The archive of Frida Kahlo, announced in June to be the subject of a new book, has many experts claiming it is a fake.
“In my view the publishers have been the victims of a gigantic hoax,” says New York-based Latin American art dealer Mary-Anne Martin, who has bought and sold numerous works by Kahlo (1907-54). “The perpetrators have constructed all these letters, poems, drawings and recipes, using Frida's biography and her published letters as a roadmap. The drawings are badly done, the writing infantile, the content crude; the anatomy drawings look like something from a butcher shop instruction book. The paintings are ‘pastiches’, composites based on published works. The provenance provided is unverifiable and meaningless. There’s nothing I would like more than to discover a group of unknown works by Frida Kahlo, but there is no way on earth that any of these works could pass muster at Sotheby’s, Christie’s, or my gallery. I am astounded it has gone as far as it has.” Full article from The Art Newspaper here.
What do you think? See slideshow of archive here.
