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A violin painted by Frida Kahlo and dedicated to Trotsky could be worth 50 million euros.

A violin painted by Frida Kahlo and dedicated to Trotsky could be worth 50 million euros.

25 October 2022

According to the expert opinion carried out in Madrid, Spain, the hand-painted polychrome violin is an unpublished work, dedicated by Frida to the Russian revolutionary, who was exiled in Mexico with his wife in 1937 and who was assassinated in 1940 by the Spaniard Ramón Mercader.

Lev Davídovich Bronstein (1879-19440), better known as Leon Trotsky, was one of the strategists of the Russian revolution of October 1917, organizer of the Red Army and opponent of the political course taken by Stalin after the death of Lenin (1924) .

For almost two years he stayed at the house of Rivera and Kahlo -belonging to the communist party- in Coyoacán, known as La Casa Azul. It was a time when Kahlo and Trotsky maintained a close relationship and were lovers, perhaps as revenge on Frida's part for discovering Rivera's love affair with her younger sister.

Frida insinuates a face in the body of the musical instrument -with eyes and a mouth- and writes in the dedication of the violin that she gives to Trotsky: «A man without a country is like an old violin without strings, I hope that very soon he recovers his country , his home, his ideal and his struggle and once again be the director of world history. Sincerely, Frida Kahlo”; while on the other side of it two butterflies are drawn and between them a sun with the symbol of the hammer and sickle.

Nobody knows how many owners the instrument must have gone through before it was given to its current owner, who, thinking it might be an original piece, contacted Gallego in Madrid to get his confirmation that Frida created both the sketches and the dedication.

Gallego has been in charge of organizing the group of specialists that have examined the violin's authenticity. The National Association of Calligraphy Experts' president, Guillermo Pastor Vzquez, is in charge of examining the handwriting and signature. And a Spanish business has established that the object was painted in the 1930s and that some of the hues used in it were exclusive to Central America through the analysis of pigments. The conclusion is that Frida painted the violin and gave it to her lover as a result.