Frida Kahlo’s painting Self Portrait with Monkeys hangs at an exhibition.
© Dieter Nagl, AFPGetty Images

People in the United States observe National Hispanic Heritage Month each year from September 15 to October 15. During this period, many Latin American countries celebrate their independence. These countries include Cuba, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, and Nicaragua.

Frida Kahlo remains an influential painter and feminist icon. Kahlo was an important Mexican painter known for her harsh, revealing self-portraits. Despite living in the 1900′s, she refused to conform to strict gender stereotypes. She boxed, challenged men, dressed in masculine clothing, and smoked. Kahlo was also known for her fashion, wearing traditional-style, colorful dresses, and adorning her hair with flowers and braided styles. Always known for living honestly, Kahlo was openly bisexual.

At the age of 18, she was severely injured in an accident while riding on a bus in Mexico City. Kahlo lived in constant pain and was crippled for the rest of her life. She underwent about 35 operations, including the amputation of one leg. Unable to pursue her dream of becoming a doctor, Kahlo taught herself to paint. In 1929, she married the famous Mexican artist Diego Rivera. Their stormy relationship involved separations, divorce, and remarriage.

Frida Kahlo was an important Mexican painter known for her self-portraits that reflected her physical and emotional suffering. Many of her other paintings include symbolic images and elements from Mexican history.
© Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Kahlo’s paintings are mostly self-portraits that reflect her physical and emotional suffering. She painted with jarring colors and odd spatial relationships. Many of her pictures include startling symbolic images and elements from Mexican history. She often portrayed herself wearing colorful Mexican Indigenous dress and ornaments. Kahlo was born on July 6, 1907, in Coyoacán, in southwest Mexico City. She died on July 13, 1954.

Diego Rivera was a Mexican artist who was famous for painting murals that portrayed Mexican life and history. Rivera is shown here standing in front of one of his paintings.
© Ed Clark, Time Life Pictures/Getty Images

Diego Rivera became famous for murals that portrayed Mexican life and history. Rivera was a controversial figure because of his radical political beliefs and his attacks on the church and clergy.

Rivera was born on Dec. 8, 1886, in Guanajuato. In the 1920′s, he became involved in the new Mexican mural movement. With such Mexican artists as Jose Clemente Orozco and David Siqueiros, he began to experiment with fresco painting on large walls. Rivera soon developed his own style of large, simplified figures and bold colors. Many of his murals deal symbolically with Mexican society and thought after the country’s 1910 revolution. Some of Rivera’s best murals are in the National Palace in Mexico City and at the National Agricultural School in Chapingo, near Mexico City.

Diego Rivera was a Mexican artist famous for his murals. His Detroit Industry Murals are a series of frescoes consisting of 27 panels portraying industry in Detroit. Together they surround the Rivera Court in the Detroit Institute of Arts. A main panel on the north wall shows laborers working at the Ford Motor Company’s River Rouge plant. The artist painted the murals in 1932 and 1933.
Detail of a mural depicting Detroit Industry (1932-33), fresco by Diego Rivera; Detroit Institute of Arts/Gift of Edsel B. Ford (Bridgeman Images)

Rivera painted several significant works in the United States, which he visited in the early 1930′s and again in 1940. Perhaps his finest surviving United States work is a mural at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Rivera died on Nov. 25, 1957.

January 13, 2017

In December 2016, an exhibition of the work of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo opened at the Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida. The museum, home to a broad collection of the works of Spanish artist Salvador Dalí, is showing more than 60 of Kahlo’s works through the middle of April 2017. “Frida Kahlo at the Dalí” includes 15 paintings, 7 drawings, and numerous photographs. The exhibit extends outdoors, where a collection of flowers and plants replicates Kahlo’s own gardens at la Casa Azul (the Blue House), her home in Mexico City. Casa Azul, the Coyoacán District house where Kahlo was born, lived much of her life, and died, is now home to the Museo Frida Kahlo.

The Salvador Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, is hosting a Frida Kahlo exhibition until April 2017. Credit: © Shutterstock

Both Kahlo (1907-1954) and Dalí (1904-1989) lived their lives much as they created their art, operating just beyond what might be considered “normal” or expected. Both created dreamlike images, and they shared a contemporary and linguistically similar—if geographically distant—art world. Dalí, firmly positioned within the Surrealist art movement, differed from Kahlo, however, whose works—while sometimes crossing the border into the surreal—offered harsher and revealing truths that often dealt with physical and emotional suffering. Kahlo rejected Surrealism and considered her works as real as her life itself. Nonetheless, French author and critic André Breton, the founder of Surrealism, took great interest in Kahlo’s work and described her art as “a bomb wrapped in a ribbon.”

Frida Kahlo’s 1945 Autorretrato con changuito (Self Portrait with Monkey) is among her works on display at the Dalí Museum. Credit: Autorretrato con changuito (1945), oil on composite board by Frida Kahlo; Museo Dolores Olmedo, © 2016 Banco de México Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo Museums Trust (Artists Rights Society)

At the age of 15, Kahlo was severely injured in an accident while riding on a bus in Mexico City. From then on, she was crippled and lived in constant pain. She underwent about 35 operations, including the amputation of one leg in 1953. Unable to pursue her dream of becoming a doctor, Kahlo taught herself to paint. In 1929, she married fellow Mexican artist Diego Rivera. Their stormy relationship added fuel to the fire of Kahlo’s art. Most of her roughly 200 paintings are self-portraits, often painted with jarring colors and odd spatial relationships. Many of her pictures include startling symbolic images and elements from Mexican history.

Frida Kahlo in 1941. Credit: © Hulton Archive/Getty Images

The pairing of Kahlo’s works with those of the Surrealist master Dalí may seem at odds on the surface, but an exploration of their mutual eccentricities puts them hand-in-hand in a walk through the enduring art of the 1900’s.