Frida Kahlo was a game-changer. In post-revolutionary Mexico, the surrealist artist celebrated indigenous heritage through her paintings – mostly self portraits – at a time when the country’s national identity was fragmented. Kahlo placed her own identities – disabled, gender-bending, bisexual, woman, and communist – front and center in her autobiographical pieces. In the decades since, her works have made her a feminist and LGBTQ icon. However, she didn’t receive as much acclaim in her day as she has posthumously. She’s now recognized as one of Mexico’s greatest artists and cultural icons.

In 2016, her 1939 Two Nudes in the Forest (The Land Itself) painting sold for more than $8 million, temporarily making her the best-selling Latin American painter of all time. And her reach has extended far beyond the borders of Mexico. In the United States, exhibitions centered around her work have set records on multiple occasions.

While worthy of all her popularity, Kahlo’s spotlight has cast a shadow over other Mexican female creatives. Between the 1920s and 1940s, art was still closely associated with masculinity in Mexico, but Kahlo and her female contemporaries centered women’s rights in their work. Kahlo receives a lot of credit for paving the way in a male-dominated world, but many of her colleagues were also barrier-breakers, who deserve praise for their work. As such, we have highlighted a list of women making art between 1925 and 1954 – roughly the time period that Kahlo produced her nearly 200 paintings. The list below features talented women who came from poverty, challenged the art world’s sexism, and faced immense loss but found beauty, strength and resistance through their art.