Art News: Frida Kahlo at Tate Modern, Tickets and What to See

Frida: The Making of an Icon, at Tate Modern until 3 January 2027, is Tate Modern's first exhibition of Frida Kahlo (1907–1954) since 2005, and Tate sold a record 41,000 tickets before it opened on 25 June. With ten weeks left, here is what is on show, what tickets cost and when to go.

What is on show

The exhibition has more than 30 works by Kahlo, among them Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird, of 1940, and Memory, or The Heart, of 1937, alongside more than 200 works by her contemporaries and by later artists who have taken her as a subject, and clothes, jewellery, photographs and memorabilia.

Its argument is in the title. It follows the many Fridas, the wife of Diego Rivera, the intellectual, the modern painter and the political activist, and then how, after her lifetime, she became one of the most recognised faces in the world. The final section, "Fridamania", gathers more than 200 commercial objects, from fashion to fridge magnets, and looks at the fans and communities who have claimed her as their own.

Of the 140 or so paintings Kahlo made, 55 are self-portraits, many painted while she was recovering from the bus accident she suffered at eighteen. André Breton hailed her as a Surrealist when he visited Mexico in 1938; she rejected the label, saying she painted her own reality, not dreams.

Frida exhibition tickets and prices

• Dates: until 3 January 2027, at Tate Modern on Bankside.
• Tickets: £25 for adults, with concessions available. Tate Collective members aged 16 to 25 pay £5, and Tate Members go free without booking.
• Opening times: 10.00 to 18.00 from Sunday to Thursday, and until 21.00 on Friday and Saturday.
• Day of the Dead: the exhibition opens from 19.00 to 22.00 on Sunday 1 November for Tate's Day of the Dead festival.
• Relaxed hours: quieter sessions run from 10.00 to 11.00 on the third Tuesday of each month, on 17 November and 15 December.
• Extras: an audio guide costs £5, and Tate sells packages of entry with lunch or dinner, or with a cocktail on Friday and Saturday evenings.
• Booking: tickets are timed and sold through Tate's website, and advance booking is recommended, above all for weekends and the last weeks before it closes.

Also at Tate Modern

Light and Magic: The Birth of Art Photography runs at Tate Modern until 21 February, and across the river at Tate Britain The 90s: Art and Fashion is on until 14 February; our guide to the 90s exhibition has the details. Tate Modern's next major show, of Claude Monet, opens on 25 February 2027.

Frida Kahlo's market

Kahlo's paintings are among the rarest of any major twentieth-century artist. Most are in museums, and since 1984 Mexico has protected her work as part of its national artistic heritage, which restricts the export of works held in Mexico. When a painting does come to auction it can set records: Diego and I, of 1949, sold for $34.9 million in New York in 2021, the highest price ever paid for a work by a Latin American artist.

Her fame has also brought a long history of fakes, so provenance is decisive: where a work has been since it left her studio, and whether it is recognised by the specialists who study her. Drawings, letters and photographs of her, including those by her father, Guillermo Kahlo, and by Nickolas Muray, are collected in their own right.

If you own a work by or connected with Frida Kahlo and are thinking of selling, send us photographs of the front and the back for a free valuation. There is no obligation to sell, and we act for you rather than for the saleroom.

Cover: Frida Kahlo, photographed by her father, Guillermo Kahlo, in 1932. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.