Hilda Trujillo Soto, the former longtime director of the Museo Frida Kahlo, the artist’s Mexico City home known as the Casa Azul, has dropped a bombshell allegation that there are numerous missing Frida Kahlo (1907–54) works from the institution’s collection. Instead of belonging to the people of Mexico, as part of the nation’s shared cultural heritage, a number of artworks appear to have sold at auction in the U.S., and are now in private collections.

In a blog post published on her personal website in April, Trujillo Soto accused the Casa Azul board of turning a blind eye to evidence of missing art uncovered during her 18-year tenure at the museum. (Trujillo Soto was the deputy director from 2002 to 2009, and director from 2009 to 2020.)

“I am driven by a commitment to the care of artistic heritage and to the transparency of museum administration,” Trujillo Soto wrote, adding that she is hopeful coming forward will help to reverse “the loss of artistic heritage and to put an end to the abuses of power” by returning any missing Kahlo artwork to Casa Azul and its sister institution, the Diego Rivera Anahuacalli Museum.

Upon Kahlo’s death, her husband and fellow artist Diego Rivera (1886–1957) made arrangements to donate their estates to the people of Mexico. He spent the final years of his life putting together an inventory for the Diego Rivera Anahuacalli Frida Kahlo Casa Azul Museum Trust, which today is administered by the Banco de México.

People queue outside the Casa Azul, or Blue House, in Mexico City, the museum dedicated to artist Frida Kahlo at her home in Mexico City. Photo: by Andrew Hasson/Getty Images.

According to Trujillo Soto, if any of the works in the Rivera inventory no longer belong to Casa Azul, their sale or transfer would have violated not only the terms of the artist’s bequest to the state, but also Mexican law. Rivera and Kahlo’s work are considered “artistic monuments of the nation,” and their export is banned without special consent from Mexico’s National Institute of Fine Arts and Literature (INBAL).

But in 2011, then-director Carlos Phillips Olmedo commissioned a study comparing Rivera’s inventory to Casa Azul’s present-day holdings. Trujillo Soto said that she never saw the full results of the study, which Olmedo kept private, despite her calls for a thorough investigation. Based on just three pages that Trujillo Soto was able to obtain of the original 200, it appears that two oil paintings, eight drawings, and several copies of two lithographs are missing.

Perhaps the best known of those works is a 1954 painting Rivera identified as Frida in a Landscape… or Frida on Fire. That work is no longer found in the Casa Azul collection, but there is work a private collection known as Frida in a Landscape with the Sun on the Earth or Loose Hair or Self-Portrait of a Sunflower that Trujillo Soto has identified as the missing painting.

Frida Kahlo, Frida in Flames (Self-portrait inside a Sunflower), 1953–54. Photo: courtesy of Mary-Anne Martin Fine Art, New York, ©Banco de Mexico Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2021; reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura, 2021.

Several of the works that Trujillo Soto has catalogued as missing appear to have have passed through the New York gallery Mary-Anne Martin Fine Art. That includes the 1952 painting Peoples’ Congress 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 the 2011 inventory listed as property of Mary-Anne Martin.

The gallery website currently does not list any inventory for Kahlo. But the Way Back Machine shows that the dealer was offering Self-Portrait Inside a Sunflower in December 2021. The provenance was listed only as “Private Collection, Dallas.”

As of press time, neither Martin nor Museo Frida Kahlo had responded to our inquiries.

Frida Kahlo, Peoples’ Congress for Peace (1952). Sold at Sotheby’s New York in 2020 for $2.66 million.

The inventory is not the only evidence Trujillo Soto pointed to of missing work. She also believes that at least six folios from Kahlo’s diary are lost. The entire manuscript was photographed for a facsimile publication in 1994. Then, in 2003, the original was taken off view from the museum, and stored in a safe.

In 2009, when Trujillo Soto opened the safe, she realized that the 12 entries (on six double-sided pages) from March 1953 were missing compared to the reproduction. She also voiced her suspicion that other pages from the diary may have been removed earlier, including a $10 million drawing said to have been burned at a party as part of an unsuccessful NFT drop in 2022. That work, too, is reportedly from Martin’s gallery, although the dealer denied knowing the NFT entrepreneur Martin Mobarak at the time he claimed to have destroyed the original work.

“These pages are undoubtedly a great loss. The diary is the most important source for anyone who wants to study Frida Kahlo’s work,” Helga Prignitz Poda, an art historian and the author of several books on Kahlo, told Mexican newspaper El Universal, noting that she was also aware of artwork originally belonging to the museum that has gone missing. “The fact that Casa Azul itself has not taken better care of its own collection is a scandal.”

INBAL responded to Trujillo Soto’s blog post by issuing a statement noting “that it has not granted any permits for permanent exports of these authors’ [Kahlo and Rivera’s] works.”

Frida Kahlo’s drawing Fantasmones Siniestros (1944), supposedly burning as part of an NFT project from Miami collector Martin Mobarak. Screenshot from YouTube.

The trust also responded with a statement, saying “the person making these accusations today [Trujillo Soto] never filed a formal complaint during their professional association with the trust. 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.”

“If benefiting third parties means hiring qualified specialists and not trying to do everything in-house, then yes, that’s what I do,” Trujillo Soto told the Art Newspaper. She has sued the trust for her October 2020 termination, and the legal dispute is still before the court.

Whatever the circumstances surrounding Trujillo Soto’s departure from Casa Azul, these claims need to be thoroughly investigated.

“With each passing minute, mistrust and uncertainty only increase,” an opinion piece in the Mexican newspaper Excélsior warned, calling on President Claudia Sheinbaum to intervene if necessary.