Technically, she was known as Diego Rivera’s partner – an exotic eccentric. Her own work, while selling in her final decade, was often overshadowed by her Bohemian reputation, and her dressing in traditional Mexican costume. She could not live off her art until late in life.By 1953, such was her declining physical state that for her first Mexican solo show, her four poster bed was taken from her house to the gallery. Kahlo arrived by ambulance and was transferred from the ambulance to a stretcher to her bed.
She died in 1954, and her work as an artist was left to languish until it was rediscovered in the 1970s by art historians and political activists. As you know, she is now a worldwide household name. Quite a life-after-death.
