Rare and Beautiful Portraits of a Young Frida Kahlo Taken by Her Father From Between the 1910s and 1930s

Painter Frida Kahlo was a Mexican self-portrait artist who was married to Diego Rivera and is still admired as a feminist icon.

Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderon, as her name appears on her birth certificate was born on July 6, 1907 in the house of her parents, known as La Casa Azul (The Blue House), in Coyoacan. At the time, this was a small town on the outskirts of Mexico City.

Her father, Guillermo Kahlo (1872-1941), was born Carl Wilhelm Kahlo in Pforzheim, Germany. He was the son of the painter and goldsmith Jakob Heinrich Kahlo and Henriett E. Kaufmann.

Kahlo claimed her father was of Jewish and Hungarian ancestry, but a 2005 book on Guillermo Kahlo, Fridas Vater (Schirmer/Mosel, 2005), states that he was descended from a long line of German Lutherans.

Wilhelm Kahlo sailed to Mexico in 1891 at the age of nineteen and, upon his arrival, changed his German forename, Wilhelm, to its Spanish equivalent, 'Guillermo'. During the late 1930s, in the face of rising Nazism in Germany, Frida acknowledged and asserted her German heritage by spelling her name, Frieda (an allusion to "Frieden", which means "peace" in German).

Below is a collection of rare and beautiful portraits of young Frida Kahlo, taken by her father Guillermo Kahlo from the 1910s to early 1930s.

Frida Kahlo at age 2, c.1909

Frida Kahlo at age 4, 1911

Frida Kahlo at age 5, 1912

Frida Kahlo at age 6, 1913

Frida (far right) age 12, with sister Cristina (L) and best friend, Isabel Campos (C), 1919

Frida Kahlo in drag, with sisters Adriana and Christina and cousins Carmen and Carlos Verasa, 1926

Frida at 18 years old, 1926

Frida Kahlo, 1929

Frida Kahlo, 1930

Frida Kahlo, 1932