This paper deals with the frictional contact occurring between deformable elastoplastic bodies subjected to large displacements and finite deformations. Starting from a standard slave=master formulation we have developed a symmetrical formulation with which the unilateral contact conditions and the friction law are satisfied for each body. From the continuum equations, the discretized frictional contact problem is set as a complementarity problem and solved using Lemke's mathematical programming method. The efficiency of the method is illustrated in the case of several examples.