This Day In Latino History

.

On this day in 1907, (she later changed it to 1910 to coincide with the Mexican Revolution), Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón was born in a blue house on the outskirts of Mexico City. This was, perhaps, the least traumatic thing that ever happened to her. Frida’s father was of Jewish German-Hungarian descent and her mother was a Catholic, mestiza woman orginally from Mexico. Their marriage was not a happy one, but they had four daughters. Frida was the third. The Mexican revolution started when Frida was three and its violence served as a backdrop for her entire childhood. She contracted polio when she was six which left one of her legs thinner than the other. At the age of 18, she was in a serious bus and trolley collision that left her with the following injuries:

• a broken spinal column
• a broken collarbone, broken ribs
• a broken pelvis
• eleven fractures in her right leg
• a crushed and dislocated right foot
• a dislocated shoulder
• an iron handrail pierced her abdomen and her uterus, which seriously damaged her reproductive ability

Frida underwent about 35 surgeries for the remainder of her life due to the injuries caused in this accident. It was during these periods, confined to her bed for months on end, that Frida took up painting. Her mother had an easel made for her so that she could paint from bed and she often painted herself, (55 of her 143 paintings are self-portraits), because she was often alone and she said was the subject she knew best. Thanks to those self-portraits she would become the most recognizable Mexican painter in the world.

In 1928, Frida met Diego Rivera and asked for his advice about her craft. He encouraged her to keep painting, recognizing her as a unique talent. Thus began a tempestuous love affair filled with many betrayals and ultimately ending in marriage. They were divorced in 1939 and re-united in 1940. It was the stuff of great B movies.