The Great Masters of Art: Frida Kahlo

Life and work of the artist and style icon Frida Kahlo in a compact overview.

Frida Kahlo has become an icon of art with her powerfully expressive work. Her pictures not only reflect a view of herself, her fears, the biography of her illness, her passions and her joie de vivre; they also take up subjects which were regarded by society as taboo. As a pioneer of the feminist movement, this Mexican artist serves women the world over as a figure of identification.

Pride and strength, vulnerability and bitterness all lie close to each other in Frida Kahlo’s art. Her self-portraits, which make up the principal part of her work, not infrequently show a charismatic woman dressed in traditional Tehuana costume, which the artist wore as a visible sign of her culture and her Mexican roots, but also to hide her wounds. Kahlo’s biography had a direct influence on her subjects: her not uncomplicated marriage to the artist Diego Rivera, her tragic accident, and her childlessness, loneliness and grief.