The life story of Frida Kahlo de Rivera (1907-1954) is one of the most told stories throughout the entire art history world. Its a story of love, anguish, and pain. Her artwork tells the story of her life through vivid details and symbolism that makes viewers think twice about what they're doing with their own lives. Frida Kahlo’s life was far from average. She had always been different and her paintings show just that. She claimed that she was born in the year 1910, so that she can be associated with the Mexican Revolution which started shortly after she was born. She suffered a great deal of pain having suffered an accident at a young age and throughout her marriage with Diego Rivera. However, she proudly painting her thick unibrow and mustache in her self portraits and boldly told the heartbreaking stories within each brushstroke.
Having suffered a terrible bus accident at the mere age of 18, where she broke her spinal column, had several fractures, and had a handrail pierce her abdomen and uterus, Frida became damaged. The resulting pain can be seen in her painting titled The Broken Column (1944) which depicts her after her accident with a broken spinal cord and iron nails piercing her bare skin. According to Whitney Chadwick in her book Women, Art, and Society, “Kahlo used painting as a means of exploring the reality of her own body and her consciousness of its vulnerability…” (Chadwick 314). Frida Kahlo accepted her own body’s weakness and instead of crying about it, she painted it for the world to see. 
Frida Kahlo The Broken Column 1944
While Frida was still a schoolgirl, she met muralist, Diego Rivera whom she married later in 1929. Being Rivera’s third wife, Kahlo understood that he was far from a monogamist. Her marriage suffered a great deal, but she hung on tight to her beloved Diego. Diego had many affairs throughout their marriage, and one was with Frida’s younger sister, Christine. Frida once said, “I suffered two grave accidents in my life, once when a streetcar knocked me down… The other accident is Diego” (The Life and Times of Frida Kahlo). Due to the fatal accident of her adolescence, Frida and Diego were unable to conceive. After suffering a second miscarriage, Frida painted The Flying Bed in 1932. In it, she shows how painstakingly she lost the baby she had been trying so hard to conceive. Frida depicts herself in hospital bed that reads Henry Fords Hospital in Detroit. She carefully added images of an unborn baby, a pelvis, a flower, a medical machine, a side view of her body, and a snail to symbolize all the pain that she suffered. The pelvis and side view of her body represents the brokenness her body feels while the flower represents Diego. The snail represents the slow and dragging horror she felt upon losing her baby.
Frida Kahlo The Flying Bed 1932
In 1939, Frida and Diego got a divorce. The pain and horror that Frida felt during this time was exasperating. She believed that Diego was everything to her, and his betrayal was something that she could not bear. At the time of her divorce, Frida painted The Two Fridas (1939). In it, she depicts herself twice; a Frida who was loved by Diego on the right, and a Frida whose heart Diego broke on the left. The broken hearted Frida is shown with a white wedding gown on and with a broken heart. She sits holding a pair of scissors that represent her cutting off all emotional ties with Diego. Her beautiful white dressed has blood dripping upon it to represent the numerous amounts of surgeries and miscarriages and pain she went through throughout her life. The Frida on the right is depicted in traditional Mexican attire that represents the Frida that Diego still loved. She holds a small portrait of Diego with a long red vein attached to it. The vein leads to the Frida on the left cutting it with a pair of scissors. Again, this showed her cutting off ties with Diego. Whereas the Frida on the left showed an open broken heart, the Frida on the right shows a Frida with her heart whole and healthy which symbolizes how Diego's love made her feel.
Frida Kahlo The Two Fridas 1939
From when Frida was born to the day that Frida died, she wa someone who was proud of who she was. She was proud of the painful life she lived and the painful marriage she was going through. She was proud of being Mexican and being able to experience the Mexican Revolution. Frida Kahlo was someone who was proud of each and every brush stroke that she made and each and every decision she made in life. That was Frida Kahlo for you. She made sure her name would be remembered, and indeed it has been and always will be.
Chadwick, Whitney. Women, Art, and Society. New York, NY: Thames & Hudson Inc., 1990.
http://www.pbs.org/weta/fridakahlo/life/index.html
http://arthistory.about.com/od/from_exhibitions/ig/frida_kahlo/fk200708_03.htm
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