Frida found—or Frida forged?
Part II
By Jesús Ibarra

The eyes of some denizens of the art world have been on San Miguel since the publication of the book Finding Frida Kahlo by San Miguel resident Barbara Levine, which tells the story of how the antiquarian Carlos Noyola and his wife, Leticia, found a collection of drawings, paintings, notebooks, letters and personal items attributed to Frida Kahlo.

In the October 2 issue, Atención published a story about how the authenticity of this collection has been called into question. Now, we present the story of how the collection came to San Miguel. 

Carlos and Leticia Noyola

A great discovery 

Noyola and his wife have been antiquarians for 38 years. They began in Monterrey but came to San Miguel de Allende in 2004 and opened an antique store in Fábrica La Aurora, La Buhardilla. That same year, while visiting a friend’s antique store in Mexico City, they found a small painting of a slain deer with the head of Frida, a painted tray, a series of personal notes and letters signed by Kahlo inside a traditional lacquered box from Michoacán dated 1950, and seven hand-painted and signed pulque pitchers. The objects were owned by a lawyer named Manuel Marcué, who wanted to have them appraised. The Noyolas were interested in the items and the lawyer agreed to give them the objects on consignment for a week. They took them to Ruth Alvarado Rivera, a granddaughter of Diego Rivera who had been an independent curator of the work of Frida and Diego who was writing a book about Frida. When she saw the objects she had no doubt they were Frida’s, but she suggested that they should be taken to the “Fridos”—Arturo Gar
cía Bustos, Arturo Estrada Hernández, Guillermo Monroy and Fanny Rabel—art students who had studied with Frida and lived with her and Diego Rivera for about 10 years. According to Noyola, the Fridos are the most important and discriminating authenticators of Frida’s work. It was Arturo García Bustos and his wife, Rina Lazo (who was Diego’s mural assistant and whose signature appears in Rivera’s mural Sueño de una tarde dominical en la Alameda Central (A Dream of a Sunday afternoon in the Central Alameda) who were available, but they said they needed time to look at the items, though at first glance they believed them to be authentic. 

Arturo García Bustos and Rina Lazo

The Noyolas left them the deer painting and returned a few days later. García Bustos and Lazo said that they were absolutely sure the painting was authentic. Once certain that the objects were genuine, the Noyolas bought many items from the lawyer.

Abraham Jiménez López

The original owner

After the Noyolas bought the first lot, the lawyer called them several times to offer them more Kahlo objects he found in his inventory. “We bought the whole collection little by little between 2004 and 2008, until the lawyer said he had no more objects,” said Noyola. “The complete collection included about 1,200 pieces.”

According to Noyola, the lawyer told him that he had bought the collection in 1979 from a woodcarver called “El Güero” who had “big freckly hands” and who had a child with Down syndrome, but whose name he could not remember. The woodcarver said he had received the objects directly from Frida; he had carved some doors and frames for her and spent time with her during her final, pain-filled days in 1954. She paid for the frames with personal items and also gave him some gifts. He said that Frida knew she would die soon and did not want others to find such personal and intimate things.

The lawyer said that in 1970 the woodcarver, while trying to sell one of the Kahlo paintings, met Dolores Olmedo, custodian of Diego’s and Frida’s work. When she saw the painting she told the woodcarver that he was not allowed to have it, since all of Kahlo’s work belonged to her. She threatened to have him jailed. She paid him very little money and kept the painting. The woodcarver was afraid to try to sell another painting, but he was aged and worried about his son and the remaining Kahlo items in his possession. When the lawyer visited him to commission some carving, the woodcarver told him about the objects and the bad experience he had had while trying to sell one of the paintings. The lawyer decided to buy them all and paid him with gold centenarios (the only form of payment he would accept). 

“While taking the tray painted by Frida to a restoration workshop, we met the painter Sergio Hernández,” said Noyola. “When he saw the tray, we told him it was part of a collection attributed to Frida that we had bought. He told us that his first teacher had a large collection of Frida’s belongings, and that he himself had read some of the letters in that collection. He said his teacher’s name was Abraham Jiménez López, that he was called “El Güero,” and that he had “big freckly hands.” We then concluded that the woodcarver’s name was Abraham Jiménez López. Later, we found a photograph of Abraham in which one can see his big freckly hands and a Kahlo painting in the background.” 

The collection The collection owned by Noyola includes five cases and the items within them—one suitcase (marked with the legend Señora Kahlo de Rivera), a wooden box, a large wooden chest, an Olinalá chest, and a metal trunk. Among the items is a diary inscribed Los placeres de la vida de la mesa a la cama, por Frida Kahlo 1948 (The pleasures of life from the table to the bed by Frida Kahlo 1948).

Throughout its pages she describes her sexual liaisons, including her experiences with Diego and Leon Trotsky as well her bisexual orientation. There is also a “Summary of Surgical Medicine” in French that includes several handwritten notes in the section on leg amputation. One of the notes reads: “Hoy sólo me queda cantar aquello de ‘La Frida ya no puede caminar por que no tiene marihuana que fumar’” (“Today all I have left is to sing ‘The Frida can no longer walk because she doesn’t have marijuana to smoke’”). This note makes reference to the Mexican popular song “La Cucaracha”: “La Cucaracha ya no puede caminar porque no tiene 
marihuana que fumar” (“The cockroach can no longer walk because she doesn’t have marijuana to smoke”). 

Letters (including some to Mexican poet Carlos Pellicer, Kahlo’s friend, as well as to Diego), drawings, small notes, cloth, lacquered boxes, streetcar tickets, postcards, and even some self-portraits complete the contents of the cases. 

Noyola said that “as antiquarians we realized that the material corresponded to the time, but we wanted to investigate further with experts in the different areas. After four years we have concluded that collection can be considered to be Frida’s. Ninety percent of it is properly authenticated.”

Noyola sold a small part of the collection—a Michoacán lacquered box containing 35 texts, some of them signed by Kahlo, including messages for Diego Rivera, poems, and two postcards from Paris that were never sent and six watercolors—to the American couple Graeme and Joanne Howard, keeping the rest for himself. 

“I believe this material has a great historical value for Mexico,” said Noyola. “I am only a temporary repository for the collection. We want to cede it to a museum so that people who are really interested in Frida and her work can have access to it. We want to offer it to researchers and historians who do not have any economic interest in it.”

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Workshop
Creative Journey
Tue, Oct 13, 5pm
Teatro Santa Ana
Biblioteca Pública
Insurgentes 25
50 pesos donation

Ups and downs of the creative journey
By Agnes Olive

Agnes Olive hosts the 16th presentation of the Creative Journey with guest artists Lulu Torbet and Edward Swift. These presentations invite local artists to share their work and their journey as artists. The focus is on the questions. What inspires us to create? Where do all these ideas come from, and how do we as artists incorporate them into our work? After the visuals, the audience is invited and encouraged to ask questions arising from the presentation.

Lulu Torbet Lulu Torbet, a photographer and painter who makes her living as a ghostwriter, shows regularly at Generator Gallery in Fábrica la Aurora. An exhibition of her photography opens at the Museum of the City of Querétaro on December 11.

“My so-called creative journey has been pretty much a roller coaster,“ Torbet says. “Over the years, I managed to sidestep and shy away from my creative life in many ways—boyfriends, husbands, the pressure to make money and other flimsy, though often amusing, reasons. But not addressing my artistic life was becoming a fierce internal pressure, and I knew that if I didn’t make a stand here in San Miguel, it would be one of the few regrets of my life.

“I am among the legions that came to San Miguel because it offers the opportunity to make your way as an artist. But it has been a challenge. For all of my “artistic” forays over the years, I nonetheless felt like I was starting from scratch. For many months at the start of this leg of my journey, I would stand paralyzed in the middle of the studio I rent around the corner from my house, crumpling up mountains of miserable drawings, clueless about painting techniques. I would obsessively photograph a subject that captivated me, and then doubt that it would interest anyone else. In other words, I was scared.

“It has taken me a while to build up a momentum with my work, and along with that has come confidence and a sense of what I hope to accomplish as an artist. At this lecture, I will talk more about my creative life, and about the ways that San Miguel has inspired and supported me—which I hope will encourage others on this journey.”

Sculptures by Edward Swift Edward Swift Edward Swift is the published author of seven works of fiction and a recognized visual artist. His work can be found at his own gallery in Fábrica la Aurora.

I am both a literary artist and a visual artist, although I think my strength as an artist is in words, particularly my novels. A Place with Promise, Principia Martindale and Miss Spellbinder’s Point of View are the three books out of the seven published that I am most proud of. As a kid I painted, drew and memorized verse and later studied art, drama and literature in college.

“I was fortunate to grow up in a wonderful community of talkers and doers. Everyone had a passion for doing something such as quilting, creative carpentry, doll making, fiddle making, painting on dishes, walls or roots and creating animals out of sticks and twigs.

“I knew an old lady who painted roots to resemble snakes and her yard was covered in them. I guess I should count her as one of my influences. 

“The Big Thicket National Preserve of Southeast Texas, where I grew up, was once a hideout for renegades, pacifists, recluses and dreamers. It is a land of mysterious swamps, forests and bayous with imaginative place names such as Splendora Sour Lake and Camp Ruby.

“My art is directly influenced by having grown up in a bewitched landscape, inhabited by people who had a dark and satirical point of view.

“Early on in my literary career I was awarded grants to the Wurlitzer Foundation in Taos, New Mexico. I received 16 fellowships to live on the foundation and during one of those stays I started making boxes and filling them with made-up gods and goddesses.

“Over the years my visual art gradually developed or declined to whatever it is today.

“I am inspired by the architecture and clothing of ancient civilizations, by tribal art and ceremonial objects, old dolls, toys and utilitarian vessels. I am always on the lookout for objects that contain spirit, personality and mystery—objects such as buttons, door keys, street wire, discarded pieces of machinery, beads, bones and bric-a-brac. Most of my findings are used in my art and those I can’t use are given to another artist who can.

“I’d go on making these things even if I didn’t have an audience or a buyer. I’ve gone on writing long after the publishing houses refused to print me. That’s the way it is. When you need to do something you do it ‘ir-regardless’ as we say in Texas, of who says what.”



The donation of 50 pesos for this presentation is shared with the scholarship fund of the Biblioteca and “Camera as Mirror” project with DIF (San Miguel Social Services Agency).



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Art Exhibit
Ezshwan Winding
A Time To Witness
Sat, Oct 17, 1–5pm
Galería6
Jardín Principal 6
Mineral de Pozos
Contact: galeria6@mac.com  or 468.103.1668


Humility and appreciation
By Nick Hamblen

Ezshwan Winding likes the fact that she is one of very few expats in her San Miguel neighborhood. “I’m right in the middle of the noise, color, street vendors, dogs and people who know every move I make” says Winding.

Walking the streets of the colonia with the artist, one sees firsthand the degree to which she has become a respected and loved member of her community. Her diverse set of neighbors—from heavily tattooed young men, clergy and almost all the women stop her in the street to extend well wishes and obvious respect.

It is from these relationships and acquaintances that Winding has drawn her inspiration for a new show “A Time To Witness” at Galeria6 in Mineral de Pozos. This stunning collection of paintings, created in encaustic—a medium that Winding describes as challenging, exhilarating, inspiring and sometimes extremely frustrating—depicts the faces and lives of her neighbors in whom she finds an abundance of faith, strength and character.

Moving from the US five years ago to make San Miguel her fulltime home, Winding says she knew she would be in for major changes. She now says “Little could I have imagined how much my life, thoughts, philosophy and art would be influenced by living in Mexico.”

Now in the fifth decade of her career as a painter, what she describes as the “fourth chapter” of her life, Winding sees it as a time to witness. To examine her own life, thoughts and actions, and to become increasingly sensitive to those around her.

She describes the “souls” appearing in this work as warm and friendly individuals who show to her simplicity, love of family, fireworks and endless hours of labor. She observes also, a deeply rooted faith mixing Catholicism and native traditional practices in a way that gives credence to their beliefs.

“When I go on my roof terrace and look out over surrounding homes, some with only simple tarp hung in a passageway to define a room, I am touched with humility and appreciation for all that I have. Yet I sense no poverty of spirit in my neighbors,” she says.

In this exhibition, through installation as well as verbal and printed media, Winding strives also to educate viewers on the processes involved in working with the encaustic medium.

In a practice not often found in galleries or museums, Winding encourages viewers to stroke and caress the paintings as a means of fully experiencing their “sensuality.” Having taught this process for the last ten years, Winding claims to have spent at least seventeen thousand hours (not including over 40 years of working in other mediums) making paintings according to this ancient method.

The word encaustic comes from the Greek enkaustikos, which means to “burn in.” It is, she says, “a challenging technique, one that continually reminds me that I do not have complete control.”

Also available at the show will be Winding’s 35-page book “The Power of Color,” which has been revised and updated for the occasion.