Inside The Fight To Keep A Trove Of Frida Kahlo Works From Leaving Mexico

(MENAFN- USA Art News) Mexico's Gelman Collection dispute is turning a private art transfer into a national test case

A major collection of Mexican modernist art, including 11 paintings by Frida Kahlo, is at the center of a widening dispute in Mexico after plans emerged to move it to Banco Santander's new cultural center in Spain. The Gelman Collection, which includes more than 160 works from the 20th century, is currently partially on view at Mexico City's Museum of Modern Art. Authorities now say the move is temporary and that the works will return in 2028, but critics argue the arrangement raises serious questions about cultural patrimony and legal oversight.

The controversy has drawn in President Claudia Sheinbaum, who on Monday defended the agreement and said officials were acting within the law. Yet an open letter published on March 18 on e-flux, and signed by nearly 400 Mexican cultural figures, said the transfer violates national heritage law. The letter singled out two Kahlo paintings,“Self-Portrait with Monkeys” (1943) and“Diego in My Mind” (1943), describing them as essential to understanding the artist's development.

The collection's history helps explain why the dispute has become so charged. It was assembled by Jacques Gelman, who was born in St. Petersburg to Jewish parents and moved to Mexico in 1938, and his wife, Natasha Zahalka. The couple collected works by Kahlo, Diego Rivera, María Izquierdo, José Clemente Orozcó, Rufino Tamayo, and other Mexican modernists. After Natasha's death in 1998, the collection passed to Robert Littman, and ownership disputes later interrupted its public display in Mexico after 2008.

In January, it was revealed that the collection had been acquired in 2023 by the Zambrano family, one of Mexico's wealthiest business families. Ownership remains with the family, while management was transferred to the Banco Santander Foundation under a private agreement. The bank has said the collection will be rebranded as the Gelman Santander Collection and installed at Faro Santander this summer.

The legal issue is especially sensitive because Mexican law treats certain Kahlo works as national cultural monuments, meaning they cannot be permanently exported even when privately owned. They may be loaned abroad, but they must return to Mexico. Critics say 30 works in the collection fall under that protection.

For now, the dispute has moved beyond one collection. It has become a broader argument over who gets to decide the fate of art that is both privately owned and publicly significant - and how far a financial institution can go in shaping the future of a country's cultural inheritance.

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