At the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, it’s not uncommon to find an exhibition schedule proliferating with cradle-to-grave retrospectives of a single artist. And when the subject happens to be one of the most recognizable—in name and visage at least—painters of the 20th century, you’d think the same template would apply.
But in the case of the just-opened Frida: The Making of an Icon, you’d be wrong. Because that’s not what the exhibit’s conceiver and curator, Mari Carmen Ramírez, set out to do at all.
“In today’s world, it’s impossible to do a full-scale retrospective of Frida Kahlo. Her production was not very extensive, and the loans are hard to get. And everyone is trying to organize exhibitions of Frida,” she says on the phone, less than an hour before the exhibit opens to the public.
“So, I decided to draw on my own experience of Frida for what I wanted to do here.”
Frida: The Making of an Icon does feature 35 distinctive paintings and self-portraits by Kahlo (1907-54) herself, along with some of her personal artifacts. But just as important are the 130+ works by more than 80 artists across the decades who have responded to, appropriated, or paid tribute to her in their own painting, sculpture, and photography.
That group includes her Surrealist contemporaries of the 1930s to proponents of the Chicano/a movement of the ‘70s, to more recent Frida-centric interests in pursuance of calling attention to feminism, civil rights, and queer activism.
Finally, one gallery will feature more than 200 examples of “Fridamania” merchandise. Most featuring her image with its defiant stare, unibrow, Tehuana dress, and exotic hair decorations. That area is curated by Arden Decker.
Ramírez—who is the MFAH’s Wortham Curator of Latin American Art and founding director of the International Center for the Arts of the Americas (ICAA)—was first exposed to the work of Frida Kahlo as a doctoral student in Mexico City in the early 1980s working on a thesis about Mexican muralism.
It was a few years after the first biographies on Kahlo had come out. But “Fridamania” really kicked off with the 1983 publication of Hayden Herrera’s Frida. That book has now been translated into about 30 different languages.
“I was part of the first wave of that new generation that came to know Frida. And I saw how these different groups of artists embraced her and her legacy beginning with the feminists, LGBTQ community, the Latinx, all the way to the disabled artists,” Ramírez says. “So, I drew upon that to show the process of how she became an icon.”
She adds that it was mostly a posthumous transformation. When Kahlo died in 1954, she was mainly known to a modest community of artists and activists in the U.S. and Mexico, years away from being a global brand.
Think about it. Most people, if shown a painting or photo of the artist, could probably identify her as Frida Kahlo (or at least throw out actress Salma Hayek’s name from the 2002 biopic).
But could the same person give you the title of a single piece of her art? Probably not. Even those, when presented with the image of Vincent Van Gogh, could at least cough up Starry Starry Night (even though the actual title is just The Starry Night. Thanks Don McLean…).
As Ramírez writes in the introduction to the exhibit catalog, “Indeed, it is practically impossible to distinguish the artistic icon from its fetishized, commercial counterpart as they circulate in tandem, continually interacting with one another.”
On the phone, she further reflects upon Kahlo’s ascent into pop culture.
“Part of it is the way all of these [social and political] movements have embraced her. And they all appropriated her, took her art to another level, and kept her legacy alive,” Ramírez offers. “And the process of the commercialization of her work began. A combination of iconicity and consumer culture.”
To illustrate that point, she notes that there are currently about “100,000” objects available for sale on Etsy and Amazon that feature Kahlo’s face. Including…sanitary napkins.
Ramírez says that she and her team of collaborators spent “about four years” putting this exhibit together. “It was a very interesting and extensive process. We scoured the internet and talked to colleagues and looked over literature for leads. And those 80 artists represented are just the tip of the iceberg,” she says.
As to how someone makes the jump from being just an artist to an icon, a lot of it may have nothing at all to do with the art itself, but the story of the artist.
“She had a very multifaceted personality, and everything was very deliberate in how she constructed her different personas,” Ramírez says, noting that a very melodramatic life story that included a major accident, illnesses, marriage to famed artist Diego Rivera, bisexualism, political activism, and even her distinct fashion sense helped that along.
“She doesn’t have a fixed identity. She’s a plural icon. And that plurality gives many people a space to identify with her and different aspects of her persona. And then all those self-portraits. She was a narcissist in many ways, and that also appeals to people. And her melodramatic life. It makes people empathize with here and make her a symbol for so many things.”
Finally, after Frida: The Making of an Icon ends its world premiere run at the Museum of Fine Arts, it’s headed overseas to the Tate Modern in London. Something that its curator is excited about.
“I’m very happy with that!” she says. “Works about Frida really have no limits.”
Frida: The Making of an Icon runs through May 17 at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Caroline Weiss Law Building, 1001 Bissonnet. For more information, call 713-639-7300 or visit MFAH.org. $20-$24, children 12 and under free.
This article appears in Private: Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2026.