Frida Kahlo's Real Name: Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón

Quick answer: Frida Kahlo's full name at birth was Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón. The Mexican painter was born on July 6, 1907, in Coyoacán, now part of Mexico City, and died there on July 13, 1954. She is best known for her brilliantly colored self-portraits (Britannica; Library of Congress).

Real name and early life

The Library of Congress name authority files her as "Kahlo, Frida." It cites a source giving her "full name at birth: Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón," and lists variants including "Kahlo de Rivera, Frida" and "Kahlo, Frieda." Another LOC note says that "according to her birth certificate, Frida Kahlo was actually born in 1907," which matters because a later birth year sometimes appears.

In Spanish naming, Kahlo was her father's surname and Calderón her mother's. Britannica says her father was a German photographer of Hungarian descent and her mother a Mexican of Spanish and Native American descent. Kahlo often explored that mixed heritage in her art. Polio in childhood left her with a slight limp. She was close to her father and helped in his studio, where she developed a sharp eye for detail.

In 1922 she entered the National Preparatory School in Mexico City, intending to study medicine. There she first met Diego Rivera, who was painting a mural for the school. In 1925 the bus she was riding home from school collided with a trolley, and she was badly injured. Britannica says she underwent more than 30 medical procedures in later decades. While bedridden, she taught herself to paint.

Career highlights

Kahlo married Rivera in 1929, divorced him in 1939, and remarried him in 1940. After their wedding she adopted the traditional Tehuana dress that became her trademark. From 1930 to 1933 she traveled with Rivera in the United States, where he painted murals in San Francisco, Detroit, and New York.

In 1938 actor Edward G. Robinson bought four of her paintings, and she had her first solo exhibition at New York's Julien Levy Gallery. In 1939 she showed in Paris at an exhibition organized by André Breton, and the French government bought The Frame. From 1943 she taught at La Esmeralda art school, sometimes holding classes at her home, La Casa Azul. Her first solo show in Mexico came in 1953; she attended in a bed because of illness.

Britannica says her work was often overshadowed by Rivera's murals during her lifetime. Her reputation grew steadily after her death, reaching what some critics called "Fridamania" in the 21st century.

Name notes for searchers

Frida was her third given name, and she used it as her first. Early English sources sometimes spelled it Frieda. After marriage she was also known as Frida Kahlo de Rivera.