Curated by Tanya Barson and Emma Dexter

Some twenty years after Frida fever swept American museums and art-history departments, the British public gets its first major Kahlo retrospective. This survey comprises over seventy paintings, drawings, and photographs, drawn mainly from Mexican institutions—though rumor has it that Madonna is also lending from her collection. Portraits, still lifes, and idiosyncratic takes on retablo, or devotional painting, are augmented by watercolors and oil sketches from the mid-’20s and by syncretistic spiritual iconographies made later in the artist’s life. Standouts will, of course, be the iconic self-portraits, including Frieda and Diego Rivera, 1931, and The Two Fridas, 1939. The catalogue features essays by a host of contributors, including art historians Gannit Ankori and Christina Burrus.

— Frances Richard