A banner at an election rally during the 2006 presidential campaign shows the powerful influence Frida Kahlo still has in Mexico, and the liberties people take with her (and the spelling of her last name). (Connie Watson/CBC)

There are "Fridas" everywhere in Mexico City.

From the country's most prestigious fine arts museum to the smallest stall of the street markets, you can find her face.

Whether she's staring out from a multi-million-dollar original oil canvas or badly replicated on a flattened out beer bottle cap, she's instantly recognizable — not just in Mexico but around the globe.

She's become a bona-fide, bankable star of the marketing world, something the rebellious young artist could never have imagined.

Nor would she ever have approved, say many who knew her.

Frida was born 100 years ago, on July 6 in Coyoacan, now a Mexico City suburb. To celebrate her centenary, the Palace of Fine Arts in Mexico City is about to unveil the world's biggest exposition of her paintings, drawings, writings and photographs. This is the same museum where hundreds lined up in 1954 to pay homage to Kahlo as she lay in state under the building's stained glass dome. (The 2007 National Homage to Kahlo runs from June 13 to August 19.)

Fridamania

Frida Kahlo painted her first self-portrait, Self-Portrait in a Velvet Dress, when she was 19.

The director of the museum says the 'national homage' is an attempt to get past what is known as "Fridamania" and show the artist in all her complexity, rather than the pop icon she's become in the past 30 years.

"There have been thousands of things that have been produced after her," said Roxana Velazquez. "But we would like to return to the origins — the photos, the way she suffered and the works of art — to get to know the real Frida, not the Frida that has been transformed into this pop icon."

Kahlo the woman grew far beyond her art. She became a heroine for the women's movement and political activists. As one art critic put it, "Never has a woman with a mustache been so revered." Madonna bought her paintings. Mexican actress Salma Hayek made a Hollywood movie that was up for an Oscar in 2002.

A painful and tumultuous life

In The Broken Column, painted in 1944, Frida Kahlo gives artistic expression to her physical pain.

Most of Kahlo's paintings were self-portraits — often haunting, sometimes gruesome in their depiction of the constant pain she endured.

Kahlo had polio as a child, then was crippled by a horrendous, life-altering traffic accident shortly after she turned 18. The collision between a trolley and the bus she was riding in almost split her in two — an iron handrail completely pierced her pelvis. A man at the scene held her down and pulled it out. Witnesses said her screams of pain were louder than the sirens of the ambulance that came to take her to the hospital.

Kahlo went through surgery after surgery from that day on.

Her love life was no less painful.

Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, with a monkey. (circa 1945) (Photo by Wallace Marly/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

She had a tumultuous marriage to Diego Rivera, arguably Mexico's most renowned artist. She divorced him — then married him again. Rivera never stopped having affairs with other women while he was married to Kahlo.

"I have suffered two grave accidents in my life — one in which a street car ran me over. The other accident is Diego."

The couple never had children and Kahlo died at just 47, shortly after one of her legs was amputated.

Kahlo said she painted portraits of herself because she spent so much time alone in her sick bed that she became her most important and familiar subject.

"All her suffering, all her pain was used to create," Velazquez said. "It's a real transformation. She is truth. Frida Kahlo is not custom. She is the real pure truth."

She's also a symbol of power and liberty — especially for women.

And she's a record-breaking artist. Last year, one of her paintings sold for more than $ 5.6 million US. That made Frida Kahlo the highest-priced Latin American artist and the only woman painter in the world to command that kind of money.

Frida for Sale

But is one of Mexico's most famous Communists being turned into one of Mexico's most marketable commodities?

When she died, her husband Rivera — also a Communist — decided their work and their homes would become the property of all Mexicans.

But somewhere along the way Kahlo's niece, Isolda Pineda Kahlo, acquired the rights to the artist's signature, her name and her image. In 2004 she put out a line of glasses and jewelry, followed by a brand of high-priced tequila and a stuffed doll.

Turning Kahlo into a registered trademark outraged many in Mexico. Pineda Kahlo and her family were heavily criticized. A niece on Diego Rivera's side called it "the prostitution of Frida."

But that was only the beginning.

The Frida Kahlo Corp.

In 2005, Pineda Kahlo went into business with a Venezuelan millionaire and his equally wealthy Venezuelan-Italian wife who distribute Armani, Versace and Hugo Boss in Latin America.

Frida Kahlo wears a Mexican folk costume for a photo taken around 1950. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

The Frida Kahlo Corp. was created.

Pineda Kahlo signed over her rights to Frida Kahlo's image, name and signature to the new company. The Venezuelan, Carlos Dorado, brought $9 million US plus his considerable connections in the fashion industry.

With the creation of the company, Pineda Kahlo lost control of one of Mexico's national treasures — to a Venezuelan couple in Miami. Dorado and his wife own 51% of the shares.

And they plan to take the marketing of Frida to a whole new level. Converse running shoes plastered with Frida's face are about to hit store shelves near you.

The couple has already registered the corporation's trademark in Mexico, Canada, the U.S., the European Union, China, India and the major markets of Latin America. That means anyone using Frida Kahlo's image, name or signature without authorization can be sued.

Corporate battles loom

'The Two Fridas' was painted around the time of Frida Kahlo's 1939 divorce from Diego Rivera. It was her first large-scale painting.

In Mexico, where trademarks don't seem to mean a lot, Frida is good business for small souvenir sellers and the shop at her home-turned-museum in Coyoacan.

In her market stall, two blocks away from Kahlo's house, Carolina Rodriguez offers Frida wall hangings, Frida paintings, Frida bags and T-shirts. She is sold out of Frida earrings. Everything Frida is made by local Mexican artisans.

"There is a lot of demand," she said. "I sell more Fridas to foreigners than I do Mexico's famous Virgin of Guadalupe."

"Frida for Sale"

Connie Watson reports for CBC Radio (Runs 3:40)

But Rodriguez says the true sign of Frida's worldwide popularity will come when the Chinese start mass-producing her and selling her back to Mexicans (as they already do with the Virgin).

That won't happen if the Frida Kahlo Corp. has its way — at least not without a court fight. You can see it now: the Venezuelans from Miami vs. the Chinese pirates for the rights to a Mexican national treasure.

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