Frida Kahlo de Rivera, a Mexican artist, was born on July 6, 1907. under the name of Magdalena Carmen Frieda Kahlo y Calderon in Coyoacan, Mexico City. Her father, Wilhelm Kahlo was a painter and a photographer, and he was Jewish. He was a very kind man, introvert and withdrawn, he played the piano and read German philosophers. On the other hand, her mother, a devout Catholic, was illiterate, unsatisfied and mostly indisposed. Frida Kahlo was born immediately after the death of Wilhelm's first wife. She had two older and three younger half-sisters.
When she was six years old she got sick of poliomyelitis and because of that, she was lying in bed for nine months in pain. After her recovery, as a consequence of the disease, one leg was shorter and thinner, and because of that she was mocked by her peers. However, that didn't discourage her. She wasn't ashamed, she was very proud, defiant and she turned her imperfection into advantage. Her mother was always pitying her, but her father was very supportive and he was admiring her. He was always telling her how she was better than the others because she was braver and smarter. She was his favourite child and out of six daughters she was the only one that was going to school.
In high school, Frida met her first boyfriend. One day, while they were driving by bus, they were in an accident in which Frida was seriously injured. She spent a couple of months in a hospital which made her boyfriend Alejandro distance himself from her. Her parents brought her crayons so she wouldn't be bored, and so she started to paint, mostly self-portraits. Because of her strength, defiance and stubbornness that kept her going, she managed to walk again when she turned 19. After her recovery, the finances dried up so Frida had to leave school and find a job. Although self-taught, of all the jobs, the only thing she knew how to do was to paint.
That is how she met a famous Mexican painter and muralist Diego Rivera from whom she seeks advice about painting, her future calling.
