Keep Frida in Mexico! Many object to move of marquee exhibit to Spain

MEXICO CITY — For the World Cup, many football fans in the city made time for a tempo-changing cultural fix: visiting an emblematic collection of 20th-century Mexican art, featuring signed works by taboo-breaking painter Frida Kahlo, who became a global feminist icon.

“It’s gorgeous,” said 41-year-old Colombian university professor Álvaro Muñoz, after viewing images of Kahlo and others. But Munoz was shocked to learn that many Mexicans feared that the private collection’s future in Mexico might be in doubt.

“Paintings are the heritage of all Mexicans,” he said.

The artifacts are planned to be exhibited in Europe, and the treasure’s impending departure has sparked one of Mexico’s most heated cultural debates in recent memory.

Hundreds of intellectuals and others have signed letters and online petitions expressing their fears of catastrophic consequences: the collection’s prolonged and possibly permanent absence from Mexico.

“These works deserve to be preserved forever for the Mexican people,” said art historian Francisco Berzunza.

68 works, including 10 oil paintings by Kahlo, were exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in February; this was the first public exhibition in Mexico in almost two decades. Reflecting a particularly eventful period in Mexican history, the exhibition attracted record crowds in excess of 300,000.

The show is scheduled to end Sunday and depart for a European tour; This tour will begin with the star turn of Mexico’s one-time colonial ruler at the September opening of the flashy new Faro Santander museum in Spain.

Other Mexican masters are also on display, including Kahlo’s husband, Diego Rivera; But the real draw was Kahlo, whose work became a cornerstone of feminist and Latin American iconography.

In life he may have played second fiddle to the flamboyant Rivera, but time has reversed the artistic hierarchy. Last year, one of Kahlo’s self-portraits sold at auction in New York for $55 million; this was a record figure for a female and Latin American artist.

Kahlo’s “Self-Portrait with Necklace” was one of her many self-portraits.

(Mexican National Institute of Fine Arts and Letters)

Berzunza is the lead plaintiff in a federal lawsuit filed this month against the National Institute of Arts and Letters, which reviews export licenses for items protected under cultural heritage laws. Dozens of works in the collection, including all paintings by Kahlo and Rivera, carry the legal seal of “artistic monument” that restricts sale and export.

The lawsuit alleges authorities ignored legal measures to secure the return of the collection to Mexico and seeks an injunction banning the works from leaving the country.

President Claudia Sheinbaum called any notion that Mexico was in danger of losing the collection fake news.

“The collection will visit various countries of the world for two years and return as specified in the law,” Sheinbaum told reporters in April, blaming political enemies for the violations. “He needs to go back.”

The foundation overseeing the traveling exhibition also said the collection “will return to Mexico at the end of the temporary export period.”

Activists say they applaud the display of heritage treasures abroad as long as laws guaranteeing their return are followed.

“I’m the last person to complain about a collection traveling; [Mexico’s] “The best face in the world,” said culture columnist Adriana Malvido. “But everything must be done within the framework of legality, order and transparency. That was not the case here.”

In the 1930s and 1940s, post-revolutionary Mexico emerged as both an incubator of modern art and a haven for European refugees, political exiles, and other immigrants. Many developed a deep love for the country and its artistic innovations while seizing job opportunities.

Among the newly arrived immigrants were Jacques Gelman and Natasha Zahalka.

According to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Russia’s St. A native of St. Petersburg, Gelman fled the Bolsheviks in the 1920s and moved to Berlin, where he began his career in the booming film industry. research paper. He later moved to Paris and became a film producer and distributor, then in 1938, during World War II. He fled to Mexico just before the start of World War II.

In Mexico, Gelman met Zahalka, a native of Bohemia (part of today’s Czech Republic) who grew up in a Catholic monastery and attended schools in Vienna and Switzerland. In 1941, the cosmopolitan soulmates married in Mexico City.

Kahlo’s work “Diego on My Mind” includes a miniature portrait of her husband and artist friend Diego Rivera.

(Mexican National Institute of Fine Arts and Letters)

Gelman achieved emperor status as a producer during the so-called Golden Age of Mexican cinema. His cash cow: Mario Moreno, better known as Cantinflas, the improvisational comic genius sometimes referred to as the “Mexican Charlie Chaplin.”

The Gelmans befriended Mexico’s bohemian avant-garde and hosted parties at lavish residences in Mexico and New York. The couple commissioned Kahlo and Rivera to paint portraits of Natasha. The Gelmans also purchased paintings by José Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and Rufino Tamayo, among other masters.

According to reports, five Kahlo paintings hung in Natasha’s bedroom.

Kahlo’s “Loving Embrace of the Universe, the World (Mexico), Myself, Diego, and Señor Xólotl” combines images of herself, her husband, and an Aztec god.

(Heritage Images via Getty Images)

Since Kahlo became a posthumous sensation, her work has attracted the attention of wealthy collectors, including Madonna. The pop star’s inventory reportedly includes five Kahlo paintings.

Against this, Experts say the Mexican government owns only seven of Kahlo’s approximately 152 known works. Mexico has long lacked the funds or interest to afford the hundreds of millions of dollars needed to buy the cache of Gelman, the former chief of the country’s fine arts agency. He told Milenio This year’s news source.

Natasha Gelman died in Mexico in 1998, after outliving her husband by 12 years. While he left the couple’s collection of modern European works to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, he handed over management of the Mexican collection to a US curator with instructions that it be exhibited to the public.

However, various legal entanglements over ownership, including a claim by Cantinflas’ descendants, led to the collection falling out of public favor in Mexico after 2007.

In January, Banco Santander, Spain’s largest financial institution, moved to lift the veil of mystery surrounding the important collection.

Santander announced that Mexico’s billionaire Zambrano family, heirs to a fortune in cement and other conglomerates, purchased the collection in 2023. While the art remained the property of Zambranos, the Santander Foundation was henceforth responsible for conservation, maintenance and temporary exhibition.

The works were rebranded as the Gelman Santander Collection.

Neither Santander bank nor the Zambrano family disclosed the purchase price. However, the lawsuit states that the paintings were collateral for a $150 million loan for the purchase. A bank spokesman declined to comment.

Among the paintings currently on display are many that are considered Kahlo’s masterpieces.

“Self-Portrait with Monkeys” shows the raven-haired artist unfazed by the presence of four spider monkeys; two of them are touching it, while the others are looking through the tropical vegetation.

In “Self-Portrait with Necklace,” a string of blue jades rests on Kahlo’s bare neck above the tassels of her lace blouse. His trademark unibrow and pale moustache are visible on his face; It’s a gender-bending look that, according to scholars, reflects Kahlo’s defiant rejection of classical female aesthetics.

And in “Diego on My Mind,” Kahlo wears an elaborate Native headdress with a miniature portrait of Rivera on her forehead; analysts say it is a visual acknowledgment of her obsessive devotion to a partner who has repeatedly betrayed her.

Kahlo’s portrait of Natasha Gelman, sophisticated and reserved, with blonde curls and fur, contrasts sharply with Rivera’s seductive approach: a sultry Gelman in a clingy white dress, reclining on a blue divan in front of a lush backdrop of calla lilies.

As the days of the exhibition count down, the inspiring visions of Kahlo, Rivera and their contemporaries continue to fascinate visitors.

“I understand that it’s important for other people in the world to see these masterpieces,” said Jeny Vargas, 29, visiting from Chicago. “But Mexicans must get to know them first.”

Sánchez Vidal is a special correspondent.