The scandal of the missing Frida Kahlo masterpieces

Times

a day ago

As a mariachi band played and a crowd of models clutched their cocktails around the swimming pool of a Miami mansion, a Bitcoin investor called Martin Mobarak took a Frida Kahlo from its frame, pinned it to the top of a cocktail glass and set fire to it, smiling broadly as the $10 million drawing was reduced to embers.
'I had to do something drastic to get attention,' Mobarak would later say of the stunt to create 10,000 digital artworks known as NFTs (non-fungible tokens) from the destruction of a real one. Mexican officials protested, but Kahlo would have approved, Mobarak insisted in 2022. 'I would bet my life that if I asked to burn a small piece of her diary to bring some smiles and better quality of life to children, then she would say: 'Go ahead and do it. I'll light the fire.''
Perhaps, but Mobarak's stunt represented more than just the burning of a piece of irreplaceable art for fun. It also shed light on how many of Kahlo's most personal works, which were supposed to be safeguarded in her home in Mexico City, had been allowed to emerge onto the art market. Her diary, written during the last ten years of her turbulent life, contains poems and drawings reflecting on her relationship with her husband, Diego Rivera, a celebrated artist in his own right.
In the three years between his wife's death and his own demise, Rivera obsessively catalogued the contents of La Casa Azul, the cobalt blue house on a shady street corner of Mexico City that he shared with Kahlo.
For admirers of one of the world's most popular, and saleable, artists, La Casa Azul is a place of pilgrimage. It is where Kahlo was born, where she grew up, where she lived with Rivera, and where she died in a room on the upper floor in 1954. Before his death, Rivera demanded that its contents, along with the entire estate, should be donated to the people of Mexico and protected by a trust which, today, is administered by the country's national bank, Banco de México.
Then, one day in 2009, Hilda Trujillo opened the safe where Kahlo's diary was held. The woman who directed both the Frida Kahlo Museum and the Diego Rivera Anahuacalli Museum between 2002 and 2020, believes that the page burnt in Miami is just one of a number which have mysteriously left the collection in recent years.
In an interview with The Times she said that at least two oil paintings, eight drawings, several copies of two lithographs and 12 double-sided pages from the diary, dated to March 1953, were missing from the collection at La Casa Azul. This, she said, was discovered after she obtained three pages of a 220-page inventory compiled in 2011. She believes the remainder of the document could reveal more artworks to be missing.
Trujillo accuses the trust of losing track of artworks and archival materials, including some that have surfaced in private collections and international auctions. In April she went public with a detailed account of what she describes as serious irregularities. She alleged that dozens of works once held by the museums in Mexico City have gone missing or were quietly sold without proper documentation or export permits, in possible violation of heritage laws.
'We are very proud of our culture, it is very rich and very deep,' Trufillo said. 'We as a society have fought many battles [to protect it] all our lives. Imagine the sadness for the Mexican people if we lose our patrimony.'
Helga Prignitz-Poda, an art historian and the author of several books on Kahlo, told the Mexican newspaper El Universal: 'These pages are undoubtedly a great loss. The fact that Casa Azul itself has not taken better care of its own collection is a scandal.'
Trujillo claims she presented Banco de México with her findings almost two-and-a-half years ago, yet said the institution dismissed the matter. She says that it could be a matter of embarrassment for the bank and Mexico's National Institute of Fine Arts and Literature (Inbal).
'Their strategy is silence, their outcome is erasure,' Trujillo said, adding that the institutions are run by 'businessmen with no sensibility and civil servants who knew nothing about art'. Neither the bank nor Inbal responded to requests for comment.
Among the best known works Trujillo claims are missing is the 1954 work that was known as Frida in a Landscape or Frida on Fire. It has subsequently been identified by experts as being a work listed with Mary-Anne Martin Fine Art, a gallery in Manhattan that describes itself as a 'must' for collectors of Latin American Art. Its experts have worked on landmark shows featuring Kahlo and Rivera, including roles as special advisers to exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Tate Modern in London.
A work called Frida in Flames (Self-portrait inside a Sunflower) was listed with the gallery in December 2021 and had a provenance only described as 'Private Collection, Dallas'. For experts, the painting is deeply significant given that, shortly before her death, Kahlo took a knife to it, scraping away layers of paint in 'frustration' as her body failed her.
Other missing paintings include 1952's Congress of People for Peace which sold for $2.66 million at Sotheby's in 2020, and the drawing American Liberty, or Sketch for an Ironic Monument to Yankee Freedom, which was listed with Mary-Anne Martin. The gallery did not respond when approached for comment.
The trust, meanwhile, accuses Trujillo of holding a grudge. In a statement it said that she 'never filed a formal complaint' and added: 'On the contrary, their contract was terminated after irregularities were detected in their administration and for having benefited third parties with the assets under their care.'
She denies this, claiming she repeatedly raised concerns internally, and hopes Interpol will be brought in to investigate.
Inbal, meanwhile, said it had not granted any 'permits for permanent exports of these authors' works'.
The works of both artists are considered national cultural heritage and are not allowed to leave the country permanently without express permission. Any suggestion that officials have allowed Kahlo's works to leave Mexico could provoke a scandal.
'With each passing minute, mistrust and uncertainty only increase,' wrote the Mexican newspaper Excélsior in an editorial, calling on President Sheinbaum to intervene if necessary.
'How is it possible that two such powerful institutions attack me instead of taking up the investigation and finding the works?' Trujillo asked. 'They want to disqualify me instead of doing their job, that's indignant.'