Frida Kahlo's Secret Life as a Schoolteacher
Frida Kahlo, renowned Mexican artist, also had a brief career as a teacher. The National General Archive houses documents detailing her appointments, suspensions, and dismissals from the Secretariat of Public Education. These records offer insights into her personal life and dedication to education.
Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo Calderón, the woman who would one day become a global icon for resilience, pain, and passionate artistry, was born on July 6, 1907, in the charming and complex borough of Coyoacán, Mexico City. The world knows her as Frida Kahlo, an artist whose turbulent personal life and intense self-reflection were immortalized on canvas in ways that challenge even the most rigid boundaries of art. But behind the famous unibrow and the vivid images of suffering, there was another layer to her identity—one that often goes unnoticed: Frida Kahlo, the teacher.
Frida’s life has always been the stuff of legend. From her early years growing up in the Del Carmen neighborhood, where her Hungarian-German father, Guillermo Kahlo, and her mother, Matilde Calderón, raised Frida and her three sisters, to the physical trauma and psychological depth that would later inform her work, her existence was undeniably marked by extraordinary circumstances. Yet, nestled among these larger-than-life narratives is a lesser-known chapter—her stint as an educator. Through a series of dusty documents housed in Mexico’s National General Archive (AGN), we glimpse Frida not just as a teacher, but as an employee of the state, subject to the bureaucracy, suspensions, and pay cuts typical of any public servant.
