Frida Kahlo Timeline

Frida Kahlo 38

1907 Frida Kahlo born in Coyoacán 6 July, in the Casa Azul Born in the blue house her father built, where she also died. She later gave her birth year as 1910 so her life would begin with the Revolution.
1913 Polio at six Her right leg never fully develops Nine months in bed left the leg thinner and shorter. Children called her peg-leg Frida, and she wore layers of socks and long skirts for the rest of her life.
1922 Enters the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria One of thirty-five girls among two thousand students Mexico's most prestigious school, which she entered intending to become a doctor. She was studying anatomy and biology, not art.
1922 First sees Diego Rivera Painting a mural at her school She watched him work on the Creation mural and reportedly told a friend she would have his child one day. He was thirty-five and famous.
1923 – 1925 Los Cachuchas A gang of nine, named for their caps A clique of clever, disruptive students who read philosophy and staged pranks. Several became significant figures in Mexican intellectual life.
1925 – 1926 A year in a plaster corset Painting begins in bed Her mother had a special easel made so she could work lying down, and fitted a mirror into the canopy of the bed. That mirror is why the self-portraits start here.
1925 Kahlo's near-fatal bus accident Multiple fractures change her life forever Frida Kahlo was nearly killed in a bus accident on September 17, 1925, aged 18. She suffered multiple fractures including her spinal column, collarbone, ribs and pelvis. Her 35 surgeries and chronic pain would become the central subject of her art.
1926 Self-Portrait in a Velvet Dress Her first Painted for a boyfriend who had drifted away, in a mannered Renaissance style. She made around fifty-five self-portraits in the years that followed.
1927 Joins the Mexican Communist Party Politics before Rivera Kahlo was committed to the party independently of her marriage, and remained so through periods when Rivera was expelled from it.
1928 Meets Rivera again Introduced by Tina Modotti She brought paintings to him and asked for an honest opinion, saying she needed to know whether she could make a living from it. He told her to keep going.
1929 Marries Diego Rivera The marriage of two giants Frida Kahlo married muralist Diego Rivera on August 21, 1929. Their turbulent relationship — marked by mutual infidelities and a divorce and remarriage — was the emotional engine of her art. Rivera called her a better painter than himself.
1930 – 1933 The Gringolandia years San Francisco, Detroit, New York Three years following Rivera's mural commissions through the United States. Kahlo disliked most of it and said so in letters, but her painting changed completely there.
1932 Henry Ford Hospital painted First fully autobiographical work Kahlo painted Henry Ford Hospital in 1932 in Detroit, where she had suffered a miscarriage. It was one of the first of her intensely autobiographical works depicting her physical suffering with unflinching directness.
1932 Her mother dies She travels back alone through the Depression Kahlo made the long journey from Detroit to Mexico City while her mother was dying, and painted her own family history soon afterwards.
1933 The Rockefeller Center mural is destroyed Rivera had painted Lenin into it The commission was cancelled and the fresco chipped off the wall. The couple returned to Mexico, and Rivera blamed Kahlo for wanting to go home.
1934 Rivera's affair with her sister Cristina Kahlo The betrayal she never entirely recovered from. She cut off her hair, moved into her own apartment, and painted A Few Small Nips the following year.
1937 – 1939 Trotsky at the Casa Azul Granted asylum in Mexico Rivera secured the exile's entry and Kahlo housed him in the blue house. She and Trotsky had a brief affair, and she later painted him a self-portrait.
1938 André Breton calls her a Surrealist She rejects the label Breton visited Mexico and claimed her for the movement. Kahlo replied that she had never painted dreams — she painted her own reality.
1938 First solo exhibition in New York André Breton calls her a Surrealist Kahlo's first solo exhibition was held at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York in 1938. André Breton championed her work and called it Surrealist — a label she rejected, saying she painted her own reality, not her dreams.
1939 Divorces Rivera After ten years The divorce year produced her most powerful work, including The Two Fridas and the cropped-hair self-portrait in a man's suit.
1939 Paris — the Louvre buys The Frame The first Mexican work in its collection Kahlo hated the trip and called the Surrealists a bunch of lunatic sons of bitches in a letter home. The purchase still made her the first twentieth-century Mexican artist the Louvre acquired.
1939 The Two Fridas exhibited Shown at the International Surrealist Exhibition Kahlo painted The Two Fridas in 1939 following her divorce from Rivera. It shows two versions of herself — one in European dress with a broken heart, one in Tehuana dress with an intact heart. It was her largest and most complex canvas.
1940 Detained after Trotsky's assassination Held and questioned for two days Because the killer had moved in her circle, Kahlo and her sister were arrested by Mexican police in the aftermath.
1940 Remarries Rivera In San Francisco, on new terms She agreed on condition of financial independence and no sexual relations. They stayed married until her death.
1943 – 1945 Teaching at La Esmeralda Her students called themselves Los Fridos When her health stopped her travelling to the school, she moved the classes to the Casa Azul and sent the students out to paint pulquerías and street walls.
1944 The Broken Column Her spine as a shattered ionic pillar Painted after being fitted with a steel corset. The body is split open, studded with nails, held together by straps.
1946 Spinal fusion in New York The operation that failed Surgeons fused four vertebrae with a bone graft and a steel rod. The pain returned worse than before, and she never worked without medication again.
1946 Wins a national prize For Moses The Ministry of Public Education awarded her a prize for a painting made after reading Freud — one of the few official honours she received in her lifetime.
1949 Diego and I His face on her forehead A late self-portrait with tears and a third eye bearing Rivera's features, painted during his affair with the actress María Félix.
1950 – 1951 Nine months in hospital Seven operations in one year Bone grafts became infected. Rivera took an adjoining room. She painted from bed when she could and drew constantly in her diary when she could not.
1953 First solo exhibition in Mexico She attends in her hospital bed Kahlo's first solo exhibition in Mexico opened in 1953 at the Galería Arte Contemporáneo. Too ill to attend, she arrived by ambulance and was carried in on her hospital bed, presiding over the opening in her signature style.
1953 Her right leg is amputated Below the knee, for gangrene She wrote in her diary that feet were unnecessary when she had wings to fly. Friends said she never really recovered from it.
1953 – 1954 The diary Ten years of drawings and writing A private notebook of ink and watercolour, part confession and part experiment. It was not published in full until 1995.
1954 Frida Kahlo dies at the Casa Azul 13 July, aged forty-seven Recorded as a pulmonary embolism. Her last diary entry hoped the exit would be joyful, and that she would never come back.
1954 Last public appearance A protest against the coup in Guatemala Eleven days before her death, Kahlo joined a demonstration in a wheelchair against the CIA-backed overthrow of the Árbenz government.
1954 Lying in state at the Palacio de Bellas Artes Draped in a communist flag A student covered the coffin with a hammer-and-sickle banner, causing a public scandal and costing the museum director his post.
1958 The Casa Azul opens as a museum Four years after her death Rivera left the house to the nation. It has since become one of the most visited museums in Mexico.
2004 Her wardrobe is unsealed Locked away for fifty years Rivera ordered her clothes, corsets and prosthetic leg sealed in a bathroom until long after his own death. Opened in 2004, they revealed how deliberately she had constructed her own image.