Early Life and Family Background Coyoacán, Mexico City, provides the setting for the birth of Magdalena Carmen Frieda Kahlo y Calderón on July 6, 1907. Her household is a convergence of different lineages. Her father, Guillermo Kahlo, works as a German-Mexican photographer. Her mother, Matilde, carries both Amerindian and Spanish descent. This domestic landscape shapes the early years of Frida Kahlo, a child whose physical reality begins to shift under the weight of illness. At six years old, polio strikes. The disease leaves her with a permanent limp, a physical marker that will persist thr…