By the time she died aged 47, Frida had already had a few solo exhibitions: global fame was another 20 years down the line, after she was adopted by the Chicana/o artists of San Francisco.

WHEN FRIDA Kahlo died in 1954 – in the same house in which she was born, the Casa Azul in Coyacán, Mexico City – she was best-known as the wife of her country’s most famous artist, the muralist Diego Rivera. One newspaper called her the “wife of the master mural painter [who] gleefully dabbles in works of art”. But a few lines on, Kahlo – playfully, the journalist suggests – jokes that while Rivera’s work is good for a boy, she is the one who’s the big artist.

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