“This is looting by another name.” This is how the historian Francisco Berzunza described in the New York Times (28/8) the exhibition that can be seen since September 8 in the Spanish city of Santander. There, in the bank's old headquarters, now converted into a cultural center, hangs the Gelman collection, one of the 20th century's most important collections of Mexican modernism. About thirty of the works are protected as national monuments under Mexican law.
The collection's owner, Mexican businessman Marcelo Zambrano, has pledged them to Banco Santander as collateral for a $150 million loan, and by agreement the same bank has the right to manage and display them. No one knows for sure when the works will return. Mexico's culture minister says the collection is due to return in 2028. But the agreement, seen by The Guardian, gives Faro Santander the right to dispose of it anytime between June 2026 and September 30, 2030 - with the option of an extension. Several processes are ongoing against Inbal, the Mexican authority responsible for cultural heritage and which has given permission for the export. In 2027, the works will go on to the National Museum in Oslo, whose management in the Klassekampen defended their participation by saying that their exhibition is produced in close collaboration with Mexican authorities and researchers.
Most controversial are the collection's paintings by Frida Kahlo (1907–1954). One of them is the self-portrait known today as "I'm thinking of Diego", which depicts her in the starched headdress of the Tehuan folk costume and with her husband Diego Rivera's face affixed as a third eye to her forehead. That particular painting hung 74 years ago – 1952 – at Liljevalch's in Stockholm, in the exhibition "Mexican art from ancient times to the present". The exhibition, which was first shown in Paris, spanned several thousand years - from Aztec objects to contemporary painting - and was called the "great art event of the century" by the Swedish press. To this day, it is Liljevalch's most well-attended exhibition of all time.
Berzunza describes himself as one of those who grew up with what he calls "Frida Kahlo fatigue". Her face appeared on everything from key rings to coffee mugs, while the works were rarely shown to the public in Mexico. One explanation is that Inbal only owns four of the approximately 150 works she painted during her lifetime. The collection's first owners, Jacques and Natasha Gelman, wanted in their will that it be publicly displayed in Mexico. Instead, for about two decades it has mostly been shelved or shown abroad. An exhibition in Mexico City in the spring of 2026 was one of the few opportunities to see the works at home. Shortly afterwards they were packed up again and flown to Spain.
Perhaps the question is not why Kahlo's portrait repeatedly leaves Mexico, but what it is expected to accomplish once it is gone. To find an answer, we can return to Liljevalch's 1952.
At the top of the list of the exhibition's lenders are the President of Mexico and four of his ministers. What they lent was the property of the state: the archaeological collections, the "antiquity" of the exhibition. Modern art was something else. There the emphasis was on "the big three" - the mural painters Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros and José Clemente Orozco - and according to the catalog the works belonged to a striking number of American collectors, including Nelson Rockefeller. All six works by Frida Kahlo were privately owned. Five belonged to Mexican collectors and patrons, among them Jacques Gelman. The sixth, a self-portrait, was lent by the photographer Nickolas Muray, who during the 1930s had a relationship with Kahlo. The difference between 1952 and 2026 is therefore not in who owns the art, but in who benefits from it being displayed.
Already in the 1930s, interest had been aroused in the neighboring United States for the peculiar Mexican mural painting
The connection to the American market has its own history. Already in the 1930s, interest had been aroused in the neighboring United States for the peculiar Mexican mural painting: Diego Rivera received public commissions, including in Rockefeller Center, and MoMA gave him a solo exhibition in 1931. Nine years later, the museum showed "Twenty centuries of Mexican art", organized in collaboration with the Mexican government and with everything from pre-Columbian art to modern painting under the same roof. The theme was strikingly similar to the exposé that reached Paris and Stockholm just over a decade later.
All this happened before Mexico had time to build up its own market for modern art. It was pointed out by Susana Gamboa, deputy director of the National Museum of Mexico, who was present in Stockholm together with her husband Fernando Gamboa, the curator of the exhibition. In an interview with Dagens Nyheter in 1952 (7/9), she said that "most and the best" of contemporary Mexican art had been sold to American collectors until then. Since three years ago, she therefore ran a gallery under the National Museum, where Mexican contemporary art was sold to Mexican buyers without commission. She called the system "the only real thing". Those who organized the largest foreign tour of Mexican art up to that point thus worked at the same time to keep the art at home.
That the exhibition came to Stockholm at all was an achievement. In Paris, the French state had been responsible for transport and insurance; no such support existed in Sweden. Instead, Swedish business formed an exhibition committee together with the National Museum and Liljevalchs, and worked for just over a year on the issue. The committee wrote to the government and enumerated the exhibition's many values. Art education for the Swedish public, good foreign policy relations, and, not least, trade policy advantages. The exhibition also had a "dollar-creating potential" by attracting art-loving American tourists to Sweden. The government heeded it, and Tage Erlander stood as the exhibition's highest patron alongside the president of Mexico.
Several of those who signed guarantees, including Marcus Wallenberg, had commercial interests in Mexico, and without a donation from Axel Wenner-Gren the exhibition would not have taken place
Business had its own reasons. Several of those who signed guarantees, including Marcus Wallenberg, had commercial interests in Mexico, and without a donation from Axel Wenner-Gren the exhibition would not have taken place. At the back of the extensive exhibition catalog, a number of Swedish companies advertised. One of them was Husqvarna, which marketed itself with the argument "Well-known in MEXICO".
There is an inherent irony in this. The modern Mexican artists were distinctly left-wing radicals. One of the exhibition's main names, the Stalinist Siqueiros, had in 1940 led an armed attack on the exiled Leo Trotsky's home in Mexico City. Trotsky survived by hiding under the bed. Frida Kahlo was also a convinced communist her whole life, and three years earlier she had had Trotsky as an insider. The political commitment was visible in the halls at Liljevalchs. Juan O'Gorman's "Tomb of Capitalism" from 1943 hung among Aztec sculptures and folkloric dolls. None of that prevented the guarantors of business from getting their money back. On the very first day, the daily record from Paris was broken.
A major difference to 1952 is the iconic status that Kahlo possesses, and around which the entire current dispute over the Gelman collection revolves. In 1952, both Swedish and American interest was about the mural painters. Kahlo's "Self-Portrait as Tehuanska", as it was called in the catalogue, glimpses for a second in the documentary film from the inauguration. The reviews generally show a lukewarm interest in modern art, and Kahlo is not mentioned at all.
The icon status was created decades after her death, during the 1970s and 80s, when feminist art history rediscovered forgotten artistry
Iconic status was created decades after her death, during the 1970s and 80s, when feminist art history rediscovered forgotten artistry. Kahlo's self-portrait, in which she depicted female pain, both physical and mental, hit precisely the subjects that were then to be recaptured. Hayden Herrera's 1983 biography spread the story of her dramatic life, and was made into a 2002 film starring Salma Hayek. However, historian Berzunza believes that Kahlo never stopped being Mexican: she painted herself and a nation onto the world stage. He only realized this when he saw the works in real life, in Berlin in 2010. In Kahlo's painting, the Mexican identity became a universal theme.
Right now, Tate Modern's most pre-booked exhibition ever, "Frida. The making of an icon", is being shown. The poster image is "Self-portrait with thorn necklace and hummingbird" from 1940, which also probably hung at Liljevalch's in 1952, then under the unpretentious title "Self-portrait".
But it is not only the paintings that are the same in Stockholm in 1952, in Santander and London in 2026. It is also the pattern: the works have always been taken out of Mexico by interests other than artistic. What has changed are the interests behind it. In 1952, the Mexican government wanted to gain foreign political prestige and the Swedish business community good trade contacts. Today, an international bank wants security for a loan and at the same time gets a chance to polish its brand by showing the collection in its new cultural center.
Also in 1952, Fernando and Susana Gamboa's project had a prize. When the presidential power in Mexico shifted, he lost his position, and in a pm from the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs it was reported how he was subsequently portrayed in a satirical cartoon in the daily newspaper Excélsior: Gamboa returning the precious art treasures to the Mexican people. The drawing should have been attached to the memorandum but is missing from the archive. What remains is the description of it, and of an irritation that is recognizable, then as now.
