On July 6, 1907, in a bright blue house in Coyoacán, on the edge of Mexico City, a little girl named Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón was born. The house, known forever after as La Casa Azul, would later become her studio, her home, and today, her museum. Frida grew up surrounded by her father's photography equipment, courtyard gardens, and the vivid colors of Mexican folk art that would one day fill her paintings.
At 18, Frida was riding a bus through Mexico City when it crashed into a streetcar. She was badly hurt and spent months in bed. To pass the time, her parents rigged a mirror above her so she could see herself, and gave her paints. She turned her own face into her favorite subject. Over her life, Frida painted 55 self-portraits showing her unibrow, her bright Mexican dresses, monkeys, parrots, hummingbirds, and the deep feelings she carried after her accident. She married the famous muralist Diego Rivera, twice, and they became Mexico's most legendary art couple.
Frida was the first Mexican artist to have a painting bought by the world-famous Louvre Museum in Paris. Today her face appears on Mexican pesos, postage stamps, T-shirts, lunchboxes, and dolls. Her paintings sell for tens of millions of dollars, and the Casa Azul welcomes hundreds of thousands of visitors a year. Frida turned her own life - her pain, her culture, her joy - into bold, fearless art, showing the world that telling your own story can be the most powerful magic of all.
