The Kahlo likeness — reduced to a shorthand of flower-studded braids, unibrow, rosy lips and bright blouse — gazes today from products including socks and yoga pants. Her style informs magazine fashion shoots, retail displays and even a Barbie doll. Yet in none of these representations does Ms. Kahlo appear as anything other than an able-bodied woman.

At age 6, Ms. Kahlo had polio, which left her right leg shorter than her left. She was teased at school for her withered leg and limp, said Circe Henestrosa, co-curator of the exhibition, and her dress became a way to conceal it. “She’d wear three or four socks to level her legs, and started to wear long skirts,” Ms. Henestrosa said.

Then, when she was 18, a school bus carrying Ms. Kahlo collided with a tram, and her body “was pierced through to the pelvic bone,” the curator said. She suffered more than 20 bone fractures, most to the spine.

“To recover, she spent about a year in bed,” Ms. Henestrosa said. “This is the beginning of the art, and of the deterioration of her body.”