Frida Kahlo

Born in 1907 to a German father and mestiza mother, Kahlo grew up in Coyoacán's La Casa Azul and seemed bound for medical school until a bus accident at 18 left her with lifelong pain and forced a turn toward art. She sought out muralist Diego Rivera for advice on whether to pursue painting; courtship followed, then marriage in 1929 and years of travel through Mexico and the U.S. Kahlo joined the Communist Party in 1927, developed a style rooted in Mexican folk culture and pre-Columbian imagery, and caught the eye of André Breton, who arranged her first solo show in New York in 1938. The Louvre bought The Frame the next year, making her the first Mexican artist in their collection. Through the 1940s she taught at La Esmeralda and exhibited widely, but her health collapsed in tandem. She had her first solo show in Mexico in 1953, a year before her death at 47 - then vanished from view until the late 1970s, when feminists and Chicano activists pulled her back into the light.