KAHLO

The Mexican artist Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) is one of the most important20th century painters, and one of the few Latin American artists to haveachieved a global reputation. In 1983 her work was declared the propertyof the Mexican state. Kahlo was one of the daughters of an immigrantGerman photographer and a Mexican woman of Indian origin. Her life andwork were more inextricably interwoven than in almost any other artist'scase. Two events in her life were of crucial importance. When she was 18,a bus accident put her in hospital for a year with a smashed spinal columnand fractured pelvis. It was from her sick bed that she first started topaint. Then, aged 21, she married the world-famous Mexican mural artistDiego Rivera. She was to suffer the effects of the accident her whole lifelong, and was particularly pained by her inability to have children. Herarresting pictures, most of them small format self-portraits, express theburdens that weighed upon her soul: her unbearable physical pain, thegrief that Rivera's occasional affairs prompted, the sorrow about herchildlessness caused her, her homesickness when living abroad and herlonging to feel that she had put down roots, profound loneliness. However,they also declare her passionate love for her husband, her pronouncedsensuousness, and her unwavering survival instinct.