The Mexican painter who, after a bus accident at eighteen shattered her spine and left her in lifelong pain, turned a broken body and a turbulent life into around 143 paintings, about 55 of them self-portraits — fusing her suffering with Mexican folk art, votive imagery, and indigenous symbols, weaving in the communist politics that shaped much of her adult life — and who, largely overshadowed by her husband Diego Rivera in her lifetime, was rediscovered from the 1970s to become one of the most recognized and beloved artists in the world, and one of the most relentlessly merchandised.
At eighteen, a wooden bus carrying Frida Kahlo was struck by a streetcar in Mexico City. A steel handrail ran through her body. The crash broke her spine, her pelvis, and her right leg, and left her in pain for the rest of her life. Bedridden through long recoveries and many surgeries, she began to paint, propping a mirror above her bed and making her own face the great subject of her art. Across roughly 143 paintings, about 55 of them self-portraits, she rendered her miscarriages, her operations, and her stormy marriage to the famous muralist Diego Rivera with an honesty almost no one had dared. Overshadowed by Rivera while she lived, she was rediscovered decades after her death in 1954 and became one of the most beloved artists on earth. Her face now sells on T-shirts and tote bags everywhere, a global brand often emptied of the radical, suffering, communist woman who made it.