Frida Kahlo

Kahlo was eighteen when a bus she was riding was struck by a tram and a handrail went through her pelvis, and she painted from a specially built easel through the long recoveries that followed, across more than thirty operations and eventually the amputation of a leg. The paintings are mostly self-portraits, which she explained by saying she was the subject she knew best. She married Diego Rivera twice, joined the Communist Party, and had an affair with Trotsky while he was sheltering in her house. The diary she kept in her last decade was published in facsimile long after her death in 1954.