Kahlo, Frida

Mexican painter. Using vivid colour and a naive style that was deliberately based on Mexican folk art, she created deeply personal, moving, and emotional paintings. Often referred to as an ‘autobiographical’ artist, she is known primarily for her surreal self-portraits in which she explored her physical disabilities (she was crippled in a bus accident when 15), her stormy marriage with the artist Diego Rivera, and her involvement with communism and the Mexican revolution. Her paintings, such as The Little Deer (1946; private collection, Houston), are rich in symbolism and personal imagery. Although her work was prized throughout her career, its popularity rose in the 1980s, and she is now considered one of the most exciting and influential artists of the 20th century.

Kahlo's love of indigenous Mexican culture was reflected in both her artistic style and her fashion – she always wore traditional Mexican clothing. Her paintings, which were often small in size, were based on Mexican retablos, small religious pictures dedicated in Mexican churches. Although her career was short, Kahlo was well known among her contemporaries in Europe and the USA. While many European surrealists wanted to place her work within their movement, Kahlo herself felt that, although stylistically her work could be perceived as surreal, or dreamlike, her subject matter was her actual reality and not, in fact, a dream.