ArtGuess.io
Artist Guide
Frida Kahlo
1907–1954 • Mexico • 14 paintings in ArtGuess.io
The Mexican painter whose intensely personal self-portraits mapped her pain, her politics and her identity, from Coyoacán to Detroit.
Frida Kahlo painted around 200 works in a short life, and more than a third of them are self-portraits. They are full of symbols drawn from Mexican folk art, Catholic imagery and pre-Columbian culture, and they are some of the most recognisable paintings of the twentieth century. Most were made in Mexico City, but a crucial few were painted in the United States.
Life and Places
Kahlo was born in 1907 in Coyoacán, then a village on the edge of Mexico City, in the house now known as La Casa Azul (the Blue House). In 1925 a bus accident left her with severe injuries and lifelong pain. During her recovery she began to paint, using a mirror fixed above her bed. Self-Portrait in a Velvet Dress (1926) was one of her first serious works.
In 1929 she married the muralist Diego Rivera, and between 1930 and 1933 the couple lived in San Francisco, Detroit and New York while Rivera worked on commissions. Kahlo felt deeply out of place in what she called “Gringolandia.” In Detroit she painted Henry Ford Hospital (1932), after a miscarriage, and Self-Portrait on the Borderline between Mexico and the United States, contrasting her homeland with American industry. My Dress Hangs There (1933) was painted in New York.
Back in Mexico she painted her most famous self-portraits, such as Self-Portrait with Monkey (1938) and Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird (1940). Her politics grew more prominent in her final years, in works like Marxism Will Give Health to the Sick (1954). She died at La Casa Azul in 1954, and the house is now a museum.
How to Recognize Frida Kahlo
- Direct gaze: A frontal self-portrait with joined eyebrows, braided hair and an unflinching stare.
- Mexican symbolism: Tehuana dresses, monkeys, parrots, tropical leaves, thorns and pre-Columbian figures.
- Industry means the USA: Smokestacks, factories and skyscrapers point to her years in Detroit and New York.
Where Frida Kahlo Painted
The 14 works by Frida Kahlo in the ArtGuess.io database were made in these places:
