Frida Kahlo's 103rd birthday celebrated with Google doodleBY ANTHONY BENIGNO
DAILY NEWS WRITER
Tuesday, July 6th 2010, 9:43 AM
Frida Kahlo's 103rd birthday present? A Google doodle.
In honor of the painter's life appears, Google has designed a Twitter-age homage to the painter's "Self-Portrait With Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird."
In the image, Kahlo is depicted in front of the Google logo; a giant flower blooming behind her with its vines snaking around the "Google" emblem and Kahlo's neck.
Kahlo was one of the most prolific painters of her time. Born in 1907, just a few years before the Mexican Revolution, she survived both polio and a bus crash in her youth.
At 22, she wed painter Diego Rivera -- for the first time -- following a tumultuous ten-year union where both artists carried on numerous affairs. They soon divorced but ultimately remarried before Kahlo died in 1954.
The artist's death was officially attributed to a pulmonary embolism, although no autopsy was performed.
After his wife's passing, Rivera famously wrote, "I realized that the most wonderful part of my life had been my love for Frida."
Since her death, Kahlo's celebrity has only grown. In 2001, she became the first Hispanic woman to have her face put on a U.S. postage stamp, and her 1943 work "Roots" set the record for the highest-selling portrait by a Latin-American artist in 2006.
She also was the subject of a 2002 film, "Frida." Directed by Julie Taymor (Broadway's "The Lion King"), the film stars Salma Hayek as Kahlo and Alfred Molina as Diego Rivera, and was nominated for six Academy Awards, including a Best Actress nomination for Hayek.
