To salvage what she could from her unhappy situation, Kahlo had to learn to keep still - so she began to paint. Kahlo was deeply influenced by indigenous Mexican culture, which is apparent in her use of bright colors and dramatic symbolism. Emma Dexter has argued that, as Kahlo derived her mix of fantasy and reality mainly from Aztec mythology and Mexican culture instead of Surrealism, it is more appropriate to consider her paintings as having more in common with magical realism, also known as New Objectivity. Although she was still unsure about her work, the National Autonomous University of Mexico exhibited some of her paintings in early 1938. The bohemian residence became an important meeting place for artists and political activists from Mexico and abroad.

While none of Kahlo's works were featured in exhibitions in Detroit, she gave an interview to the Detroit News on her art; the article was condescendingly titled "Wife of the Master Mural Painter Gleefully Dabbles in Works of Art". The beautifully illustrated and authoritative biography of Frida Kahlo’Frida will hold its place as the first comprehensive biography of this most visceral of artists’ Observer’Mesmerizing’ TimeFrida is the story of one of the twentieth century’s most extraordinary women, the painter Frida Kahlo. When Kahlo was six years old, she contracted polio, which eventually made her right leg grow shorter and thinner than the left. In Henry Ford Hospital (1932) Kahlo depicted herself hemorrhaging on a hospital bed amid a barren landscape, and in My Birth (1932) she painted a rather taboo scene of a shrouded woman giving birth. After suffering a miscarriage in Detroit and later the death of her mother, Kahlo painted some of her most-harrowing works.

The exact reasons for his decision are unknown, but he stated publicly that it was merely a "matter of legal convenience in the style of modern times . Considered one of Mexico's greatest artists, Frida Kahlo was born on July 6, 1907 in Coyocoan, Mexico City, Mexico. Although Kahlo had a relationship with art dealer Heinz Berggruen during her visit to San Francisco, [231] she and Rivera were reconciled. During this time, she developed her artistic style, drawing her main inspiration from Mexican folk culture, and painted mostly small self-portraits that mixed elements from pre-Columbian and Catholic beliefs.

In a letter to a friend, she wrote that "although I am very interested in all the industrial and mechanical development of the United States", she felt "a bit of a rage against all the rich guys here, since I have seen thousands of people in the most terrible misery without anything to eat and with no place to sleep, that is what has most impressed me here, it is terrifying to see the rich having parties day and night while thousands and thousands of people are dying of hunger. In Mexico, the traditional Spanish values of machismo were widely embraced, but Kahlo was always uncomfortable with machismo. To mask the fact that she was older and to declare herself a "daughter of the revolution", she began saying that she had been born on 7 July 1910, the year the Mexican Revolution began, which she continued throughout her life.Kahlo's parents were photographer Guillermo Kahlo (1871–1941) and Matilde Calderón y González (1876–1932), and they were thirty-six and thirty, respectively, when they had her. Her painting Frieda and Diego Rivera (1931) shows not only her new attire but also her new interest in Mexican folk art.

Frida Kahlo was a Mexican painter best known for her uncompromising and brilliantly colored self-portraits that deal with such themes as identity, the human body, and death. Back in Mexico City, Kahlo and Rivera moved into a new house in the wealthy neighborhood of San Ángel. She also had several affairs, continuing the one with Nickolas Muray and engaging in ones with Levy and Edgar Kaufmann, Jr. On moving to Morelos in 1929 with her husband Rivera, Kahlo was inspired by the city of Cuernavaca where they lived.She and Rivera successfully petitioned the Mexican government to grant asylum to former Soviet leader Leon Trotsky and offered La Casa Azul for him and his wife Natalia Sedova as a residence. During her slow recovery, Kahlo taught herself to paint, and she read frequently, studying the art of the Old Masters. No matter whether she was in Paris, New York or Coyoacán, she clothed herself elaborately in the Tehuana costumes of Indian maidens.