Frida Kahlo

At 18, Frida Kahlo’s bus was hit by a streetcar. A steel handrail impaled her through the pelvis. Her spine was broken in three places, her collarbone shattered, her right leg crushed. Doctors didn’t expect her to walk again. She spent months in a full body cast, and her mother rigged a mirror above her bed so she could see herself. So she painted what she saw. Over the next three decades, Kahlo created some of the most visceral, honest art the world has ever seen — self-portraits that didn’t flinch from pain, from heartbreak, from the messy reality of being alive in a body that kept betraying her. She had 30 surgeries in her lifetime. She drank too much, loved too hard, and fought with Diego Rivera the way other couples fight about dishes. Her last diary entry read: “I hope the exit is joyful — and I hope never to return.” She was 47.