After Lawsuit, Mexican Masters in Hiding

(Frida Kahlo’s Self-Portrait as a Tehuana (Diego on my Mind). One of 95 artworks in dispute).

In today’s NY Times, an interesting story regarding the legal dispute over famous Mexican artworks.

The works, by Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and their contemporaries have been removed from a museum in Cuernavaca, about an hour south of here, until further notice as a legal battle unfolds over the collection’s rightful ownership. The paintings belonged to Jacques Gelman, a Russian-born producer of Mexican films who died in 1986, and his wife, Natasha, who jointly began amassing art after they were married in 1941.

At the time of her death the collection consisted of 95 pieces, including two well-known 1943 works by Kahlo, “Self-Portrait as a Tehuana (Diego on My Mind)” and “Self-Portrait With Monkeys,” and Rivera’s 1941 “Calla Lily Vendor.” The largest number of works are by the couple’s close friend Gunther Gerzso, an abstract painter whose reputation has grown over the last decade. In 1993 Mrs. Gelman wrote a Mexican will that bequeathed the Mexican collection to Robert R. Littman, an American curator who was a close adviser and friend in the last years of her life. He established the Vergel Foundation to oversee the collection, which traveled to museums around the world.

But two years ago a cousin of Mrs. Gelman who has been fighting for a greater share of her estate brought his legal battle to Mexico City. The cousin, Jerry Jung, hired a team of lawyers who have used a quirk in Mexican law to mount a challenge to Mr. Littman’s control over the collection. One of the lawyers, Francisco Fuentes Olvera, bought the succession rights to Mrs. Gelman’s Mexican estate for $20,000 from her half brother, Mario Sebastian, in 2007 just before he died. The transaction would give the lawyer the right to any part of the estate that was not clearly left to somebody else.

More from the NY Times here.