The Guardian:

From almost every painting, her dark oval eyes stare out, serious and uncompromising, a daring look that can, juxtaposed with the open wounds that adorn some of her work, somehow seem comforting, a point of reference in the splash of colours. The surrealist self-portraits of Frida Kahlo, revered as Mexico’s most prominent female artist of the 20th century, will soon be seen in Britain. Recently Tate Modern announced that her first solo show in the UK would be its main summer exhibition. Opening in June, it will contain about 60 paintings and 20 drawings, nearly half of her remaining work. “A lot of her work deals with suffering and blood,” said Ruth Findlay of Tate Modern.

“She was a very colourful person and moved in high society in Mexico and that’s reflected in her work.” Born in 1907, she suffered a withering of her right leg by polio when she was six, and at 18 a serious accident left her unable to have children.

Her popularity was once overshadowed by her husband, the artist Diego Rivera, but she was rediscovered in the 1980s. When Kahlo died in the summer of 1954 the New York Times wrote that she professed no technique for her startling works.

“I put on the canvas whatever comes into my mind,” she declared.