Frida Kahlo, 1907-1954

Frida Kahlo de Rivera,  original name  Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón  

Mexican painter noted for her intense, brilliantly coloured self-portraits painted in a primitivistic style. Though she denied the connection, she is often identified as a Surrealist. She was married to muralist Diego Rivera (1929, separated 1939, remarried 1941).

In 1925 Kahlo was involved in a bus accident that so seriously injured her that she had to undergo some 35 medical operations. During her slow recovery from the trauma, Kahlo taught herself to paint. She showed her early efforts to Rivera, whom she had met a few years earlier, and he encouraged her to continue to paint. After their marriage, Kahlo traveled  with Rivera, who had received commissions for murals from several cities in the United States. In 1938 she met Andre Breton , a leading Surrealist, who championed her work; both Breton and Marcel Duchamp were influential in arranging for some of the exhibits of her work in the United States and Europe. In 1943 she was appointed a professor of painting at La Esmeralda, the Education Ministry's School of Fine Arts. Her house in Coyoacán is now the Frida Kahlo Museum.

--from  Encyclopedia Britannica Online