JULY 13, 1954

MEXICAN MESTIZA PAINTER FRIDA KAHLO DIED

Magdalena Carmen Frieda Kahlo y Calderón, born July 6, 1907, in Coyoacán, Mexico, was a Mexican Mestizo (Spanish & Native American descent) surrealist painter.  While recovering from an accident, she taught herself to paint.  Joining the Mexican Communist Party, she met artist Diego Rivera whom she  married in 1929.  Kahlo and Rivera often hosted artists and activists, such as Leon Trotsky and André Breton.  Her first solo exhibition, at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York in 1938, was hugely successful.  In 1939, the Louvre acquired her work, The Frame, making her the 1^st 20th-century Mexican artist included in the museum’s collection.  Also, in 1939, she painted her most famous works, including The Two Fridas.  In 1943, she became professor of painting at La Esmeralda, the Education Ministry’s School of Fine Arts.  Kahlo died in La Casa Azul in 1954.  Successful in her own time, her posthumous reputation grew into “Fridamania” by the 21st century.  

Source:  Alicja Zelasko, “Frida Kahlo: Mexican Painter,” Encyclopedia Britannica.  Retrieved 7/6/2019, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Frida-Kahlo
Photo:  Carl Van Vechtan (1880-1964), 3/19/1932. “Frida Kahlo with Diego Rivera.”  Library of Congress.  Restrictions on this collection expired in 1986.  No other known restrictions.  The Library of Congress believes this to be in the Public Domain.