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Mexico trove of 1,200 Frida Kahlo Works All Forged: Experts
by: Yuri Cortez of the Associated Foreign Press

MEXICO CITY-- Experts said Thursday that a trove of 1,200 art works displayed at prominent Mexican gallery as the work of famed artist Frida Kahlo are forgeries.

The works, owned by the art dealer Carlos Noyola and his wife, had been on exhibit at a gallery in San Miguel Allende in central Mexico.

But experts said there was no chance that the works could be genuine.

"The works in question are not authentic," Hilda Trujillo, director of the Frida Kahlo museum, told AFP.

"All of the pieces are signed exactly the same way, while Frida used different signatures," she said.

"Nowhere is this trove of works documented -- much less a reserve of this size," said Carlos Phillips Olmedo, another expert affiliated with the Kahlo Museum.

The couple who owns the pieces, which include oil paintings, sketches, letters and other documents, claim to have purchased them in 2005.

Law enforcement officials said no criminal charges had been filed against the couple, because they are alleged simply to have claimed that the works were by Kahlo, and not to have actually created the forgeries.

Frida Kahlo, who lived from 1907 to 1954, is best known for her haunting self portraits, but she also celebrated women and indigenous traditions in her surrealistic paintings.