How Well Do You Know the Life and Works of Frida Kahlo?

In 2021, Frida Kahlo's 1949 self-portrait "Diego and I" (or “Diego y yo” in Spanish) sold at auction for $34.9 million, making it the most expensive Kahlo work ever sold. In fact, the high price tag made it the most expensive work ever sold at auction by any Latin American artist. The record had previously been held by none other than Kahlo's husband, Diego Rivera, whose 1931 painting "The Rivals" sold for $9.8 million in 2018.

Throughout the 1930s, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera championed the ideas of Leon Trotsky, going so far as to consider themselves Trotskyites. However, when Joseph Stalin came to power, Trotsky was exiled from the USSR. Rivera and Kahlo petitioned the Mexican government to allow Trotsky asylum, which it did in 1937. Kahlo and Trotsky went on to have an affair, and Kahlo even dedicated one of her self-portraits to him.

"The Two Fridas," painted in 1939, is possibly Frida Kahlo's most famous painting. A double self-portrait, the life-size work depicts two different versions of Kahlo sitting together: one wearing a white, Victorian dress, and the other in a traditional Tehuana garment. The masterpiece was completed in 1939, the year in which Kahlo divorced Diego Rivera. It may represent her heritage, the way Rivera saw her, or an internal conflict between two dueling personalities.

Frida Kahlo was born on July 6, 1907, in Coyoacán, Mexico City, but in her adult life she often told people she was born in 1910 to directly associate with the beginning of the Mexican Revolution. A Communist and revolutionary, Kahlo liked to declare herself a "daughter of the revolution."

"The Wounded Deer" is a relatively small painting, measuring only a foot long and about nine inches high, but it is one of Frida Kahlo's most famous works. The image depicts a deer, pierced by nine arrows all over its body, with Kahlo’s head sporting a pair of antlers. It was painted shortly after Kahlo underwent one of her most intense spinal surgeries, leaving her in a state of chronic pain. She used her pet deer, Granizo, as a model for the animal body in the artwork.

During her time in Mexico as a successful artist, Frida Kahlo kept a number of pets, including birds, dogs, and most famously, spider monkeys. One of her primate companions was named Caimito de Guayabal, and another, a gift from her husband Diego Rivera, was named Fulang Chang. A number of Kahlo's paintings even feature the animals seated beside her self-portrait or riding atop her shoulders.

In 1925, Frida Kahlo was involved in a brutal bus accident, which injured her so seriously, she underwent more than 30 related medical operations and spent almost two years recovering in bed. During that time, she began to study the art of the Old Masters (European artists from the Renaissance to early modernism) and arranged an easel above her bed so she could paint while lying down.

Known as La Casa Azul, or "The Blue House," the Frida Kahlo Museum in Mexico City was where the artist spent most of her life. Kahlo grew up in the building, lived there with her husband Diego Rivera for a time, and died there in 1954. In 1957, Rivera donated the home and its contents to be turned into a museum, which remains to this day.

Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera had a complicated and tumultuous relationship. The two began dating in 1927, and became infatuated with each other as artists and people. Rivera was one of the most famous muralists in Mexico, and Kahlo was a talented up-and-coming painter. They married in 1931, divorced in 1939, and remarried in 1940. The couple appears in many of Kahlo's paintings, including a few that feature Rivera's head atop Kahlo's trademark unibrow.

After a series of accidents and illness left her bedridden for much of her life, Frida Kahlo had to paint what was available to her: herself. The artist once said, "I paint myself because I am so often alone and because I am the subject I know best." Of her known works, more than a third are self-portraits, many of which are considered her best pieces.