2007 is the centenary of Frida Kahlo’s birthday.

Magdalena Carmen Frieda Kahlo y Calderón was born in July 6, 1907 in her parents' house in Coyoacán, Mexico. She died on July 13, 1954 in the same house at the age of 47.

Her father, Wilhelm Kahlo sailed to Mexico in 1891 at the age of 19 and, changed his German forename to its Spanish equivalent, Guillermo.

Her mother, Matilde Calderón y Gonzalez, was an indigenous descent mixed with Spanish. Frida's parents were married shortly after the death of Guillermo's first wife. Their marriage was unhappy and throughout most of her life, Kahlo was closer to her father than to her mother.

In her writings, Frida recalled that her mother would usher her and her sisters inside, as gunfire echoed in the streets of her hometown. . Eventually, Kahlo began to claim she was born in 1910 so people would directly associate her with the revolution.

Around 1913 Frida suffered a bout of polio when she was only six, which made her right leg looking much thinner than the other.

In 1925, while riding in a bus they crashed with a trolley car. She suffered many serious injuries, including a broken spinal column, collarbone, ribs, a pelvis, and eleven fractures in her right leg and a crushed right foot.

She found herself confined to a hospital or bedridden for many months at a time so her father eventually let her use his paintings and gave her a mirror and special easel for her to work and keep herself busy.

Though Frida recovered from her injuries and eventually regained her ability to walk and deal with constant pain, she never recovered psychologically of the abdominal injury caused by the iron handrail impaled through her abdomen, which in time was the cause for her not being able to carry a full term pregnancy.

Frida's paintings attracted the attention of Diego Rivera in 1932, and she later married him. Frida's mother did not like Diego, and called them "The Elephant and the Dove".

Their marriage was often tumultuous. They both possessed fiery temperaments and both had numerous extramarital affairs. Frida was outraged when she learned that Diego had an affair with her younger sister, Cristina. The couple divorced but eventually remarried in 1940.

Channeling her personal experiences including her numerous surgeries, troubled marriage and painful miscarriages, Kahlo's works are often characterized by their gory images of pain which frequently incorporate symbolic portrayals of her physical and psychological wounds.
Her paintings were deeply influenced by indigenous Mexican culture too, which is apparent in the bright colors and dramatic symbolism.

Kahlo's work is sometimes classified as surrealist, though she never considered herself one. "I paint my own reality," she once said. Her figurative female themes and the candor with which she expressed them made her something of a feminist cult figure in the last decades of the 20th century.

By 1954 she had been ill throughout the previous year and had had a leg amputated because of gangrene. A few days before her death she had written in her diary: "I hope the exit is joyful, and I hope never to return."

Despite all her life of sufferings and physical pain, Frida Kahlo was a vibrant, extroverted, strong willed woman. And because of her constant use of native cultural icons, she became a Mexican icon herself.