Works attributed to the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo ‘are fakes’

Source: Times Online

More than 1,000 paintings, drawings, illustrated letters and personal notes attributed to the artist Frida Kahlo are fakes, according to a legal complaint filed in Mexico.

Fifteen art experts and relatives of Kahlo, including her husband, Diego Rivera, the artist, led a four-year investigation and concluded that about 1,200 works held in a private collection — and featured in two books — had been forged.

State prosecutors are to examine the case, brought by the Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo Trust. Kahlo, who died in 1954 aged 47, was declared an “artistic monument” in 1984 and her works are protected under Mexican law. They fetch huge prices: in 2006 her painting Raices (Roots) sold at auction in New York for $5.6 million (£3.5 million), a record for a Latin American artist.

“We must stop the commercialisation of these fakes,” Hilda Trujillo, director of the trust, said. Among those adding their names to the complaint are Pedro Diego Alvarado Rivera, a descendant of Kahlo’s husband, and Cristina Kahlo, the painter’s great-niece.


Read more: http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/visual_arts/article6848201.ece

The article doesn't seem to give specifics. I have several books of Kahlo's artwork and now I'm curious as to which pieces might be forgeries.

three years after Frida. When did he make this study? This story is one of the worst written I've seen in a long time. I must assume they meant relatives of her husband but that is not what the sentence says.

"Friends and relatives of Kahlo and her husband..." but said "including." Either poor writing or poor editing by an editor who thought that the "and" should be replaced by "including."

re-wrote it to say what he thought was being written.

"Fifteen art experts and relatives of Kahlo, including her husband, Diego Rivera, the artist, led a four-year investigation..."

makes sense if it is written as

"Fifteen art experts and relatives of Kahlo and her husband, Diego Rivera, the artist, led a four-year investigation..."

but an editor might be confused by the "...and...and...", even though it is grammatically correct.

Some guy spent the mid-1960s running around with a Magic Marker drawing large eyebrows on portraits...