“Frida (Magdalena Carmen) Kahlo (y Calderon de Rivera): (1907-1954) Mexican painter. The daughter of a German-Jewish photographer, she had polio as a child and at 18 suffered a serious bus accident. She subsequently underwent some 35 operations; during her recovery, she taught herself to paint. Her marriage to Diego Rivera (from 1929) was tumultuous but artistically rewarding. She is noted for her intense, bizarre, brightly colored self-portraits, many reflecting her physical ordeal, which incorporate primitivistic elements but are executed with a fine technique. The Surrealists Andre Breton and Marcel Duchamp helped arrange exhibits of her work in the U.S. and Europe, and though she denied the connection, she is often identified as a Surrealist. She died at 47. Her house in Coyoacan is now the Frida Kahlo Museum.”
Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
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