The exhibition "Frida: The Making of an Icon" has achieved the highest pre-sale ticket sales in the history of the Tate Modern in London, and will continue until January 3, 2027.

What distinguishes this exhibition from the retrospective ones held over the decades is the display of 200 works by nearly 80 contemporary artists, or artists from later generations, who were inspired by her and followed in her footsteps, integrating her symbolism into their visual language, and reviving her story or imagining it through art.

The Tate's galleries are filled with more than 30 of Kahlo's most famous works, introducing us to the multiple facets of her personality: the wife, the intellectual, the contemporary artist, and the political activist.

The artificial limbs and orthopedic devices sculpted by artist Berenice Olmedo, which reveal the "process of self-reconstruction," also bring us closer to Frida's long suffering from polio she contracted in childhood, and then the terrible car accident that destroyed her spine and pelvis, forcing her to live with a prosthetic frame for the rest of her life.

A painting by Frida Kahlo - tate.org.uk

The Spanish newspaper EL Pais described the exhibition as "dedicated to an icon venerated by generations around the world, a figure printed on more than a hundred thousand products on sale, in addition to people's attempts to imitate her image through open wooden statues, behind which they stand to become Frida and unite with her."

Art historian and Puerto Rican curator Mari Carmen Ramirez said, "No other artist has sparked such a unique interaction across multiple generations of followers, and this stems from the challenges she faced in her life and the strange construction of her identity, which resonates strongly with a multicultural global audience that knows her simply as Frida."

She adds, "The works and murals of the Chicano movement, a resurgence of the Mexican immigrant community in the United States in the 1960s as part of the struggle for civil rights, also embody how activists took Frida as a model of political resistance and cultural pride."

Born Magdalena Carmen Calderón in Mexico in 1907, she chose the name Frida Kahlo for herself. Upon her death in 1954, her husband, Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, hid all her belongings in their home known as the "Blue House," which was reopened in 2004.