The reason why Tate’s blockbuster Frida Kahlo show has so few works by the Mexican artist

The Tate’s major Frida Kahlo show has come under fire for its lack of artworks by the artist – but the critics are missing the point of the exhibition, says its curator - (Public domain)

A major Frida Kahlo exhibition unpacking the Mexican artist’s extraordinary legacy will draw tens of thousands of visitors to London’s 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’s highest-pre-selling exhibition ever, breaking a record previously set by a 2017 David Hockney show.

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’s impenetrable mien – that prodigious monobrow and braided updo – 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.