Frida Kahlo Biography: 10 Things You Didn't Know

Think you know everything about the famous Mexican painter? These facts will surprise you. Some even claimed the legend died of an overdose.

1. Her style "close to folk art" (Primitivism, Naïve art) was influenced among others by indigenous cultures of Mexico, European Realism, Symbolism, and Surrealism.

2. Many of her works are self-portraits.

3. Kahlo was married to Mexican muralist and communist Diego Rivera.

4. Frida Kahlo was born on July 6, 1907 in the house of her parents, known as La Casa Azul (The Blue House), in Coyoacán.

5. On September 17, 1925, Kahlo was riding in a bus when the vehicle collided with a trolley car. She suffered serious injuries in the accident, including a broken spinal column, a broken collarbone, broken ribs, a broken pelvis, eleven fractures in her right leg, a crushed and dislocated right foot, and a dislocated shoulder. An iron handrail pierced her abdomen and her uterus, which seriously damaged her reproductive ability.

6. Active communist sympathizers, Kahlo and Rivera befriended Leon Trotsky as he sought political sanctuary from Joseph Stalin's regime in the Soviet Union during the late 1930s.

7. A pre-Columbian urn holding her ashes is on display in her former home, La Casa Azul (The Blue House), in Coyoacán, which since 1958 has been maintained as a museum housing a number of her works of art and numerous relics from her personal life.

8. Later, in his autobiography, Diego Rivera wrote that the day Kahlo died was the most tragic day of his life, adding that, too late, he had realized that the most wonderful part of his life had been his love for her.

9. The official cause of death was given as a pulmonary embolism, although some suspected that she died from an overdose that may or may not have been accidental.[4] An autopsy was never performed.

10. In 2006, Kahlo's 1943 painting Roots set a US$ 5.6 million auction record for a Latin American work.