The self-portrait Thinking of Death, 1943, deals explicitly with Kahlo’s preoccupation with mortality and the fragility of her body - the legacy of polio in childhood and a near-fatal bus accident. She drew on many different types of funerary imagery in her paintings, including Aztec art and Mexican folk traditions. Later, she extended her range of sources to include Eastern religions. In this work, the third eye chakra in the centre of the forehead, which denotes wisdom or spiritual truth according to Indian Yogic beliefs, has been supplanted with a death’s head.
