"Wounded table": how the painting of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo disappeared

Katarina Lopatkina - Ph.D. in art, curator of the largest exhibition of Frida Kahlo, held in the Moscow Manege in late 2018 - early 2019. Katarina now lives and works in Helsinki. She is conducting her independent investigation into the search for the painting "The Wounded Table" together with German researcher of the work of Frida Kahlo Helga Prignitz-Poda. Using archival documents, letters and museum records, Katarina traced the path of Frida’s paintings from Mexico to Russia, and then to Poland, where a trace of this canvas was lost.

- Tell us more about the painting "Wounded Table" ...

- The story of the creation of the picture, like everything in Frida’s life, is colored by drama. She wrote The Wounded Table during a divorce from Diego Rivera, the largest Mexican artist in the first half of the 20th century. They were divorced for only eight months, after which they married again and were happy until the end of Frida's life, as much as was possible in such a peculiar pair.

Frida wrote four paintings during the divorce, and Wounded Table was one of them. Such a large size of the picture (122 × 244 cm) is very unusual for Frida. As a rule, she wrote on small metal plates, close to the size of a folk Mexican retablo. But her task was to present her work at the international exhibition of surrealism, in which Diego also participated. She wanted her work to be larger than his. And Rivera, as you know, was a large-format artist.

- There are many different characters in the picture. Who are they? And where does this name come from? 

- The characters of the picture are nomadic in the works of Frida. In fact, the “Wounded Table” is a double self-portrait. Frida depicts herself in the center of the composition. But at the same time, she portrays herself as a table. Instead of legs at the table, real human legs. This is one of Frida's “signatures”. As soon as there is an image of a human leg in the picture, this means that we are talking about the artist herself or about some of her projections onto herself. This is due to the fact that in childhood she suffered polio, and one of her legs was shorter than the other. For Frida, this was a subject of constant reflection. If you look at her work, you can pay attention to the fact that the theme of legs in her work constantly pops up.

In the picture, she portrayed herself without arms - as a sign of her own helplessness. And on her neck hung real beads. Holes were made in the wooden canvas to fix them. The artist Frida periodically dressed Frida in the portrait in a new necklace.

The picture also shows: Judah - a character from the Mexican carnival, a traditional clay figurine from Nayarit, a skeleton - the image of death, Frida's nephews and her famous pet - a fawn. And on the floor there is a letter to whom it is addressed - it is impossible to make out on the photograph.

- You conduct your investigation with a fellow art critic from Germany. Why exactly with her? 

- Helga Prignitz-Poda is the best specialist in the work of Frida Kahlo in the world. She lives and works in Berlin and is one of the authors of the reason catalog, which contains all the works of Frida Kahlo.

"It was not Frida who came up with it."

- Before the picture went to the Soviet Union, did she leave Mexico?

- Yes, after the picture was painted, it was successfully exhibited, went to an exhibition in New York. It was not sold there, returned to Frida back, hung in her "Blue House". 

- And why did Frida decide to make such a gift to the Soviet Union? 

- For me it was the main intrigue in the whole story. I wanted to understand why a person who lives in Mexico with a very rich personal and artistic life suddenly makes this gesture? It is believed that the year of the present is the 1945th. But in fact, no one saw any documents and it is not known for certain when exactly she gave the USSR this picture.

It is surprising that Frida does this against the background of other Mexican artists who were members of the Communist Party, the same Alfaro Siqueiros, who attempted to attack Trotsky, and others who were actively involved in political work. Why does Frida suddenly send her work to the USSR, and the rest do not send?

I asked this question and began my work by finding who was the initiator of this gift. And she found out that, in fact, it was not Frida who came up with it. She only agreed to the proposal of Konstantin Umansky, the Soviet ambassador to Mexico.

“And what was Umansky’s goal when he suggested to Frida to make this gift?”

- Umansky was a completely unique person, very educated, loved art and understood it well. In 1920, his book dedicated to the Russian avant-garde was published in Germany.

• The book of Konstantin Umansky “The New Art of Russia 1914-1919”, published in Munich in 1920.
• © Wikimedia Commons

Umansky in Mexico quickly established contacts and became friends with art circles.

He thought the idea to send the works of Mexican artists to the Soviet Union was correct, so that Soviet people could better understand, feel and love Mexico. And to do the opposite gesture - to show the work of Soviet artists in Mexico.

Umansky began to work on this, to negotiate directly with artists. In 1944, the Mexican-Russian Institute joined in, which was created to establish cooperation between our countries. The work was very successful. They agreed with a large number of artists. But in 1945, Umansky died. He exploded on a plane flying from Mexico City to Costa Rica, where he was appointed part-time ambassador. Because of this, the collection of Mexican art has stopped.

Worst moment for a gift

- The picture still arrived in the USSR ...

- Alexander Kapustin, appointed ambassador to Mexico in the same year, continued what Umansky started, and already in October 1945, the Soviet diplomatic mission prepared a draft letter of thanks to the artists who donated their works to the USSR.

I found this letter in the archives, and it was from it that it became clear that not only Frida was the donor. It was a rather extensive list of 18 high-level artists of different styles.

There, for example, were the work of Joaquin Clausel, a Mexican impressionist. He had already died by then, but the widow had donated his work to the Soviet Union. There were works by students of Frida. There were very young and more adult artists, painters and graphic artists. In general, the whole color of Mexico's “left” art scene was presented there. It is interesting that there were photographs - his work was donated by Manuel Alvarez Bravo, who stood at the origins of the Mexican school of photography. 

- And if the whole collection came to Moscow, could it be a whole Mexican hall in one of the museums? 

- A small spoiler: she, in fact, came, it was we who lost everything on the spot. Although the artists in official letters promised that their work will be presented at the State Museum of New Western Art. And a Mexican hall will be made in which their work will be placed. 

- But this is the very museum in which the collections of Schukin and Morozov were stored and which was eliminated as a "hotbed of formalistic views" in art? 

- Yes. It was there that the Mexican hall was to open.

The paintings arrived in Moscow in December 1947, and it is difficult for me to imagine the worst moment for the appearance of any Western modernist art in the USSR.

The beginning of the Cold War, foreign policy crises, the struggle against cosmopolitanism, and from the 30s the campaign against formalism in art is still ongoing. All cultural contacts are minimized. Employees of all organizations that were engaged in external cultural contacts were afraid for their lives and tried, as far as possible, to do nothing.

As you know, in March 1948 the Museum of New Western Art was closed. This happened four months after the arrival of Mexican paintings, and they were in a "limbo" state. The museum simply did not have time to accept them. If some documents, for example, donation, were attached to this parcel, then, probably, the museum would have time to take them for storage. And then these things would now be either in Pushkin or in the Hermitage. 

I am very sad that for some four months they have separated us from preserving this wonderful gift. Because it was really a very representative collection, specially selected to acquaint people from another country with the work of Mexico for a century. 

“We apologize to Pushkin”

- The fate of the collections of Russian philanthropists divided between the Pushkin Museum and the Hermitage is well known after the State Museum of New Western Art was closed. But what happened to the Mexican works?  

- They received VOKS - the All-Union Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries. But the employees of this organization did not understand what happened: they received a box with Mexican paintings, in which there was no documentation. And at the same time, they saw Frida’s two-meter canvas, which was hard to miss. In Moscow, the year 1948, you open the drawer - and you see a picture of Frida Kahlo - without hands, a bloodied table, and you have not seen anything like this for a long time.

Everyone was at a loss. Frantic correspondence began within the organization. Everyone was trying to understand what it is. They write to Mexico with a request to send a list of these works, who are the authors, characteristics on them. A certificate was needed that these were trustworthy people. This correspondence lasted two years.

As a result, in 1949 a meeting of a special commission was appointed, experts were singled out. It was headed by the respected painter Alexander Gerasimov, the author of the famous painting "Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin and Kliment Efremovich Voroshilov for a walk in the Kremlin." As you might guess, the meeting was not very successful for Mexican artists. The resolution was as follows: the presented Mexican painting is formalistic and surrealistic according to the method of execution, it is not possible to use it for wide viewing.

VOKS was asked to remove the canvases from the stretchers and deposit them at the Pushkin Museum. “We apologize to Pushkin, comrades,” the official resolution on Mexican painting was announced at the end of the meeting.

- The "wounded table" was stored in the Pushkin Museum to them before traveling to Warsaw. A.S. Pushkin? 

- The Pushkin Museum did not receive these paintings. Museums have a very clear storage system. In Soviet museums - even more so. If something has been deposited, we can always track it through the books of receipt. These works never entered the Pushkin Museum. In addition, the “Wounded Table” could not be removed from the canvas - it was painted on a wooden surface similar to chipboard.

The paintings continued to be kept at the VOKS, when in 1953 Diego Rivera asked that Frida's only work, donated to the Soviet Union, attend one of the largest Mexican exhibitions that regularly took place in Europe in the 1950s. Mexican cultural figures then became very active in the European space. 

Diego wanted to show the “Wounded Table” back in 1953 at an exhibition in Paris. And VOKS did not mind, but the Mexican embassy, ​​which could not do this, had to pay for the transportation. 

- But the picture somehow ended up in Warsaw? 

- Yes, the next exhibition was in Poland. In the 54th year, Diego again wrote a letter asking him to send the "Wounded Table" to Warsaw. Again, no one objected.

The picture was sent through diplomatic mail to Poland with the postscript "Representative of VOKS in Poland." On this, the documentary trace of the picture ends. We know that she arrived safely in Poland, was exhibited in the main gallery of Warsaw - Zahent. The painting had a wonderful place at the exhibition. I went there. The layout of the halls in the gallery has remained the same. This is a wonderful big room. Work hung in a central place, it was very clearly visible. Several newspapers published articles about her. But that’s all, the “Wounded Table” has disappeared.

“Look under the table”

- The search was conducted in hot pursuit? This is a huge canvas, it was difficult to steal it unnoticed ...

- The problem is that the work was not accepted for any museum registration.

There was no one who was worried about her fate. There are no documents that these things were in the museum fund. Therefore, there was no victim. There was only the conclusion of Soviet art historians that this work was of no value.

Therefore, of course, no case was opened for her search. 

Unfortunately, the Warsaw Gallery also lacks documentation that records temporary exhibitions and the preservation of objects. They believe that the work was sent back to the Soviet Union. In the archives of VOKS there is nothing about the fact that the work came back.  

- That is, further your searches can go only on a hunch? Where did you look for the picture? 

- Yes, this is a big field for thought, where did it go. Helga Prignitz-Poda was the curator of the Frida exhibition in Poland two years ago. And she suggested that the people who saw her might be alive. She searched among private collectors, promised a reward for information about the painting. Not a sound.

• Katarina Lopatkina, art critic.
• © Photo from the personal archive

When the exhibition “Frida and Diego”, which I oversaw, opened in Moscow in 2018, I also addressed everyone in every interview that if you see an old good table, look - maybe a picture is painted on the back. I suppose that the picture could come back, but VOKS could transfer it to some organization where it was later written off, the door was made, or the table. 

- Most of all in this picture Diego was interested. Maybe it’s just that he didn’t give up the picture, and now it is stored somewhere between the walls in the “Blue House”?

- The whole story was reconstructed by me on the basis of documents. Only in the archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in total I spent about three months. Everywhere you find some grains and start to add history. 

The fact is that the exhibition was mobile. The tour started from Poland, followed by Sofia, Bucharest, Prague, Berlin, then it was planned to bring the exhibition to the USSR and further to China. Documents survived - correspondence between the organizing committee of the exhibition and Diego Rivera. They accused him of not agreeing with the Soviet authorities on a tour of the painting of Frida together with an exhibition from Poland to China, but agreed only on Warsaw, after which the work of Frida had to be sent back. 

For some time I had the hope that, nevertheless, the work, contrary to the agreements, went further with the exhibition, and not back to the Union.

The "wounded table" is in the catalogs of exhibitions in Sofia and in Bucharest. But, having arrived in Romania and having worked in the archive with the documents of this exhibition, I realized that the receiving party simply reprinted the text of the catalog, which was prepared in advance, without checking the actual composition of the items. 

If Diego wanted to seize the moment, then it would be easier for him to do this if the picture went on. But because of his agreements, I think that the canvas remained in Poland or returned. And if it was a diplomatic cargo, just a box, then even with the preserved documentation, you can never find out what was actually in it. Therefore, today it is not possible to reliably find out whether work arrived back in the USSR or not. 

"News about the sale - fake"

“If Frida’s picture is still intact, what do you think, where can it be?” 

- I adhere to two working versions. According to the first, she was still sent to Russia. Here she lay for some time, and then she was sent as an illustration of delirium to some, perhaps, an appropriate institution. There, it could be painted over, and it may exist somewhere as a waste object that secretly awaits its fate.

The second version is that it was destroyed. But there must also be documents for this. Previously, there were practices of the destruction of works of art. Such a scenario could also be. But while I did not find documents about its destruction. 

- With some periodicity on the Internet there are reports that the "Wounded Table" is about to be found. How can this correspond to reality?

- Such messages appear from the Mexicans. There are two people who are obsessed with the idea of ​​finding this picture. One of them is the famous Mexican art critic Raul Cano Monroy. He is close to the circles of the heirs of Diego Rivera. He said that in five years he would find the lost Frida. But not yet found. 

And quite recently another story surfaced - that the “Wounded Table” is being sold at auction. But this is one hundred percent fake. 

- In the article that you consider fake, it was said that they plan to put the picture on sale for $ 20 million. Do you think this is a real price? Could the painting be sold for that amount?

- The problem with Frida's pricing is that her paintings very rarely enter the market. In the 90s, the singer Madonna, in her collection two paintings of Frida, bought them cheaply enough, within three million. For an artist of this scale, this is a very low price. But precisely because she is not sold regularly, the prices of her paintings are not rising. The last sale, I think, last year, was Frida's early work, and it went for five million dollars. I think that 20 million is, of course, an overpriced one. 10 million, as it seems to me, - so much would have really been paid for it at an open auction with transparent provenance. 

- If a picture were found, would it belong to Russia as the successor of the USSR? 

- There is one caveat. The whole group of Mexican artists was promised that their work would be exhibited at the State Museum of New Western Art. And in the case of Frida, Mexican researchers now refer to this letter.

If there is work, then this may serve as an occasion for an international scandal. The letter says that if the work is not exhibited in the museum of new Western art, then they promise to send it back to Mexico so that the artist disposes of it at his discretion. This sees an opportunity to challenge the belonging of the "Wounded Table" to the Soviet Union.

Because, indeed, the work was never exhibited in this museum. Moreover, the museum was liquidated and did not even have time to take it for storage. 

- And what happened to the works of other artists from the Mexican collection?

“I found part of this gift.” Graphic works were still transferred to the Pushkin Museum in 1955. Then VOKS was moving, and they handed over the entire schedule that they had for years to the Pushkin Museum. And before I started this investigation, no one in the museum knew what kind of work this was, what their history was. They only knew that from VOKS - that's all. We, the curator of this fund, Anna Chernysheva, did a great job, identified the works from this gift.

The Pushkin Museum has a large collection of Mexican graphics, donated to him in different years. And we were able to isolate from it the work sent in 1947. At the exhibition of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera in Moscow, I was able to tell the story of this art exchange that did not take place until the end, showing these graphic works for the first time. 

Unfortunately, no paintings and photographs have been found yet, but it is known for certain that these works are not in the Pushkin Museum. All paintings from the museum collection are published in collections catalogs and on the museum website, everything is very transparent. 

“So the rest of the artists — Clausel, Angiano, Frida’s students — can they still be in Moscow?”

- Yes, the painting disappeared somewhere in Moscow. Unfortunately, we only know the names of the artists, and there is one photograph that shows what kind of work this could potentially be. This photo was taken back in Mexico. But we do not know the names of the works, nor the sizes. There are still archives in Moscow that I still can’t visit, maybe some documents about these works are stored there. I do not lose hope that painting will ever be found. How I do not lose hope one day to find out what happened to the "Wounded Table".