Frida Kahlo: Artist or brand? - The Sunday Story
The Story
The Times
3.9 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 8 March 2026
⏱️ 35 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Thirty years after her death, Frida Kahlo went from relative obscurity to one of the most famous female artists on the planet. Now, her image has been used on everything from watches, scented candles, clothes, sanitary pads, and even Barbie dolls. But how did the communist icon become the face of a million dollar enterprise? At the centre of the story is a Kahlo family divided. Should her image reflect her artistic treasures or a global brand?
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Guest: Blanca Schofield, assistant culture and books editor for both The Times and The Sunday Times.
Host: Rosie Wright.
Producer: Dave Creasey.
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Read more: Artist — or brand? How Frida Kahlo’s family lost control
Photo: FridaMoji/Getty Images.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | From The Times and the Sunday Times, this is the story on Sunday. I'm Rosie Wright. |
| 0:10.5 | Here we have a woman lying asleep in her bed, covered in a yellow blanket with greenery around her. |
| 0:26.6 | And the bed is kind of floating in the sky. |
| 0:33.6 | When the dream of the bed was painted in 1940, it gathered very little attention. |
| 0:39.4 | And the most interesting and alarming thing about the bed is that on top of the four-poster is a skeleton also lying down, resting against some pillows. |
| 0:51.3 | Back then, almost no one out of Mexico knew of the artist who painted this picture of |
| 0:57.0 | a skeleton and a woman on a bed. Often, you see Frida Kahlo with her hair tied up beautifully in a |
| 1:07.0 | chignon and an emphasis on her face and on her monobro and on her dress. |
| 1:12.7 | But in this painting, she is lying down in a white, presumably nightgown with her hair down, asleep. |
| 1:22.3 | Well, in November last year, that painting sold for just over £40 million. |
| 1:30.3 | Its value is a sign of just how far Frida Carlo's work has come since she died in 1954. This is the dream, Brockets the Bird, |
| 1:38.3 | which in Spanish is Esuigno Brocats La Cama, which was painted in 1940 by Frida Callow during a really turbulent time in her life |
| 1:49.1 | because it followed her divorce from her husband Diego Rivera and also the assassination of her former lover, |
| 1:59.7 | the Russian Revolutionary Trotsky. |
| 2:02.6 | Her art goes way beyond the canvas now. |
| 2:19.1 | I expect you know her face, even if actually you don't know who she was. |
| 2:25.5 | Her face is on tote bags, tattoos, posters, even Barbie dolls. |
| 2:31.1 | Frida Carlos become big business. |
| 2:38.4 | It's literally insane. You can get Frida Callo's sanitary path. You can get Frida Carlo tequila bottles. There is even a freed emoji, a |
| 2:45.6 | Frida Kahlo emoji. She is ubiquitous. That is literally the word for her. But at the center is a family |
| 2:53.7 | divided over the question of her legacy. Should it be a priceless artistic treasure or a |
| 3:02.1 | global brand? The story on Sunday. |
... |
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