ntions of becoming a physician, took up painting to pass the time. Her early portrayals of her sisters and friends were largely three-quarter length portraits that evoked "the influences of the Italian Renaissance and of contemporary Art Deco" (Billeter, "World," 11). But they also display the influence of "the colonial and post-colonial provincial portraiture of nineteenth-century Mexico" in their evocation of an "awkward and calculatedly 'primitive' quality" (Milner 9). Thus in her earliest work Kahlo displayed the synthesizing talent that was to serve her so well throughout her career. She was capable of drawing on the work of various traditions of high, low, and popular art and combining them in works that had an internal coherence of their own.
Kahlo showed some of her work to Diego Rivera and his encouragement led her to continue to work at painting. She also strengthened her commitment to the idea of revolution in the mid-twenties. Frida Kahlo was a member of "a generation enthused by the last shots of the revolution" and had long been
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