June 25, 2026
Frida: Tate Modern Unpicks the Making of a Global Icon
Tate Modern's 2026 exhibition examines how Frida Kahlo became one of the most recognised artists on earth — and the woman behind the legend.
Her face is now everywhere — on tote bags, murals and mugs. Tate Modern's 2026 exhibition steps behind the phenomenon to explore how the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo became one of the most recognised cultural figures on the planet.
Kahlo turned her own pain, politics and identity into unforgettable images, painting her body, her heritage and her tumultuous marriage to Diego Rivera with raw symbolic power from her home, the Casa Azul in Mexico City.
The show looks at both the art and the myth-making — the self-fashioning, the photographs, the afterlife — asking how a once-overlooked painter became a worldwide icon of resilience.
Image: “The kitchen inside La Casa Azul (The Blue House), which is the Frida Kahlo Museum located in Coyoacán, Mexico City” — Rebeccananonof, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.