16 / 50 · Art & culture

Frida Kahlo

Mexico · 1907–1954

Kahlo’s self-portraits bring the body, pain, identity and Mexican cultural references into an intensely personal visual language. Her work has become important to discussions of disability, gender and self-representation.

Her paintings deserve attention beyond the familiar image of the artist herself. They resist a neat separation between private experience, political commitments and the ways a woman chooses to be seen.

“I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone, because I am the person I know best.”

Interview with Antonio Rodríguez, Así, 17 March 1945; translated quotation.