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Frida Kahlo

1907-1954 MX, Coyoacán

A.k.a. Magdalena Carmen Frieda Kahlo y Calderón

Mexican painter. Born: 6 July 1907 in Coyoacán, Mexico City, Mexico. Died: 13 July 1954 in Coyoacán, Mexico City, Mexico (aged 47). Frida Kahlo de Rivera was a painter known for her self-portraits. Much of her work was completed at her home (known as "La Casa Azul" or the "Blue House", and now the "Frieda Kahlo Museum"), and was often largely focused around Mexican culture and politics, which has been sometimes characterised as 'naïve art' or 'folk art'. Her work has also been described as surrealist, and in 1938 principal initiator of the surrealist movement André Breton described Kahlo's art as a "ribbon around a bomb". Frida rejected the "surrealist" label imposed by Breton, arguing that her work reflected more of her reality than her dreams. She suffered lifelong health problems, many caused by a teenage traffic accident she survived. Recovering from her injuries isolated her from other people, and this isolation influenced her works, many of which are self-portraits, and likely contributed to her volatile marriage with the famous Mexican artist Diego Rivera.

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