Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderon was born on 6 July 1907 in her parents€™ house, known as The Blue House, in Coyoacan, which was a small city at the time. She suffered from polio at a young age that left her right leg thinner than her left. In 1925, she was in a horrific bus accident that broke her pelvis, fractured her right leg and broke her spinal column. An iron handrail also impaled her through the womb. She would convalesce for two years but never fully recover. During this time, she taught herself how to paint, giving up her previous studies in medicine. Kahlo often incorporated indigenous Mexican motifs in her paintings, along with native animals, Christian and Jewish themes, and symbolic portrayals of pain and psychosis. She married painter Diego Rivera in 1929 and their marriage was wrought with passionate arguments and betrayal. They divorced only to remarry again and the second time was no better. Active communists, Kahlo provided protection to Leon Trotsky when Stalin sentenced him to death. Later, Kahlo would disavow faith in Trotsky and become a full supporter of Stalin. The year before her mysterious death, she was gravely ill and had her right leg amputated at the knee. She died on 13 July 1954 and no autopsy was performed. The coroner listed it as a pulmonary embolism, but controversy surrounds her death as many think it was an overdose.
