The first UK exhibition in over two decades to show the full breadth of Frida Kahlo’s work traces how a painter of self-portraits became a worldwide cultural phenomenon.
Tate Modern on Bankside follows Frida Kahlo from a relatively unknown painter to one of the world’s most recognised artists, until Sunday 3 January 2027. It is the first UK exhibition in over two decades to show her range in full.
Kahlo built her art around her own image. Self-Portrait (With Velvet Dress), from 1926, and Self-Portrait with Loose Hair, from 1938, show her Mexican heritage, queer self-image, feminist convictions and experience as a disabled woman.
She rejected the Surrealist label, yet André Breton called her “a self-made Surrealist”. After her first solo show in New York in 1938 he invited her to Paris, where the French state bought The Frame.
The exhibition builds on Tate Modern’s 2005 survey. More than 30 of her works hang among over 200 by contemporaries and later artists, beside her tehuana dresses and possessions.
Diego Rivera’s portrait of her from about 1935 hangs here with María Izquierdo’s Dream and Premonition. So does work by the Chicana and Chicano painters who took her up as an emblem of pride from the late 1960s.
The final section turns to Fridamania, with more than 200 commercial objects that carry her face and style.