{"id":889769,"date":"2026-06-24T15:55:19","date_gmt":"2026-06-24T15:55:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/889769\/"},"modified":"2026-06-24T15:55:19","modified_gmt":"2026-06-24T15:55:19","slug":"frida-kahlo-the-reason-why-tates-blockbuster-show-has-so-few-works-by-the-mexican-artist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/889769\/","title":{"rendered":"Frida Kahlo: The reason why Tate\u2019s blockbuster show has so few works by the Mexican artist"},"content":{"rendered":"

A major Frida Kahlo exhibition unpacking the Mexican artist\u2019s extraordinary legacy will draw tens of thousands of visitors to London\u2019s Tate Modern in the coming months. The blockbuster show, which opens this week, has attracted unprecedented levels of interest, shifting more than 41,000 tickets to become the Tate\u2019s highest-pre-selling exhibition ever, breaking a record previously set by a 2017 David Hockney show.<\/p>\n

The demand is unsurprising. Decades on from her death in 1954, and following a feminist reappraisal of the artist in the 1980s, the world is still in the grip of Frida Fever. She is the most googled female artist of all time, the second most overall after Leonard da Vinci. Today Kahlo\u2019s impenetrable mien \u2013 that prodigious monobrow and braided updo \u2013 adorns everything from fuzzy socks to cake toppers. And so, the chance to get up close and personal with Kahlo this summer has proven predictably irresistible to many. Many of those same people might find themselves surprised by how few Frida Kahlo works there are in a show about, well, Frida Kahlo. <\/p>\n

\u201cFrida: The Making of an Icon\u201d features no more than 33 of its subject\u2019s works \u2013 less than the originally stated 36. These are presented alongside her garments, personal memorabilia and photographs of her. The rest of the show comprises 200 works by other people \u2013 her contemporaries, and some of the many thousands of artists who have paid homage to her over the years, including Tracey Emin and Ana Mendieta, both of whom feature in Tate exhibitions this year. Early reports<\/a> had highlighted difficulties the Tate faced in trying to secure paintings for the show. Reviews<\/a>, meanwhile, have picked up on this lack of Frida, noting that the Tate\u2019s 2005 Kahlo exhibition showcased 80 of her works by comparison. \u201cIt\u2019s hard not to feel cheated when you see Rosalie Favell\u2019s 2003 reworking of Kahlo\u2019s Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair (1940), with a tiny reproduction of the absent original beside it,\u201d writes Chlo\u00eb Ashby in The Independent\u2019s review. <\/p>\n

Co-curator Tobias Ostrander, however, maintains that the show was never intended as a retrospective like its predecessor, even in the earliest stages of development six years ago. \u201cThe attraction of this show is to offer another take, or another chapter,\u201d he says. \u201cLooking at the Frida effect… the larger cultural dynamics that have created Frida, the icon \u2013 the most recognisable artist in the world at the moment.\u201d <\/p>\n

Ostrander concedes that it would have been \u201cvery hard to do a classic survey of Frida\u201d today because loans are more difficult than in the past. On why that is, he cites \u201cthe high value of the works\u201d as part of the reason. Kahlo is, in fact, the world\u2019s most expensive woman artist<\/a> at auction; her 1940 surrealist self-portrait El sue\u00f1o (La cama) \u2013 The Dream (The Bed) \u2013 set a new record last year when it sold at Sotheby\u2019s for $54.7m. At one point, Tate was trying to secure a loan of that same work from the unidentified buyer, but was unsuccessful in its attempt. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe live in a volatile world currently so people are aware of the fragility of paintings,\u201d Ostrander says. And it\u2019s not just the Tate that has run into issues; in April, the long-term loan of a trove of Kahlo paintings, including 1933\u2019s Self-Portrait with Necklace, from Mexico City to Spain prompted protests from the country\u2019s cultural elite who said the move would rob Mexicans of an artistic treasure. <\/p>\n

Conservation is a typical concern when it comes to big-budget art loans \u2013 critics of the Bayeux Tapestry\u2019s impending move from Normandy to Britain, for example, highlight the delicacy of the 1,000-year-old linen \u2013 but Kahlo\u2019s works tend to be especially closely guarded. <\/p>\n

\u201cPeople are very, very connected to their Frida paintings. It\u2019s a very personal relationship,\u201d says Ostrander. \u201cAnd so people feel close to the artworks they were bought or were given. Frida becomes a saint-like or a talisman-like figure for them. There was one older collector who was going to loan some works and then decided not to when she got sick because, as she said, \u2018I can\u2019t live without my Frida. I need my Frida.\u2019 There is this real sense of Frida Kahlo being a guiding force and a real source of strength for people.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"ThisThis year\u2019s exhibition showcases 33 of Frida Kahlo\u2019s artworks in comparison to the Tate\u2019s 2005 show, which featured more than 80 (PA)<\/p>\n

Ostrander notes the same dynamic played out in Kahlo\u2019s lifetime, during which her ill health \u2013 she was diagnosed with polio at age six and suffered 20 bone fractures, mostly to the spine, in a bus accident aged 18 \u2013 often precluded her from social occasions. \u201cHer paintings often served as a surrogate for herself,\u201d says Ostrander. \u201cPeople forget that many of her self-portraits were made as commissions by friends, collectors, supporters \u2013 or made for her lovers and friends. The paintings stood in for her. Frida couldn\u2019t travel as much as she probably wanted to, so they became these sort of surrogate selves to share with people when she couldn\u2019t be [physically] present. And so that has always been there \u2013 this idea of her aura, her person contained within the work.\u201d <\/p>\n

The Tate show centres this relationship between Frida and her admirers through some 200 works by other artists that fill out the rest of the exhibition. \u201cIn today\u2019s world, she has come to symbolise many things,\u201d says Osterlan. \u201cShe is a symbol of resistance, a symbol of cultural pride\u2026 an anti-establishment, anti-hegemony figure, as well as an artist, a woman, a woman of colour, a bisexual woman, and a woman living with disability \u2013 all the while presenting herself with such a unique aura of strength.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"MaryMary McCartney\u2019s \u2018Being Frida\u2019 featuring Tracey Emin is one of the some 200 works by other artists to feature in the Tate exhibition (Mary McCartney)<\/p>\n

In short, Frida Kahlo is an icon \u2013 hence the exhibition\u2019s name and focus. \u201cThe idea of Frida-mania speaks to her iconography,\u201d says art historian Katy Hessel. \u201cWe don\u2019t have icons written by women. From Venus to Medusa to the Virgin Mary to Mary Magdalene, these archetypes were all written by men, but what Frida does is make herself an icon.\u201d The Tate exhibition, she says, \u201cmade me realise the global effect that Frida has had on people, which is a really interesting angle for a show to take\u201d. <\/p>\n

Hessel is unbothered by the lack of Kahlo\u2019s own works in the show. \u201cIt\u2019s not a retrospective,\u201d she says. \u201cCurators have to keep reinventing the way they want to tell an artist\u2019s story because there have already been retrospectives. So… how do we reframe Frida for our world now?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A major Frida Kahlo exhibition unpacking the Mexican artist\u2019s extraordinary legacy will draw tens of thousands of visitors…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":889770,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[32],"tags":[648,1032,1033,171,320534,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-889769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-frida","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116805902697983200","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/889769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=889769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/889769\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/889770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=889769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=889769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=889769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}