Frida Kahlo: The Most Searched Painter in America

Her father was a German-born professional photographer, her mother Mexican. As a girl Frida helped in his studio, where she developed a sharp eye for detail. She wanted to study medicine.²

In 1925 the bus taking her home from school collided with a trolley. She suffered multiple fractures and would undergo more than 30 medical procedures in the following decades. Bedridden, she taught herself to paint.²

From 1930 to 1933 she followed Rivera to the United States, where he painted murals in San Francisco, Detroit and New York. There she painted some of her most harrowing works.²

Recognition came slowly. In 1938 the actor Edward G. Robinson bought four of her paintings, and she had her first solo show, in New York. In 1939 she exhibited in Paris in a show organized by André Breton, the founder of Surrealism, and sold The Frame to the French government.²

Her first solo exhibition in Mexico came only in 1953. Too ill to stand, she attended it in a bed.²

She taught at the art school La Esmeralda, holding classes at home in La Casa Azul, “the Blue House,” when she was too ill to travel.² During her life her work was often overshadowed by Rivera's murals; after her death her reputation grew steadily, reaching what some critics called “Fridamania” by the 21st century.²

A 2021 study of Google searches for 2020 found that she was the most searched artist in 29 countries, including the United States, Mexico and Brazil; only Leonardo da Vinci won more countries.¹