This renowned Mexican artist, daughter of a German-Jewish photographer, Guillermo Kahlo, was born in Coyoacán, in the southern part of Mexico City. At the age of sixteen she suffered an accident with a truck and was seriously injured. Kahlo required a lengthy recuperation period, which was when she began painting. Three years later she took some of her paintings to show Diego Riviera, who encouraged her to continue painting. They were married in 1929.

Kahlo was greatly influenced by her husband’s work and she used her art to express her Mexican identity, blending in many traditional and folkloric elements. Kahlo painted many self portraits. Art was a way of portraying all the difficult and painful moments of her life, a great part of which she spent laying on a bed due to her injuries. Her pain was not only physical but also psychological, due to her impossibility to bear children.

She displayed her work at three art shows, one in New York in 1938, one in Paris in 1939 and the last one in her home town, Mexico City a year before her death in 1954. Her home in Coyoacán is now a museum that bears her name.

Some of her Works are:

• The Broken Column (La columna rota)
• The Two Fridas (Las dos Fridas)
• Without Hope (Sin esperanza)
• Thinking of Death (Pensando en la muerte)
• Flower of Life (Flor de la vida)