Galleries and Exhibitions

After visiting Frida Kahlo's Blue House, we are preparing for the Solo Show at the Tate Modern in London in June.

April 08, 2026

Curated by Cristina Zappa

Casa Azul, originally the Kahlo family's home, then the Rivera couple's marital home (1940), located in Mexico City in the intellectual area of the time in Coyoacan, is like a typically Mexican studio house still inhabited, leveled and opening onto flourishing gardens full of fountains, cacti, orange trees, Aztec idols and pre-Columbian artefacts.

The house was donated to the city in 1957 by her husband so that it could be turned into a museum in memory of his predeceased wife (1907-1954).
Kahlo, now a rediscovered artist on the contemporary art market, had an unfortunate life: born with spina bifida, treated as if it were polio, she was in a serious bus accident at 18 that left her bedridden.

But in his artistic work physical pain is mystified with colorful costumes (in the style Tehuana) and a reserve that does not amplify personal suffering, but shows composure and playful determination.

She has lived in the shadow of her overwhelming love, which she marries and remarries, she has become involved in extramarital affairs with famous people and artists (editor's note: Tina Modotti) and a much-talked-about unhealthy bond with her sister: yet in this secluded place everything seems perfect and she serenely paints her infirmities, nature and human transience.

The bedroom with the mirror on the canopy that helped her paint, the kitchen with its crockery and doves in love on the wall, the dining room with its lace and frills, Diego's jacket and hat, keep anxiety and political and marital drama at bay. The urn containing Frida's ashes is still in her study, alongside a funerary mask and personal items.

The town is still rife with social contradictions today, and the cobalt-blue building is far from Palanco—the city's only safe area. However, the artists' private collection of Mexican folk art and pre-Hispanic works welcomes visitors, who then wander through the house's rooms, one after the other, among spectacular works by the two artists and papier-mâché Judas skeletons that seem ready to explode on the first Saturday of Easter, as is Mexican custom.

The last words he wrote in his diary were: “I hope the exit is joyful and I hope I never come back again.”. He died after having his leg amputated due to gangrene at the age of 47.

Her works have been sold at record prices in recent auctions (Sothebys, December 2025, the work “El Sueno, la Cama” was sold without buyer's premium for 47 million dollars) and the interest in this unconventional and combative artist who said she was born in 1910 because she considered herself a daughter of the Mexican Revolution, and her paintings full of eroticism, symbolism and hybrid figures, traits of cruel reality and imagination, self-portraits and masks, animals and nature are today reevaluated by critics internationally.

In June also the Tate Modern is dedicating a single show to her, which will certainly be unmissable as it is the first retrospective entirely dedicated to the artist, featuring some of her most famous paintings, along with photographs and personal memorabilia and works by contemporary artists who were inspired by her: a tribute that will finally give visibility to this female artist who has marked the history of her country.