Rita Kernn-Larsen makes her debut in 1934 in Copenhagen, where the press calls her “a female Danish Picasso”. Before that, she receives education at, among others, the Statens Tegneskole in Oslo, the Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen and at the Academie Moderne with Fernand Léger. In the 1930s, Kernn-Larsen is associated with the circle around the Linien, but primarily she exhibits, lives and works most of her life in France and England. In Paris, she experiences early recognition and exhibits at some of the most controversial surrealist exhibitions of the time, side by side with artists such as Salvador Dali, Max Ernst and Meret Oppenheim.

From the mid-1960s, she exhibits more regularly in her home country. Internationally, she is rightly brought out of oblivion in publications such as J. Vovelles La femme surréaliste, 1977, and Whitney Chadwick's Women Artists and the Surrealist Movement, 1985. In 1986 she participatedsin the Venice Biennale and in 1995 is shown in an extensive retrospective exhibition at Randers Kunstmuseum.

However, it is only in recent years that Kernn-Larsen has seriously returned to the art historical agenda. In 2017, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice shows a representation of her works. The following year, she exhibited on Danish soil in “Women's Surrealism” at the Kunstforeningen Gl. Strand and “SOLO” curated by Kunsten i Ålborg in collaboration with Gl. Holtegaard. Finally, she appears at Louisiana in the summer of 2020 in company with, among others, Frida Kahlo and Meret Oppenheim under the title “Fantastic Women”.