Fighting over Frida Kahlo

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In Mexico, the emergence of work said to be made by the artist has led to a very public debate about its authenticity. The Times’ art critic has seen the pieces.

Policing the legacy of artists can be a tough business. Nowhere is it tougher than in Mexico, where the magnetic, self-mythologizing painter Frida Kahlo (1907-54) shot from relative obscurity to iconic status only in the last quarter-century.

Now, a festering dispute over a little-known archive of ephemera attributed to Kahlo has erupted into open warfare. Despite the tantalizing possibility that some or maybe even all the material is authentic, a sharp line has been drawn in the art historical sand, writes Christopher Knight.

Read more here.-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City