Frida Kahlo ’40 Pastel on Paper For Auction at 888 Auctions on Dec 5th, 2019

Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) was a Mexican painter known for her complex self-portraits. Inspired by pre-Columbian artifacts and Mexican folk art, Kahlo produced bizarre yet beautiful works. Surrealist, André Breton once described her work as a “ribbon around a bomb”. “My paintings are well-painted, not nimbly but patiently,” she once said of her work. “My painting contains in it the message of pain.”

Magdalena Carmen Frieda Kahlo Calderón was born on July 6, 1907, in Mexico City, Mexico. She studied philosophy and medicine as a youth. Involved in a traumatic bus accident at the age of 18, Kahlo was badly injured and therefore, was confined to a bed for months. She started painting and abandoned her academic pursuits during her recovery. In 1927, she joined the Mexican Communist Party and was introduced to Diego Rivera. They married in 1929, maintaining an often combative relationship in which both were unfaithful.

Though Kahlo and Rivera divorced in 1939, they remarried a year later. Kahlo later painted prolifically and was subject in exhibitions in the United States and Europe, despite chronic pain and destabilizing health problems. Kahlo died in Mexico City, Mexico on July 13, 1954 at the age of 47. Her home, the La Casa Azul (The Blue House) was converted into the Museo Frida Kahlo in 1958.

Today, the artist’s works are held in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the de Young Museum in San Francisco, and the National Museum of Women in the Art in Washington, D.C., among others.