A Frida Kahlo drawing was destroyed to create NFTs

A Mexican entrepreneur told a well-stocked crowd in Miami that what came next “is going to change the lives of thousands of children.” Then he started a drawing of Frida Kahlo, perhaps Mexico’s most famous artist.

The audience cheered. The whimsical sketches of a world-renowned painter who died 68 years ago would now live on in the form of 10,000 NFTs, or non-fungible tokens.

But the act has left art lovers horrified. In Mexico, government officials have suggested that businessman Martin Mobarak may have broken a law that makes it a crime to intentionally damage an artistic monument. The fact that Mobarak intends to donate some of the proceeds to charity has not dampened the outrage.

On top of that, art historians and experts warned that it is far from clear whether the burnt drawing was a Kahlo original or a fake. Even the drawing’s value is disputed — Mobarak claims it was valued at more than $10 million, a price some experts said seemed wildly inflated.

“The whole thing is scary,” said Mary-Anne Martin, one of the top Latin American art dealers in the world, who twice sold the Kahlo drawing in question, once in 2004 to a foundation and again in 2013 to a private collector. She said she did not sell the drawing to Mobarak and had never heard of him until last week.

The ink and watercolor painting at the center of the drama is aptly named Fantasmones Siniestros, or Sinister Ghosts. The 9-inch-by-6-inch image, which Kahlo drew in her diary, features a ghostly figure with enormous eyes intertwined with a giant fish, a broom, duck, bird and other creatures against a green backdrop, with the phrase “Here are the creepy ghosts” scrawled across it.

Mobarak told VICE World News that he bought the piece in 2015 from a private collector and that it had been in a safe for most of that time. On July 30, he hosted the event in Miami that featured a fire performer, mariachi band and models posing in swimsuits. Mobarak stood in front of about 200 people gathered around a swimming pool, removed the drawing from its frame, attached the piece of paper to a martini glass and set it on fire, according to a video posted online. The popular Mexican song “Cielito lindo” played in the background as the drawing was reduced to ashes.

“People can see it as I destroyed it. But I didn’t, Mobarak said. “This way I bring it to the world. I let everyone see it. I think it does more good for the world and makes a statement instead of just sitting in someone’s private collection.”

Mobarak is selling images of the original drawing as 10,000 NFTs, each for the price of 3 ETH on the Ethereum blockchain, roughly the equivalent of $4,000, for what he hopes will be a total of $40 million.

NFT holders will receive high-resolution images of the front and back of the drawing, a copy of the certificate of authenticity, and “animated GIFs and short film loops for viewing in digital picture frames or projecting on walls,” according to a website celebrating the “transition” of Kahlo’s drawing into the Metaverse.

“MR. Mobarak’s vision is to introduce Frida’s work into the metaverse and leverage her powerful likeness to bring together a community of collectors, creators and art lovers on a mission to merge the traditional art world with the expanding potential of the digital art worlds of art and immortalize the humanities. history,” the website explains.

It also provides evidence of what it says is the drawing’s authenticity: a paper signed by Mexican art dealer Andrés Siegel dated July 30, the morning of the burning, confirming that he believes the drawing to be Kahlo’s “Sinister Ghosts.” Siegel, who owns a gallery in Mexico City, did not respond to a request for comment. Mobarak told VICE World News that immediately after Siegel examined the drawing, it was given to a private security company that had custody of the artwork until the moment it was burned.

But there are so many fake Kahlo paintings in the world that even a certificate of authenticity is questionable, especially when it doesn’t come from a top auction house, said James Oles, a specialist in Latin American art at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, who stressed that he had not inspected the drawing Mobarak burned and could not think of its authenticity.

“He destroyed the evidence that would determine whether it was real or not. Isn’t that convenient?”

Damaging artwork and turning it into NFTs is a small but growing trend, as artists experiment with the idea of ​​art in the digital world. In 2021, British artist Damien Hirst sold 10,000 paintings, each of which had its own corresponding NFT. He gave the owners a year to decide if they wanted the original or the NFT. Hirst now plans to burn the 4,581 paintings by owners who chose NFT.

A collective called BurntBanksy also burned an original artwork by the famous street artist Banksy to become an NFT, but they were partly inspired by the fact that Banksy famously self-destructed one of his own works, said Paul Dylan-Ennis, a professor at University College Dublin studying cryptocurrencies.

Such stunts “should at least attempt to say something interesting about art or the art medium,” Dylan-Ennis said, adding that was not the case with the Kahlo drawing.

“The work of a famous artist has been burned for a gauche metaverse project in the style of an NFT profile picture collection that passes the night.”

Mobarak has promised that a portion of the proceeds from NFT sales will go to organizations that support abused women and children with autism, as well as prominent Mexican art institutions, including the Frida Kahlo Museum. Whether they will accept his money is another question – Mexico’s National Institute of Arts and Letters said on Tuesday it would not, and that it was investigating whether the drawing Mobarak burned was an original.

“In Mexico, the deliberate destruction of an artistic monument constitutes a crime,” says a press release.

Kahlo’s artwork has become some of the most sought after of any Latin American artist in recent decades. Long known as the wife of prominent Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, Kahlo became a pop culture icon after her death in 1954 at the age of 47, with her artwork routinely selling for millions of dollars.

Converse, Zara and Forever 21 have sold clothes and shoes bearing Kahlo’s image, and in 2018 toymaker Mattel launched the Frida Kahlo Barbie as part of its “inspiring women” line, despite the objections of Kahlo’s niece. Last year, Kahlo’s self-portrait “Diego y yo” sold for $34.9 million at a Sotheby’s auction, the most ever paid for a work by a Latin American artist.