Frida: The Making of an Icon at Tate Modern is the first major interrogation of the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo’s legacy in London for 25 years. It already has more advance sales than any exhibition in Tate history.

The title puts the visitor on first name terms with someone who died in 1954. Yet despite the many privileged glimpses into Kahlo’s life, from photographs, to objects, and – of course – her work, the show is more about ubiquity than intimacy.

The opening sections of the show are brilliant. Immediately to the left of the entrance are two photographs taken by Kahlo’s father when the painter was 18. In one, she is seated in ¾ profile, wearing a dress and holding a book, if not withdrawn, thoughtful. In the other she is pictured with her sisters and their cousins. She stands, slightly taller, in the centre, dressed in one of her father’s suits, one hand in her pocket. She stares out of the picture, with an outwardly directed intensity.

The photographs were taken just months after Kahlo was involved in a bus accident that resulted in a life of periodic surgery. This trauma, among others, is a motif in her work. The seated Kahlo tucks her damaged right leg behind the other; the standing Kahlo holds a walking stick in her right hand. These two images contain the promise of the show: suffering, introversion, defiance, self-presentation,........

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