Kahlo’s surgeries and convalescences, infatuations and heartbreaks, lived on in her paintings after she died, and she eventually gained a near-mythical status as a patron saint of misfits and sufferers. Could these masterpieces ever have been painted by someone who was well? I wondered. Could they have been created by someone who hadn’t been forced to confront the terrible fragility of the human body? I wasn’t sure.
