Drawn From Life

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Mexican painter Frida Kahlo's self-portraits are now reproduced on boxes, bags and chairs, but she can never be entirely domesticated — her painful images still belong to her, and still have the power to shock, as can be seen at "Frida Kahlo," a retrospective of nearly 90 works at London's Tate Modern until Oct. 9 (tel: [44-20] 7887 8008; www.tate.org.uk).

Her work has been labeled socialist, feminist and Surrealist — but she defied every pigeonhole. What is certain is that her life played like a soap opera: at 18 she was horribly injured in a bus crash. In 1929 she married muralist Diego Rivera, who was repeatedly unfaithful. She had affairs; divorced and remarried Rivera; and gained success as an artist before dying at 48 of pneumonia in 1954. In her many self-portraits she poses formally, surrounded by foliage, landscapes and animals. She was also inspired by local retablos — naive pictures given as votive offerings to saints for miraculous recoveries. Unrescued, Kahlo presents herself, bleeding like a martyr.

Later she turned to mysticism, and her paintings became overburdened by symbols, with Karl Marx and Jesus meeting Satan and monkeys. She liked to paint herself with simians, often with an arm round her shoulders (Self Portrait with Monkey, 1940, above). Kahlo's work, like the monkeys, retains a wild, playful quality.