Frida Kahlo: More Than Just a Pretty Face on a Tote Bag

If you’re anything like me, your (late) twenties were distinctly marked by a wave of Fridamania, our cultural obsession with artist Frida Kahlo. I distinctly remember Kahlo’s iconic self-portraits suddenly appearing everywhere: coffee table books, mugs, #girlboss imagery, and every imaginable piece of Urban Outfitters merch. Kahlo, commodified.  

What many people don’t realize is that Kahlo’s life and art were deeply shaped by her experiences of illness, injury, and chronic pain. She contracted polio as a child, and as a teenager, she survived a streetcar accident that left her with multiple orthopedic injuries, including spinal fractures and a shattered pelvis. Over the course of her life, she underwent thirty surgeries. A group of modern Spanish neurologists hypothesize Kahlo may have suffered from cauda equina syndrome. Much of her artwork directly confronts the emotional and physical toll of her surgeries, hospitalizations, and lifelong disability. She also painted works exploring the grief of miscarriage and reproductive loss.

‍“I’ve been sick for a year now. Seven operations on my spinal column. Doctor Farill saved me. He brought me back the joy of life. I am still in the wheelchair, and I don’t know if I’ll be able to walk again soon. I have a plaster corset even though it is a frightful nuisance, it helps my spine. I don’t feel any pain. Only this…bloody tiredness, and naturally, quite often, despair.”

- Frida Kahlo 

Kahlo’s work resonates with me for its unflinching portrayal of medical trauma and the emotional impact of traumatic injury and acquired disability. In describing her relationship with Dr. Farill, she captures the complex interplay of gratitude and grief that often defines post-injury recovery. Many of her paintings embody this same tension, illustrating the surreal experience of living in a body that has become a conduit for pain and suffering. 

Notably, Kahlo rejected the label of Surrealist, insisting that she was simply painting her reality. What may seem surreal to us as onlookers is, for the person living it, profoundly real. This distinction underscores the empathy gap that often exists between those navigating injury, pain, and disability and those who are not. In these moments, radical acceptance of our patients’ experiences as true and valid can open new pathways for understanding and action. 

I’ve selected three of Kahlo’s paintings that reflect the arc of surgical recovery: initial injury, navigating complications and procedures, and ultimately, finding resilience. 

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The Broken Column (1944)

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The Broken Column portrays Kahlo’s experience of chronic pain through vivid imagery: nails pierce her body, and her skin and muscle are torn away to reveal her fractured spine, her "broken column." The column, rendered in a Grecian Ionic style, is visibly damaged, with deep fractures running from base to capital. Tears streak her face as she gazes directly at the viewer, her posture held in place by the medical brace she is forced to wear.

In my work with trauma patients, many have described feeling fundamentally and irreparably broken after injury, even when their recoveries were considered surgical successes. In The Broken Column, the barren desert landscape and the stark, central focus on her wounded body reflect how pain and injury can eclipse one’s identity. The painting powerfully illustrates how trauma can come to define the self.

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Without Hope (1945)

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Without Hope starkly captures the pressures that patients feel to force their bodies to do what they ultimately cannot control. Kahlo draws from her own experience with prolonged bed rest and an aggressive feeding regimen to combat malnourishment. In the painting, she evokes the 

excruciating passage of time with both the sun and the moon suspended in the sky. A grotesque mass of undigested food and animal carcasses looms above her, suspended like a burden, delaying her recovery and symbolizing the helplessness of her situation. Pinned to her hospital bed, Kahlo gazes outward, seemingly pleading with the viewer for understanding. 

Many people describe hospitalization as feeling like confinement where the only way out is through changes in their condition or bodily functions that they can’t will into being. The very real tension between what the body can do, what we can consciously control, and what the healthcare system demands can be deeply internalized by patients, often manifesting in a painful sense of betrayal by their own bodies. 

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Tree of Hope Remain Strong (1946)

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Tree of Hope Remain Strong is my favorite of Kahlo’s paintings. In it, she once again captures the dualities that define the experience of illness: day and night, pain and strength, despair and resilience. In the daylight, she portrays herself in the patient role - her back turned to the viewer, fresh incisions laid bare. In the foreground, beneath the cover of night, she appears again - this time upright in a chair, no longer wearing her brace, which now rests in her lap. In her hand, she holds a banner that reads: Árbol de la Esperanza mantente firme (Tree of Hope remain strong). Below her, the cragged earth of the desert and perhaps death, not yet come for Kahlo. 

This piece captures the multitude of our identities and our efforts to stay connected to our past, present, and future selves in the midst of medical trauma. For many, identity becomes flattened into a single role: patient. There is pressure, both internal and external, to fully inhabit this role. Attention narrows to the recovering body: monitoring symptoms, managing appointments, interpreting every signal. Loved ones, too, can become consumed by this identity - conversations gradually reducing to procedures, bills, and test results. And as clinicians, we may unintentionally reinforce this flattening. 

Entering the hospital often feels like entering an entirely separate world, disconnected from our own lives and the lives our patients once led. During my time in the SICU, the theme of dehumanization came up often in conversations with patients and families. Many ICU survivors describe the importance of moments where staff saw them not just as bodies to be stabilized, but as full, complex people. Small gestures like a question about life outside the hospital, a moment of eye contact, a gentle explanation, offered dignity, and in some cases, the thread of resilience that helped carry them through. 

‍Tree of Hope Remain Strong speaks to the inherent hope that our full selves still exist after harrowing medical experiences. That who we are outside the hospital is not lost, but waiting - held quietly in the background until we’re ready to return. For many, the version of self that emerges isn’t exactly the one we expected - but that’s a conversation for next time. 

So, when you spot a Kahlo tote bag, a poster, or a coffee table book, I hope you’ll think not just of her image, but of her resilience - and the resilience of your patients. Even when pain, fatigue, and despair are present, the care of a physician who sees the whole person can restore a sense of hope. We may not always cure, but in small moments of connection, we can help patients hold on to who they are beyond the hospital walls.

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Thanks for reading, 

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Sacha

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