This June, Fridamania hits London. ‘Frida: The Making of an Icon’, Tate Modern’s summer blockbuster (June 25, 2026 to January 3, 2027), is the highest preselling show in the museum’s history. Kahlo looks down from the giant screen at Piccadilly Circus, traditional Mexican papel picado flutters above Carnaby Street, and Kahlo-themed socks and skateboards fill the gift shop. Is any other artist’s image so instantly recognizable to so many?

When Tate Modern staged its last major Kahlo retrospective in 2005, other women associated with the Surrealist movement were little-known to anyone beyond a small circle of curators and collectors. Twenty years later, they represent one of the fastest growing segments of the art market.

‘Fridamania’, explains art historian Alyce Mahon, was coined after the 1982 exhibition of Kahlo and Tina Modotti at the Whitechapel Gallery in London, when its curators, Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen, noted ‘how the “cult” of Frida was built not just round her art but her life story as a “suffering” artist which lent her a kind of saintly status, like a martyr.’

This quasi-religious devotion persists – the Tate dedicates a whole gallery to the resultant, often kitsch, merchandise – but her fame undeniably rests on talent, too: ‘She had the ability to fuse European and Mexican iconographies and techniques in a highly original and captivating way,’ Mahon says, ‘whether in a self-portrait, an image of the trauma of miscarriage, or a portrayal of how Mexico was being destroyed by American capitalism.’ Kahlo was a committed communist, and, for a brief time, Trotsky’s lover.

Last year, Kahlo’s market reached new heights when El sueño (La cama) (1940) sold at Sotheby’s for USD 54.7 million, the most ever paid at auction for a work by a woman (it was bought in 1980 for just USD 51,000). But supply is limited. Kahlo created fewer than 150 paintings, many now held in museums, and her art is designated a national monument in Mexico, meaning works already in the country cannot be exported. Major paintings rarely appear on the market, and the value sits in just a handful of trophy lots.

The wider market for women Surrealists is flourishing. The émigré artists who left wartime Europe to join Kahlo’s circle in Mexico, such as Leonora Carrington, Remedios Varo, and Alice Rahon, are among the most sought-after names. In 2024, Carrington’s Les Distractions de Dagobert (1945) sold for USD 28.5 million at Sotheby’s in New York, far surpassing the artist’s previous auction record of USD 3.3 million. In March, a small canvas by the American Dorothea Tanning, Children’s Games (1942), sold for GBP 4.7 million at Christie’s in London, nearly double the previous auction record for the artist.

According to figures from Sotheby’s, annual auction sales of works by women Surrealists rose from USD 7.9 million in 2018 to USD 94.3 million in 2024, outpacing the growth of their male contemporaries.

So how did women Surrealists become one of the hottest segments of the market? Few understand this better than Wendi Norris, whose San Francisco gallery represents Carrington, Varo, Rahon, and Tanning. Norris first met Carrington in 2002, visiting her at her Mexican home, and steadily developed her market long before the recent records.

‘The early champions of Leonora Carrington, Remedios Varo, and Dorothea Tanning comprised an almost cult-like following, with pockets of dedicated collectors in California, the Western US, and Mexico,’ Norris says. ‘Tanning wisely placed many of her works in major museum collections during her lifetime, but there were previously few places where the public could see Carrington or Varo in person.’

That changed, Norris says, with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s 2012 exhibition, ‘In Wonderland’, the first major survey of women Surrealists who were active in Mexico and the US. ‘[That exhibition] catalyzed a new, active group of collectors – including museum curators – from around the world,’ Norris adds.

Mahon, who curated the first major Tanning retrospective, at the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid in 2018, also credits forward-thinking museum directors, such as Manuel Borja-Villel at the Reina Sofía and Frances Morris at Tate Modern, for their role in bringing these artists to the fore. But, she notes, Surrealism was an avant-garde movement in which women were already prominent and ‘there is no doubt that the #MeToo movement also put pressure on institutions to redress the balance.’

Despite the institutional attention and market records, value remains concentrated among a relatively small group of star names. This reflects data from The Art Basel and UBS Art Market Report, authored by Clare McAndrew of Arts Economics, which found that in 2025 women accounted for 11% of the top 200 artists at auction and just 8% of the value. The share of value was down on the year before, even with the Kahlo record in November.

For the London-, Rome-, and New York-based dealer Richard Saltoun, whose program has long championed overlooked women artists, the imbalance is also geographical: ‘The Latin Americans seem to have no problem hero-worshipping their women,’ he says, ‘whereas the Europeans still, bizarrely, don’t think their females should be as expensive as their males.’

‘Europe pretends to be very sophisticated,’ Saltoun says, ‘but it’s the South Americans who actually give financial parity to their female artists.’

At Art Basel earlier this month, Saltoun dedicated his gallery’s booth to the Vienna-born Italian Surrealist Manina, the first presentation of her work in 30 years, with prices ranging from around EUR 20,000 to EUR 200,000. For most collectors at the fair, Manina would have been a new discovery. ‘Unless you’re in the museum world, you’re unlikely to have heard of her,’ Saltoun says.

In New York, his gallery is staging ‘Scandalous: Women in Surrealism’ (until July 2), which includes work by the British artist Stella Snead and the Czech painter Toyen, who was among the few women included in the landmark 1936 International Surrealist Exhibition at the New Burlington Galleries in London. (In March, an auction record was set for Toyen when Le devenir de la liberté (1946) sold for GBP 3.7 million at Christie’s in London.)

Argentina-born British artist Eileen Agar is another who featured in the 1936 exhibition. Alison Jacques recently announced co-representation of Agar’s estate and is currently staging a survey of the artist’s work in London (until July 25).

‘The subject of women Surrealists is as old as anything,’ Saltoun says, referencing the Venice Biennale’s 1986 ‘Arte e Alchimia’ exhibition, which featured many of the artists now breaking records at auction. ‘It’s just that every generation discovers it from a different place.’