iTate Modern · Bankside
Frida: The Making of an Icon
Over 30 iconic works by Frida Kahlo alongside contemporary pieces, exploring her rise into a global cultural and commercial phenomenon.
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The first gallery puts one of Frida Kahlo's plaster body casts front and centre: she wore it while bedridden in a Mexico City hospital in 1950 and painted it with a hammer and sickle and an unborn baby. Around it hang the self-portraits, nearly all of them staring straight back at you.
The show is on Level 3 of the Natalie Bell Building. Tate counts just over 30 works by Kahlo herself, set among her dresses, photographs and more than 200 works by contemporaries and artists she later inspired. It ends in 'Fridamania', a room of more than 200 pieces of Kahlo merchandise. If you own a Frida tote bag, you're technically part of this room.
The critics agree on where it's strong. FAD called the opening galleries "exceptional" and said the show "begins to lose focus in its second half"; the Standard warned it can feel "more tribute than deep dive". So give most of your time to the early rooms. It's open until 21.00 on Fridays and Saturdays.
Editor's pick
The one everyone's asking about. Timed tickets, long lead times, and a show about how an image gets built — the photographs, the wardrobe, the unsent letters. Book a weekday slot and forget about it.
Look for
The painted plaster cast
Look for it in the first gallery, decorated with a hammer and sickle and a baby, a record of the injuries and miscarriages behind so much of her work.
Memory (The Heart), 1937
Kahlo stands between a hanging school uniform and a Tehuana dress while a huge bleeding heart drains into the sea at her feet.
Self-portrait with thorn necklace and hummingbird, 1940
A monkey picks at the thorns until they draw blood while a black cat waits to pounce, painted the year she divorced and remarried Diego Rivera.
Tracey Emin as Kahlo
Mary McCartney's photograph of Emin in bed, roses heaped on her head, sits in a room of impersonations that also includes Yasumasa Morimura.
Fridamania
The last room is wall-to-wall merchandise, candles to tequila bottles, and it leads straight into Tate's own gift shop.
Good for
- Evening Visits
- First-Timers
Skip if
You only want Kahlo's own paintings: critics found the second half crowded with homages to her.
With kids
Under Tate's general exhibition rules, up to four children aged 11 and under go free per adult and 12-18s pay £5. Tate's content guidance flags images of dead bodies and references to sexual violence and miscarriage.
Free in the same building
- The Collection: Modern and Contemporary ArtFree permanent displays spanning Picasso, Dalí, Rothko and Warhol to the latest contemporary work across two interconnected buildings.
- The TanksThe world's first permanent museum galleries for live art, performance, installation, and film, housed in vast industrial oil tanks.
Also at Tate Modern
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Image credits
8
- Frida: The Making of an IconCourtesy of Tate Modern
- By Appointment Only: Romani Art, Culture & Heritage© London Museum
- Salman Toor: Someone Like You© Salman Toor; Courtesy of the artist, Luhring Augustine, New York, and Thomas Dane Gallery. Photo: Genevieve Hanson
- Tate ModernAcabashi / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Hayward GalleryMykReeve / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
- London MuseumMatt Brown / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Courtauld GalleryAnthony O'Neil / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0
- Barbican CentreJulian Herzog / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0