Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón, also known as Frida Kahlo, is widely hailed as one of the most remarkable painters of all time. She became an icon, an inspiration to most artists and also to those who have disabilities. Today, nearly 50 years after her death, the Mexican artist’s iconic images are displayed in museums, calendars, greeting cards, posters, pins, and even paper dolls. Frida hand-crafted her own image. One on par with Cleopatra as well as other iconic, famous artists in history. We know many interesting facts about Frida. She produced about 200 paintings and most of these artworks feature still life, and portraits of herself, her family, and friends. She also kept an illustrated journal and did dozens of drawings that are fascinating and enchanting. With techniques learned from both her husband and her father, Frida created mesmerizing, sensual, and stunningly original paintings that expressed elements of surrealism, fantasy, and folklore into powerful narratives. In stark contrast to the 20th-century’s leaning toward abstract art, Frida Kahlo’s work was staunchly figurative. Despite occasionally being commissioned for portraits, she sold relatively few paintings while she was alive. Today, however, her works fetch astronomical prices at auction. In 2000, a self-portrait painted in 1929 sold for more than $5 million. Frida was born in Mexico on July 6th, 1907, and passed away at the age of 47 on July 13th, 1954. She was born in Coyoacán, a village on the outskirts of Mexico City, Mexico. She was raised by her parents Guillermo Kahlo, who was a photographer, and Matilde Calderón y González. Her father, Guillermo, moved to Mexico from Germany after he sufferedfrom epilepsy caused by an accident which eventually ended his university studies. Frida described her childhood as a “very very sad” memory. Both her parents were often ill and their marriage was devoid of love. Her relationship with her mother was somehow extreme and quite interesting. Her mother she described as "affectionate, active and intelligent, but also calculating, brutal and fanatically religious.” Her father had a photography business which suffered during the Mexican Revolution because the recently overthrown government had commissioned works from him, and the long civil war limited the number of private clients. When Frida was six years old, she had polio, which eventually made her right leg grow shorter and thinner than her left leg. Poliomyelitis, more commonly known as polio, is an infectious disease caused by the poliovirus. Around 70% of cases are asymptomatic while mild symptoms may surface too. Symptoms include sore throat and fever. More severe symptoms develop such as headache, neck stiffness, and paresthesia for major polio cases. This often happens due to poor handwashing and hygiene. It can also happen from eating or drinking contaminated food or water. Having polio forced Frida to be isolated from the people dear to her for months and this became a reason for her to be bullied. Polio made her secluded but also made her Guillermo's favorite child due to their shared experience of living with a disability. Frida showed how grateful and happy she was in her works. Her father became her source of inspiration, courage, and strength. She adored and admired her father. She once painted a portrait of him on which she inscribed, “character, generous, intelligent and fine.” For Frida, her father was "marvelous ... he was an immense example to me of tenderness, of work (photographer and also a painter), and above all in understanding for all my problems."Guillermo taught Frida about photography, history, literature, nature, and philosophy. He also motivated Frida to play sports to regain her strength, despite the fact that most physical exercises were seen as unsuitable for girls. His father taught her photography, and she began helping to retouch, develop, and colorizing photographs. Polio was no reason for her to stop her progress and not pursue an education. Frida was a fighter and she pushed forward in her life. Becoming an inspiration to many current artists. Even though it was late compared to her peers, Frida came back to school to continue with her education. Along with her younger sister, she attended the local kindergarten and primary school in Coyoacán and was homeschooled for the fifth and sixth grades. Frida was then enrolled in a German school due to their father's wishes, unlike her siblings who continued their studies in local schools. Due to disobedience, she was soon expelled from this German school and was sent to a vocational teachers' school. She stayed here for quite a short amount of time since she was abused by her teacher. One day when she was 18, Frida along with her boyfriend, Arias, were on their way home from school when an accident happened which caused her dream of becoming a physician to fall to pieces. While the two were riding the bus, the driver attempted to pass an incoming electric streetcar. The streetcar crashed into the side of the wooden bus and several passengers were killed in this accident. While Arias only suffered minor injuries, Frida was not so lucky. She was severely impaled with an iron handrail that went through her pelvis. She later described the injury as "the way a sword pierces a bul.l" It was terribly painful, according to Frida. Arias and other passengers tried to remove the handrail. Her pelvic bone had been fractured, her abdomen and uterus had been punctured by the handrail, her spine was broken in three places, her right leg was broken in eleven places, her right foot was crushed and dislocated, her collar bone was broken, and her shoulder was dislocated. She spent a month in the hospital and recovered at home for two months. It was an excruciating ordeal which changed her life forever. About a year after her accident, Kahlo was introduced to Diego Rivera, who later became her husband. She first met Diego when he was painting a mural at her school. Their relationship became deeper when Frida asked him to judge whether her paintings showed enough talent for her to pursue a career as an artist. Frida and Diego were married in a simple civil ceremony at the town hall of Coyoacán on August 21, 1929. Soon after the marriage, in late 1929, the couple moved to Cuernavaca in the rural state of Morelos where they were paid to paint murals for the Palace of Cortés. After completing their work in Cuernavaca, they moved to San Francisco, California in the United States, where they painted murals for the Luncheon Club of the San Francisco Stock Exchange and the California School of Fine Arts. A few years later, Frida and Diego returned to Mexico and then traveled to New York City during the fall for the opening of Rivera's retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Rivera was later commissioned in Detroit to paint murals for the Detroit Institute of Arts. By this time, Frida had become bolder and braver in her interactions with the press and media. Journalists were impressed with her fluency in English and stated on her arrival to the city that she was a better artist than her husband. Frida had a hard time in Detroit although she had enjoyed visiting San Francisco and New York. She was exposed to many aspects of American society that she did not like. She regarded these as attributes of a colonialist and she found most Americans "boring." She hated socializing with capitalists such as Henry and Edsel Ford. She wrote a letter to a friend and stated 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 h