The Bus Accident That Changed Frida Kahlo's Life

May 2024 · 1 minute read

She was only 18 when she took an ill-fated bus ride with a fellow student, Alejandro Gómez Arias. The bus collided with a streetcar and Kahlo was run through by a steel handrail, which fractured her spine and pelvis. After several weeks' hospitalization, she returned home to further recovery, and it was there that she began to paint, beginning with a self-portrait which she presented to her friend Gómez Arias. In 1929 she married Diego Rivera, a Mexican mural artist and fellow Communist.

By 1938 Kahlo had an exhibition at a major New York art gallery which resulted in the sale of about half of the paintings on display. She connected with and became friends with other international artists, including Pablo Picasso. Some try to classify her art — and her; as The New York Times said, "there is little doubt Kahlo continues to exist as a potent figure of myth." Part of that is because many of her most famous pieces are variations on self-portraits, featuring vibrant color and iconography. Kahlo herself resisted being lumped into one particular school. New York's Museum of Modern Art quotes her: "They thought I was a Surrealist but I wasn't. I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality." Color, and joy, and pain.

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