Can Frida Kahlo Leave Mexico? Plans to Relocate a Trove of Paintings by the Famous Artist Spark a Heated Debate

Nearly 400 cultural heritage professionals signed an open letter protesting plans to move a collection featuring artworks by the renowned Mexican painter out of her home country

Michele Debczak | Correspondent

April 8, 2026

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More than 70 years after her death in 1954, Frida Kahlo remains one of Mexico’s most iconic cultural figures. Now, the art world is embroiled in controversy over plans to remove Kahlo pieces from her home country and display them overseas in Spain.

The paintings were originally part of a collection of art owned by Jacques and Natasha Gelman. In 2023, Mexico’s Zambrano family, owners of the cement company Cemex, acquired the artworks, and in January of this year, Spain’s Santander Bank said in a statement that it had come to an agreement with the Zambranos to manage “the conservation, research and exhibition” of the collection.

As Oscar Lopez reports for the Guardian, the collection—which also includes works from such Mexican artists as Diego Rivera (Kahlo’s husband) and José Clemente Orozco—is currently on public display in Mexico for the first time in nearly two decades. But the newly rebranded Gelman Santander collection is set to move to the Faro Santander cultural center in Spain this summer.

Faro Santander’s director, Daniel Vega Pérez de Arlucea, told Rodrigo Naredo of El País in January that the collection will have a permanent presence there, igniting fierce backlash from Mexican cultural professionals. Nearly 400 academics and artists signed an open letter criticizing what they feel to be the lack of transparency around the collection’s new management and relocation.

“It’s a very serious issue,” says Francisco Berzunza, a historian and one of the letter’s publishers, per the Guardian. Kahlo “is the most important artist in the history of our country and it’s easier to see her work outside of Mexico than in Mexico itself.”

Mexico classified Kahlo’s work as a national “artistic monument” in 1984. Any of her artworks that were in the country at that time can leave Mexico only on a temporary basis.

In a contract with the Spanish bank, the National Institute of Fine Arts and Literature gave Faro Santander control over the collection from June 2026 through September 2030, with the possibility to extend the term, according to the Guardian. While the agreement states that the art’s relocation is temporary, Vega Pérez de Arlucea suggested to El País that the legal protections surrounding the collection are flexible.

“In Kahlo’s case, the prohibition of permanent export is definitive, with temporary exports allowed for reasonable time frames,” Eduardo Pizarro, a partner at the Mexico City-based firm SMPS Legal, tells the Art Newspaper’s Constanza Ontiveros Valdés. “Such agreements do not pose problems as long as they respect heritage laws.”

Santander released a statement in March assuring critics that the art will return to Mexico. Mexico’s minister of culture, Claudia Curiel de Icaza, also commented on the matter, stating in a recent press conference that the works will return in 2028.

But just because a painting stays in Mexico, that doesn’t mean it will go on display, James Oles, a scholar of Mexican art at Wellesley College, tells the New York Times’ Victoria Burnett and Zachary Small. He adds that museums should purchase artworks with cultural significance or encourage collectors to donate them.

Born in Coyoacán, Mexico, in 1907, Kahlo produced close to 150 paintings throughout her lifetime, more than a third of which were self-portraits. She suffered lifelong chronic pain following a bus accident at age 18. This experience, along with her Mexican heritage and turbulent marriage to Rivera, was among the most prominent influences on her work.

While long-term exhibition plans for the Kahlo pieces in the Gelman Santander collection remain uncertain, several paintings are on display at Mexico City’s Museum of Modern Art through July.

Michele Debczak | Read More

Michele Debczak is a writer and editor based in Brooklyn, New York. She appears in seasons four through six of History Channel’s “The Food That Built America,” and her work has been featured in Mental Floss, IndieWire, Eater and Vice.