Mexico City (AFP)

Diego Rivera painted there all his passion for his compatriot Maria Felix: a portrait of the Mexican actress has been missing in Mexico for four years, after the death of its last owner, singer Juan Gabriel.

The one who was nicknamed "La Doña" (the lady) posed for Diego Rivera (1886-1957) in 1949. On the canvas, she appears wearing a white dress whose transparent effects barely conceal her nudity.

But the work never pleased the actress (1914-2002), showing "too much skin", she said.

"He painted me as he wanted, naked. He was in love ...", said the star in an interview, then 80 years old.

The fourth and last husband of the diva, the French Alex Berger, did not appreciate the work either: "you have a wooden leg, it looks like you are sitting on a toilet, you are horrible!"

The actress ended up asking a bricklayer who worked at her house to paint a little to hide her body a bit.

She then offered the portrait to a Mexican variety singer, Juan Gabriel, who died in 2016 at the age of 66.

Shortly before dying, the latter had handed it over to a friend, César Duarte, ex-governor of the State of Chihuahua (2010-2016), imprisoned in the United States since July for an embezzlement of 52 million dollars. .

- "It hurts" -

"The last information we have (....) is that the ex-governor had the painting," Guillermo Pous, executor of the singer who gave it to his friend because he feared, told AFP. that his house, where he no longer lived, would be broken into.

"He was asked to take care of it while (Juan Gabriel) decides where he wants to settle," he says of the work which he estimates at seven million dollars.

But contact with the former governor was lost when the latter left Mexico.

The executor is evaluating whether to file a complaint, without knowing whether the work is still in Mexico.

The canvas being considered in this country as an "artistic monument", its owners must normally notify any transaction and obtain a permit to take it out of the country.

The fiery Maria Felix - of whom the French writer Jean Cocteau once said "she is so beautiful it hurts" - was fascinated by the creation of myths around her.

“She knew that her stories aroused great interest, as it has shown,” said Cuban Gonzalo Rodriguez, president of the Maria Felix Foundation.

"A work by a mythical figure like Rivera, which has also been linked to the history of a composer like Juan Gabriel, all linked to Maria Félix, makes it a piece of incalculable cultural value", emphasizes -he.

© 2020 AFP