Hispanic Heritage Month, celebrated September 15 through October 15, is a chance to discover the artists, cultures, and stories that have shaped art across generations.
From Frida Kahlo’s self-portraits to Salvador Dalí’s melting clocks, Hispanic artists have created some of the most recognizable works in art history. Their work reflects identity, history, imagination, and the places they called home, and can be found in many of the world’s great museums.
We gathered 5 Hispanic artists every young artist should know, with kid-friendly facts, famous works, and the stories that made each one an important part of art history.
The Story to Share Frida started painting seriously at 18, while she was stuck in bed recovering from a terrible bus accident. Her mother had a special easel made so she could paint lying down, with a mirror above her bed. So Frida painted the person she could see: herself.
She kept painting herself for the rest of her life. Her self-portraits are full of clues about who she was. Animals she loved. Plants. The clothes she wore. The pain she lived with. Her pride in being Mexican.
This painting surprises a lot of people. Instead of flower crowns and colorful traditional dress, Frida is wearing an oversized suit. Her long hair lies cut on the floor all around her. She painted it right after her divorce from artist Diego Rivera (yes, the same Diego you'll meet at number 4). It's Frida showing the world who she was, on her own terms.
Look Closely Together
- What is Frida wearing? Is that what you expected?
- Where did all that hair come from? What do you think just happened?
- How do you think Frida was feeling? What makes you think so?
Try It at Home Set up a mirror and draw a self-portrait. Then add one thing that says "this is me": a pet, a favorite outfit, a plant, a food, anything. Just like Frida, let the picture tell a little of your story.
The Story to Share Picasso grew up in Spain and could draw realistically when he was very young. But as he got older, he started asking a big question: does a painting have to look exactly like real life?
His answer was no. Picasso helped create a style called Cubism, where artists break people and objects into geometric shapes and sometimes show different sides of them at the same time. An eye might look straight at you while the nose turns to the side.
Three Musicians looks like a jumble of colorful shapes at first. Give it a minute. Three musicians start to appear, along with their instruments, their costumes, and a dog hiding under the table.
Look Closely Together
- Can you find all three musicians?
- What instruments do you see?
- Can you spot the dog? (Hint: look down low.)
- Why do you think Picasso built people out of shapes?
Try It at Home Cut squares, triangles, and rectangles from colored paper and build a person or a musician. Try giving your face one eye from the front and a nose from the side, just like Picasso.
The Story to Share Start with a question: have you ever had a dream that made no sense at all? That's where Dalí's art lives.
Dalí was born in Catalonia, Spain, and became one of the most famous Surrealist artists. Surrealism is an art movement all about dreams, imagination, and the unexpected. Dalí could paint with extraordinary detail, and he used that skill to paint things that could never happen in real life.
In this painting, hard pocket watches have gone soft and droopy. One melts over a tree branch. Ants crawl across another. A strange creature rests in the middle of the scene.
But not everything is made up. Those golden cliffs in the back? They're from the coast of Catalonia, Dalí's home. He mixed a real place with impossible things.
Look Closely Together
- What's strange in this painting? What looks real?
- What do you think the creature in the middle is?
- What would a melting clock feel like if you touched it?
Try It at Home Draw a real place you know, like your kitchen, backyard, or bedroom. Then add one thing that could never happen there. A fish swimming through the air. Stairs that lead to the ceiling. A pancake as big as the house.
Talk about it as you go: What's real in your picture? What's the dream part? Just like Dalí, you're mixing a place you know with something no one has ever seen.
The Story to Share Diego Rivera liked to make art BIG. Instead of painting only on canvas (the fabric artists stretch over a frame), he became famous for murals, giant paintings made right on walls.
Rivera was a leader of Mexican Muralism, an art movement that used huge paintings to tell stories about Mexico, its history, and its people. His murals are full of farmers, workers, Indigenous people, and everyday life.
This painting shows Emiliano Zapata, a leader in the Mexican Revolution who fought for farmers to have rights to the land they worked. Zapata stands beside a white horse, surrounded by farmers holding their tools. Rivera made everyday working people the heroes of the picture.
He first painted this scene as part of a much larger mural in Mexico. In 1931, he recreated it for the Museum of Modern Art in New York using fresco, a technique where you paint onto wet plaster. That way, people in New York could see the kind of art Rivera was famous for back home.
Look Closely Together
- Who do you think is the most important person here? How can you tell?
- What are the farmers holding?
- Why do you think Rivera painted workers instead of kings or presidents?
Try It at Home Make a family mural. Tape a long sheet of paper to the floor or wall and paint the people who make your community work: the mail carrier, a farmer at the market, grandparents, neighbors. Everyone paints one section.
The Story to Share Dots. Lines. Animals. Flags. Strange little creatures. Joan Miró could turn simple shapes into a whole world.
Miró was born in Barcelona, and even his most imaginative paintings often came from places he knew. This one was inspired by his family's farm in Montroig, Catalonia.
At first, it looks like a jumble of shapes. Look longer and a landscape appears: a hunter, a rabbit, a tree, the sea, a fish, flags, and lots of tiny details. Miró even tucked in pieces of Catalan culture, like the Catalan flag and the letters "SARD," short for the Sardana, a traditional Catalan dance.
The longer you look, the more you find.
Look Closely Together Make it a game. Set a timer for two minutes and see who can find the most things. Can you find the hunter? The rabbit? The fish? The letters?
Try It at Home Draw a map of a place you love, like your house, yard, or favorite park, using only simple shapes, lines, dots, and little creatures. Can someone else guess what's what?
You’ve met the artists. You’ve seen their masterpieces. Now it’s time to go looking for the real thing.
All five works in our Hispanic Heritage list are part of the collection at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City, one of the world’s leading museums of modern art. And you don’t have to be in New York to explore it. MoMA’s collection is available online.
Your Art Hunt - Head to MoMA’s online collection and search for each artist:
- Frida Kahlo Find Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair
- Pablo Picasso Find Three Musicians
- Salvador Dalí Find The Persistence of Memory
- Diego Rivera Find Agrarian Leader Zapata
- Joan Miró Find The Hunter (Catalan Landscape)
Found All Five?
Don’t stop there. Click each artist’s name and see what else is hiding in MoMA’s collection. Find another Frida self-portrait. Spot a Picasso that looks nothing like Three Musicians. See how many of Miró’s strange shapes and creatures you can recognize.
No tickets. No travel. Just five masterpieces and a little art detective work.
START THE ART HUNT AT MoMA → MoMA Online Collection
Meeting an artist through a masterpiece is one thing. Getting to paint, build, and create inside their world is something else entirely. With our Frida Kahlo My Artist Box, young artists can step into Frida’s world through four hands-on projects, from self-portraiture and mixed media to building their own 3D La Casa Azul.
And if Salvador Dalí left them curious, another world is waiting. Dalí comes to My Artist Box in December 2026, with a hands-on introduction to Surrealism inspired by his unforgettable art. Subscribe to My Artist Box and experience a new artist through hands-on art each month.
Happy Hispanic Heritage Month!
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