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 Vallarta Living | Art Talk | April 2007 
Kahlo's Kin Take Control of Image
 El Universal
The only living relatives of artist Frida Kahlo have formed a company to try to control - and profit from - the commercial exploitation of the image of the woman who is nearly on a par with tequila as a national symbol of Mexico.
The daughter, granddaughter and great-granddaughter of the artist´s younger sister, Cristina, created the Frida Kahlo Corporation, which licenses the use of the iconic painter´s name and likeness in exchange for a royalty ranging from 2 percent to 5 percent.
Company headquarters are in a historic house in Coyoacán, a colonial district on the south side of the capital where the brilliant artist lived during many years of her life (1907-1954) with a spinal injury suffered in a 1925 traffic accident.
Frida had a formidable personality that excited the interest of intellecuals like André Breton, who defined her as "a ribbon around a bomb."
In an interview with EFE, Frida´s grandniece Mara Romeo said the corporation was a response to a book "that spoke very badly" about her grandmother Cristina.
Isolda Pinedo Kahlo, Cristina´s daughter, is the head of FKC, but day-to-day operations are in the hands of Mara Romeo and her daughter, Mara de Anda.
When they saw the book, the women consulted lawyers and discovered that Isolda and her descendents owned the rights to the painter´s name and image, so they decided to found the company which functions as a "regulatory body," according to Mara Romeo.
The objective, she said, is that "the products (bearing her name and image) have the same spirit she had, strong and innovative and above all Mexican."
"The family has to preserve Frida´s image so it represents us in every country in a worthy manner," she said.
Asked about the growing profitability of the painter´s image, she preferred not to give any revenue figures and would only reveal that the company is still not self-sufficient but that she hoped it would be in the future.
Of course it is profitable enough, Mara Romeo said, to continue the work of promoting the already popular Frida, something that would not have bothered her great aunt even though she was an ardent Communist, she said.
"As long as they are Mexican companies that create jobs for Mexicans, and the products are arts and crafts and are sold in the rest of the world, I believe she would agree with it," she said.
To the contrary, she thought Frida would not have authorized the marketing of "horrible, ugly things" that profited "people who don´t even know who she is or what she represents," as is the case, she believed, in many stores nowadays.
For now, the products over which the company has exercised its rights are a tequila, a brand of eyeglasses and a doll, of which around 100,000 have been produced by artisans in a rural district of central Mexico.
It has also struck a deal with Aeroméxico allowing two airliners on the Mexico City-Madrid route to bear Frida´s name on the fuselage.
But in the future the range of FKC products could be much wider if the firm´s attorneys are able to exercise control over the large group of clever merchants both inside and outside of Mexico who sell everything from glasses and ashtrays to T-shirts, post cards and notebooks with Frida´s picture on them.
"We don´t want to fight with anyone, we want to regulate the use of the name, we want to inform them that a registered brand exists and that they have to comply with that," she said.
Last month, art critic and Kahlo scholar Raquel Tibol said the doll sales are just one more example of the many business opportunities the family is exploiting in a "vulgar and opportunistic" fashion.
"There are many ways to survive without doing business in such a contemptible way," he said.
"Fridamania," which started around 1990 and got a powerful boost with the 2002 movie about the artist´s life starring actress Salma Hayek, has further surged this year with the celebration of the centenary of her birth and the 50th anniversary of the death of her husband and fellow artist Diego Rivera (1886-1957). |
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