Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo Calderón was born in Coyoacán, Mexico City, the third of four children of Matilde Calderón's marriage with the German photographer Guillermo Kahlo. She often declared that she was born in 1910, coinciding with the Mexican Revolution. During her youth she became interested in literature and philosophy and formed a group of friends nicknamed Los cachuchas, among whom are Miguel N. Lira and Alejandro Gómez Arias.

1925 is a fundamental year for Frida: on 17th September she was seriously injured in an accident caused by the collision between a tram and the bus on which she traveled, with her boyfriend Alejandro Gómez Arias, to Coyoacán. Prior to the accident, she had been a promising student headed for medical school, but in the aftermath had to abandon higher education. Forced to total immobility, she begins to paint: her first painting is Paisaje Urbano. The complications due to the accident make it necessary to apply a prosthesis to the right leg and a bust to support the spine.

Thanks to her friendship with Italian protographer Tina Modotti, in June 1928 Kahlo was introduced to Diego Rivera, one of Mexico's most successful artists and a notable figure in the communist party. They had met briefly in 1922, when he was painting a mural at her school. Kahlo soon began a relationship with Rivera, despite his being 42 years old, having had two common-law wives, and being a self-confessed womanizer. Kahlo and Rivera were married in a civil ceremony at the town hall of Coyoacán on August 21, 1929. Her mother was against the marriage. Regardless, her father approved as Rivera was wealthy and therefore able to support Kahlo, who could not work and had to receive expensive medical treatment.

In 1930 Frida became pregnant, but she suffered her first abortion in the third month of pregnancy. This pain was added to the suffering for Rivera's numerous betrayals. On 10th November she accompanies Diego on his trip to the United States, first stop in San Francisco. Kahlo was introduced to American artists such as Edward Weston, Ralph Stackpole, Timothy Pflueger, and Nickolas Muray. In November 1931 Frida and Diego moved to New York, invited by Frances Flynn Payne, art advisor of the Rockefeller family, to create a personal exhibition of Rivera at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). The following year Rivera agrees to paint some murals at the Detroit Institute of Arts and the couple moved to Detroit. Here Frida gets pregnant for the second time, but again has a miscarriage. She spent thirteen days at the Henry Ford Hospital, where she quickly resumed working, painting Hospital Henry Ford, Mi nacimiento and Autorretrato de pie en la frontera entre México y los Estados Unidos.

Frida is tired of the United States and feels a strong nostalgia for her homeland: the two come back in 1934 and go to live in the house-studio built for them by Juan O'Gorman, in San Angel. But things didn't get better: Frida once again gets pregnant and suffers a therapeutic abortion. In 1935 Frida separated from Diego after the umpteenth betrayal, this time with her younger sister Cristina; she started drinking and having new relationships with both men and women. She travels alone to New York and knows the North American sculptor Isamu Noguchi. She paints Unos cuantos piquetitos and Autorretrato con pelo rizado, both works dictated by anger for Rivera's infidelity. In the following years she met many important persons in the international political and cultural scene, including Leon Trotsky and André Breton. From October 25th to November 14th, 1938 her first solo exhibition took place at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York; in January 1939 he traveled to Paris to participate in the Mexique exhibition, organized by André Breton at the Surrealist gallery Renou et Colle. On 6th November she divorced from Diego Rivera and in the same days she completed her painting Las dos Fridas.

Frida's health worsens due to a severe form of nephritis and anemia. She reunites with Rivera and resumes treatment with Dr. Eloesser. Thanks to the doctor's intervention, who was convinced that a reconciliation with Diego could benefit Frida's health, the two remarried on December 8th (she was 33 years old, he was 54) and then returned to Mexico. But Frida's health continues to worsen: she had to wear that metal bust that Frida represents in the opera La columna rota of the same year. She is subjected to seven different operations to the vertebral column. The constant use of analgesics and morphine to relieve pain is also evident in her painting technique, often inaccurate in her last works. Kahlo's right leg was amputated at the knee due to gangrene in August 1953. She became severely depressed and anxious, and her dependency on painkillers escalated.

It is a shared opinion that Sandías "Viva la Vida" is the last work by Frida. Feeling her imminent death, for the last time Frida took the brush to add the writing and to sign it, as if it was her farewell. Frida died on July 13th, 1954 in her Casa Azul, at the age of 47, officially for pulmonary embolism. The hypothesis of suicide has never been totally excluded.