million, setting a new record for any Latin American artist and reaffirming her enduring power and presence.

"My painting carries with it the message of pain," she said. "Painting completed my life... I believe that work is the best thing."