Frida Kahlo The Mexican painter

Frida Kahlo features as one of the most prominent female artists of the 20Th century; she is mentioned with all the great male painters and her contribution to women being recognised as prominent figures in the world of art is insurmountable.

Frida showed her own life in her pictures, a life of sadness and sorrow. Pablo Picasso, Wassily Kandinsky and the surrealist artists admired her work. She never became a member of this movement herself, but developed a style that was entirely her own.

Frida Kahlo painted using bright colors and an indigenous style that reflected the cultures of Mexico and European influences including Realism, Symbolism, and Surrealism. She was married to fellow artists Diego Rivera, and had her own unique art style, often depicting herself in her paintings.

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The Kahlo self-portrait paintings were to symbolize her emotions and difficulties in different areas of her life. She led, like many top artists past and present,a fairly turbulent life and her character and paintings have gained her great popularity around the world and helped her to gain success in her own right.

When the artistic movement in Mexico known as Neomexicanismo began, she became very prominent.This movement recognized the values of contemporary Mexican culture. Previously she was only known as an artist married to legend Diego Rivera, but finally she received the recognition she deserved.

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Frida Kahlo had suffered from polio at the age of six, and never fully recovered the use of her right leg. A iron bar penetrated her body in a bus accident later on in her life; and from then on she spent her life in constant pain. Frida began to capture herself and her suffering in a series of unique pictures.After the  traffic accident Kahlo turned her attention away from the study of medicine to begin a full-time painting career.

She painted to occupy herself during her difficult times and it was then that her self-portraits became a dominant part of her life. Of her 143 paintings, 55 are self-portraits which often used symbolic forms of her own experiences.

At the age of twenty two, Kahlo married the much older painter Diego Rivera, who was famous for his murals glorifying the Mexican revolution. She was always in Diegos shadow, and this is how she painted herself in their wedding portrait Frida and Diego Rivera. Rivera alone is carrying a painters utensils; a palette and paintbrushes, while Frida is every inch the wife. People called the oddly matched couple ''the dove and the elephant ''.

 Their marriage was passionate, but not always happy. They divorced because the domineering Rivera began showing to much interest in other women. However, they never really got away from each other, and later married a second time. Kahlo became Riveras maternal protector; at least that is how she depicted herself in her painting ''The Love embrace of the Universe''.

Many of her self -portraits show Frida Kahlo looking serious and reflective. But there are other pictures that tell of happier days and greater Joie de Vivre. A portrait of her first boyfriend, for example or a self-portrait in the national dress of a Mexican Tehuana woman that she and Rivera loved.

Kahlo's last painting, completed shortly before she died, is a still life with cut watermelons. In the flesh of one of the melons, Kahlo has inscribed the words '' Viva la Vida '': long live life!

Frida Kahlo paintings now reside in the following art institutions, to name but a few -- Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York, Fundación Proa, Buenos Aires, Argentina, Frida Kahlo Museum, Mexico City, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin, Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Wisconsin, Museo Dolores Olmedo, Xochimilco, Mexico City, Museo de Arte Moderno, Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, Museum of Modern Art, New York City, Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, Arizona, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California.