Frida Kahlo (1907–1954) was a Mexican painter who turned her life, her pain and her love of Mexico into vividly coloured self-portraits. In her paintings folk art meets symbol, and her gaze always meets the viewer head-on. Her works are among our hand-painted reproductions of Frida Kahlo paintings on canvas.
We paint every Frida Kahlo painting by hand, in oil on canvas, to order and in the size you choose, and before dispatch we send you a photograph of the finished painting.
Frida Kahlo paintings in our gallery
Life: the Blue House in Coyoacán
Frida Kahlo was born in 1907 in Coyoacán, Mexico City, to a German father and a mestiza mother. She spent most of her life in the family’s Blue House (La Casa Azul), now the Frida Kahlo Museum. As a child she contracted polio, and at 18 a serious bus accident left her in pain for the rest of her life. While recovering in bed she began to paint, with a mirror fixed above her easel. In 1929 she married the painter Diego Rivera; they divorced in 1939 and remarried the following year. She died in 1954, aged 47.
Style: Mexican folk art and self-portraits
She drew on Mexican folk art and on retablos, small votive paintings that people offered to the saints in thanks for being saved from a calamity. Most of her paintings are self-portraits of fairly modest size, and in many she wears the dress of the women of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, the dress she favoured. In her own words, “I paint myself because I am often alone and I am the subject I know best.” André Breton claimed her as a Surrealist, but she rejected the label. In 1939 the Louvre bought her painting The Frame, making her the first Mexican artist in its collection.
Her most famous works
Frida Kahlo’s most famous painting is The Two Fridas (1939), a large double self-portrait in the Museo de Arte Moderno in Mexico City. Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird (1940) belongs to the Harry Ransom Center in Austin, Frieda and Diego Rivera (1931) to SFMOMA in San Francisco, and Self-Portrait Dedicated to Leon Trotsky (1937) to the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington. The Wounded Deer (1946) and Diego and I (1949) are in private collections. To compare her with other great names, read our overview of the most famous paintings in the world.
Frequently asked questions about Frida Kahlo
Who was Frida Kahlo?
A Mexican painter (1907–1954) from Coyoacán, known above all for her self-portraits, in which she wove together her own life and Mexican folk culture.
What did Frida Kahlo paint?
Mostly self-portraits, as well as portraits of friends and patrons, and in her last years mainly still lifes of fruit and flowers.
Where are Frida Kahlo’s originals?
Many are in Mexico City, for example in the Museo de Arte Moderno and the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection; other works belong to museums in the United States, and some are in private collections.
Can I buy a hand-painted reproduction of a Frida Kahlo painting?
Yes, our online gallery has hand-painted reproductions of Frida Kahlo paintings on canvas in the size you choose. Before delivery you receive a photograph of the painting for approval, and we send it only once you approve it.
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