Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón was Mexican artist, who later became famous for her paintings and an icon of modern feminism.

Frida was born in 1907, in a neighborhood called Coyoacán, in Mexico City, Mexico. She had polio when she was a child and when she was 18, she suffered a bus accident. She broke many of her bones, including her ribs and spine. The doctor recommended her to stay in bed for many months.

Frida was in bed for a long time, so she needed to find something to pass the time. She started to paint. Her father gave her a box of oil paints. Her mother made her a special easel so that she could paint while lying in bed. Soon, Frida realized that she loved to paint and she had a talent for arts. Because she lived by the nature and was interested in ancient artifacts of Mexico, her painting was very easy to recognize.

Frida became famous for painting self-portraits. Portraits are pictures of a person’s face and sometimes it includes the torse. A self-portrait as a painting your the painter’s self. Frida painted 55 self-portraits. She did not try to make herself look happier or more beautiful in her paintings. Instead, she painted herself as she looked in real life.

In 1939, Mousée de Louvre purchased the painting “The Frame from Kahlo”, making her the first Mexican artist to be featured in the French museum’s collection. A few years later, in 1953, she finally had her first solo exhibition in her home country. Unfortunately she died young, at the age of 47, in 1954.

Frida Kahlo’s life was not easy. She was in a lot of pain for most the time but that didn’t make her afraid to discuss important issues in her art – such as identity, gender, race, class, postcolonialism, race. She was able to turn her pain into something good: beautiful artwork and inspiration for people all over the world.