Character Catalog

Frida's first self-portrait, painted at age 19 during her convalescence after the accident. It already anticipates her characteristic style of intense and meticulous self-portraits, influenced by Renaissance masters.

Double portrait depicting Frida and her husband Diego Rivera hand in hand, in which she presents herself as a proud wife but also as an artist in her own right. Now held at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

An autobiographical work depicting Frida after one of her miscarriages in Detroit. The painting illustrates her physical and psychological pain with uncompromising brutality, inaugurating her most personal style.

Masterpiece painted after her divorce from Rivera, depicting two versions of Frida with exposed hearts connected by a vein. The largest canvas she ever painted, now at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Mexico City.

A poignant self-portrait showing Frida with her body split open, her spine replaced by a crumbling Ionic column riddled with nails. Painted after one of her many back surgeries, it symbolizes her permanent pain.

Painting depicting Frida dressed in her Tehuana costume, holding her own spine in a lunar landscape, facing her operated and recumbent body. A symbol of her will to resist in the face of suffering.

Frida's last completed work, painted eight days before her death. On slices of watermelon, she inscribed "Viva la vida" — a vibrant testament to her love of life despite all the ordeals she endured.

I suffered two serious accidents in my life, one in which a streetcar knocked me down… The other accident is Diego.

Diego, my love, do not forget that as soon as the brushes are in my hands, the world will be too small to contain my joy.

I never painted dreams. What I painted was my most intimate reality.

My art is not revolutionary, why keep calling it that? I cannot, because I am too honest for that.

The blue house in Coyoacán, where Frida was born, lived, and died, is today the Museo Frida Kahlo. It is there that she painted the majority of her works and received Rivera, Trotsky, Breton, and many notable figures.

Frida accompanied Diego Rivera during his fresco commissions in the United States between 1930 and 1933, discovering American capitalism, which she criticized sharply. It was in New York that she exhibited for the first time in 1938.

In 1939, André Breton organized an exhibition of her work at the Galerie Renou et Colle. The Louvre then acquired her self-portrait "The Frame", the first work by a Mexican artist to enter the museum's collections.

Frida was one of the few girls admitted in 1922, where she met Diego Rivera while he was painting a fresco, and joined the radical student group "Los Cachuchas". It was there that her political and artistic convictions were forged.

A historic neighborhood of Mexico City where Frida grew up and spent most of her life. Its atmosphere of a Mexican colonial town, its colorful markets, and its popular culture deeply nourished her pictorial world.

Specially designed for her after her accident, this easel attached to her bed canopy and allowed her to paint while lying down. It has become the symbol of her creative resilience in the face of physical pain.

Frida wore the traditional costumes of the Tehuantepec region almost daily: long colorful skirts, embroidered huipil, and floral headdress. This garment was both a Mexican identity statement and a way to conceal her shorter leg.

Following her multiple spinal surgeries, Frida wore up to 35 different orthopedic corsets throughout her life. She painted and decorated them with Mexican motifs, transforming these medical devices into works of art.

Her mother had a large mirror installed on the ceiling of her canopy bed so she could see herself during her long periods of immobility. This mirror is directly responsible for the series of self-portraits that make up the bulk of her work.

Frida used vivid pigments and saturated colors typical of Mexican folk art. Her very fine brushes allowed her to achieve the intimate and meticulous detail characteristic of her technique.

Frida regularly smoked unfiltered cigarettes and drank tequila, going against the feminine norms of the time. These habits, visible in certain photographs, were part of her image as a free and rebellious woman.