Frida Kahlo

Frida Kahlo (1907–1954), whose full name was Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo Calderón, is Mexico’s most famous painter worldwide. After a bus accident in her youth she painted mostly intense, symbol-laden self-portraits about her body, her pain and Mexican identity. She was born and died in the Casa Azul (Blue House) in Coyoacán, today the Frida Kahlo Museum.

She was married to the muralist Diego Rivera. In 1937 the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky, exiled in Mexico, lived for a time in the Casa Azul and had an affair with Frida; Trotsky was murdered in Coyoacán in 1940.