An expert’s guide to Frida Kahlo: five must-read books on the Mexican Surrealist

Frida Kahlo (1907-54) is arguably the most recognisable artist in the world. The Mexican painter’s reputation grew following her death but over the past few decades her image has exploded in the popular consciousness, from being portrayed on the silver screen and referenced in The Simpsons , to having her image spray-painted on walls around the world and plastered on merchandise. This elevation to global fame is explored in the exhibition Frida: The Making of an Icon at Tate Modern (until 3 January 2027). Here, Beatriz García-Velasco, the exhibition’s assistant curator, picks out five key books for learning all about Kahlo’s life and career.

“A good place to start is with Hayden Herrera’s biography. Translated into more than 25 languages, it introduced Kahlo to vast global audiences and inadvertently catalysed the ‘Fridamania’ phenomenon. The book is a meticulously researched, incisive art-historical study that nevertheless reads like a page-turner. Drawing largely on first-hand interviews with those who knew Kahlo intimately, Herrera examines the artist’s work through her lived experience, with particular focus on Kahlo’s accident, lifelong disability and suffering.”

“Gannit Ankori’s writing brings a much-needed, fresh perspective. Questioning the essentialist readings that often rely on autobiographical myth or pseudo-psychoanalytical assumptions, Ankori argues that Kahlo was a trailblazer, who deliberately constructed her own identity and was ahead of her time in breaking taboos by openly portraying the female body, gender, cross-dressing, hybridity, identity and disability, themes that continue to resonate strongly with audiences today.”

“Functioning essentially as a catalogue raisonné, this monumental publication brings together exquisitely reproduced images, documentation and commentaries on every known painting by Kahlo. It’s a book you can lose hours in, turning its lush pages to inspect the detail and texture of her work.”

“For those wanting to get even closer to Kahlo, this accessible facsimile reproduces the notebook she kept over the final decade of her life, which remained hidden until her private rooms were unlocked in 2005. Turning these pages immerses you in her brilliant, and at times tormented, mind.”

“Written in Spanish, this is a personal and vital intervention by the Mexican curator and philosopher, Helena Chávez Mac Gregor. The title takes its cue from André Breton’s famous 1938 characterisation of Kahlo’s work as ‘a ribbon around a bomb’, a phrase Mac Gregor brilliantly upends by arguing that there was perhaps never any ribbon at all: only bombs, and they continue to detonate across time.”