NEW YORK — It appears that Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat won’t be the only art-world icons heading to The Great White Way.
A musical based on the life of the late Mexican painter Frida Kahlo is in development, eyeing a pre-Broadway run for next year.
Producer Valentina Berger announced Thursday the famed portraitist’s family has authorized the development of “Frida, The Musical,” which will feature music by the Mexican composer Jaime Lozano and lyrics by the Obie Award-winning playwright Neena Beber.
“Frida still has so much to teach us, and I am thrilled at the chance to honor her life and her work through this most expressive medium,” Berger said. “Her spirit is very much alive in our young creative team, who continually dazzle me with their big creative swings and mind-bending talent.”
According to the announcement, the musical will reveal “new, rarely explored layers of this most complex — and ardently Mexican — genius as it follows her journey from Mexico City to Paris and New York, and finally back home to the house of her birth for one final professional triumph.”
The synopsis, provided by Rick Miramontez said the production is “grounded by the rollercoaster romance between the artist and her great love, Diego Rivera,” and “will be a full-throated celebration of Kahlo’s joyous spirit of creativity and her unmatched gift for transforming physical and emotional pain into breathtaking beauty.”
The groundbreaking 20th-century artist, who painted more than 150 self-influenced works of art before her death in 1954 at age 47, has remained a pop culture staple throughout the decades.
In 2002, Harvey Weinstein produced the acclaimed biopic, “Frida,” directed by Julie Taymor and starring Salma Hayek in the titular role. The film went on to garner six Oscar nominations, winning two for best original score and best makeup.
Earlier this year, the family announced a partnership to produce a TV series based on the life and works of the artist.
Recognized for her uniquely ornate, colorful wardrobe and fashion sensibility, Kahlo — who was disabled as a child due to polio — became the subject of Victoria and Albert Museum 2018 summer exhibition “Frida Kahlo: Making Her Self Up.”
Kahlo was one of many notable women to have their likeness immortalized in a Barbie doll in honor of International Women’s Day in 2018, causing major backlash for Mattel. Members of the artist’s family blasted the toymaker for using her likeness without permission — and for not using traits truer to Kahlo’s actual look.
In 2019, the Brooklyn Museum hosted “Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving,” which it said was the largest U.S. exhibition in years devoted and the first in the U.S. to display a collection of her clothing and other personal artifacts rediscovered and inventoried in 2004.
The Gap started selling T-shirts with her famous likeness emblazoned on it earlier this year.
The first workshop of “Frida, the Musical” is slated for 2023. No other details were furnished.
But Broadway is already adding some artistic flourishes and splashes of color to its fall season; Anthony McCarten’s hit London play, “The Collaboration,” is set to begin its American premiere at MTC’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre Nov. 29.
The Kwame Kwei-Armah-helmed production — starring Golden Globe Award nominee Paul Bettany and Tony, Grammy and Emmy Award nominee Jeremy Pope — explores the relationship between the two iconic painters, Warhol and Basquiat.
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