Frida Kahlo

Known for: autobiographical self-portraiture; The Two Fridas (1939)

Frida Kahlo began painting after a bus accident in 1925 left her with lifelong injuries that became central subjects of her self-portraits, in which physical pain, Mexican folk culture, and her tumultuous marriage to Diego Rivera are rendered with an intensity that defied the conventional categories of Mexican and European art. She aligned herself with Surrealism but refused the label, describing her paintings as depictions of reality rather than dreams. Her work was largely overlooked at her death in 1954 and was rediscovered by feminist art historians in the 1970s.