CHICAGO (CN) — The company that controls Frida Kahlo's image filed a pair of lawsuits against online merchants on Monday, claiming they had sold products related to the iconic Mexican artist under unauthorized use of the company's trademarks.
The company wants all the profits the alleged counterfeiters have made off their sales of Kahlo merchandise, or in the alternative, $2 million "for each and every counterfeit use of the asserted trademarks."
"Defendants’ images, artwork and derivative works are virtually identical to and/or substantially similar to the Frida Kahlo works," the company alleged in its primary complaint. "Such conduct infringes and continues to infringe the Frida Kahlo works in violation of [U.S. trademark law]."
Kahlo's niece Isolda Pinedo Kahlo, Isolda's daughter Maria Cristina Romeo Pinedo and Venezuelan businessman Carlos Dorado formed the company, known as the Frida Kahlo Corporation, in 2004. Based out of Panama City, Panama, it owns more than two dozen trademarks associated with Frida Kahlo, from the artist's name and image to soaps, cigar cutters and cookware emblazoned with her likeness or works.
The company claims in its lawsuit that the online merchants operated under "fictitious names" to sell items on Amazon and other platforms, sourcing product from a "common source" while working together to evade legal scrutiny.
"Defendants communicate with each other and regularly participate in chat rooms and online forums regarding tactics for operating multiple accounts, evading detection, pending litigation, and potential new lawsuits," the company argued.
It did not respond to a request for comment on the litigation.
Monday's suit is not the first legal battle the Frida Kahlo Corporation has fought to keep control of the famous Mexican artist's image; a battle complicated by Kahlo's own artistic and political legacy.
Kahlo was active in communist and anti-imperialist political circles for decades prior to her death in July 1954, and her politics informed much of her work. She drew inspiration from the Mexican Revolution of 1910 and its aftermath, incorporated themes that celebrated femininity, nature and Mesoamerican indigeneity, and lambasted the capitalist systems of the U.S. and Europe.
Within this context artists have created and distributed Frida Kahlo-inspired works for decades. Some of the first were Kahlo's own friends and students who spent time with her at La Casa Azul — now the Frida Kahlo Museum — her childhood home in Mexico City where she also spent the last years of her life.
Their art has challenged, both philosophically and legally, the notion that anyone can own the legacy of a famous artist — particularly one critical of the notion of private property.
In 2019 a folk artist named Cristine Melo filed a federal lawsuit against the Frida Kahlo Corporation in northern California, hoping to stop the company's attempts to bar her from selling her Kahlo-inspired paintings online. In her suit she accused Dorado of using his business acumen to "con" the Kahlo family into giving him control of Frida Kahlo's legacy, and argued Frida Kahlo herself was "known to favor and support the artwork and craft of local artisans."
"It appears that FKC serves improper, wide-ranging takedown notices... forcing artists to either stop making art in homage to Frida Kahlo, or join FKC’s program," Melo also wrote in the complaint.
Another folk artist named Nina Shope filed a similar federal complaint in Colorado the same year, hoping to protect her handmade Frida Kahlo dolls from the Frida Kahlo Corporation as it backed the 2018 release of a Frida Kahlo Barbie doll made in partnership with Mattel.
That same Barbie doll — light-skinned, lacking Kahlo's signature unibrow and not including the prosthetic leg Kahlo wore in her final years — had also prompted an internal fight between the Kahlo family and the Frida Kahlo Corporation that saw court action in both Mexico and Florida.
In South Florida's federal court district in 2018, the Frida Kahlo Corporation accused Maria Cristina Romeo Pinedo of defamation and trademark law violation. It said she tried to sabotage the corporation's Mattell partnership and falsely claimed on social media that it couldn't sell products using Frida Kahlo's image without her consent.
The company argued that Pinedo "timed her disparaging social media publicity attacking FKC’s right in the FKC Trademarks, to coincide with the publicity generated by the FKC / Mattel, Inc. announcement that it would be selling a line of dolls to honor Frida Kahlo."
According to court filings Melo voluntarily dismissed her suit in April 2021 after reaching a settlement with the company; Shope did likewise in April 2020. U.S. District Judge Robert Scola Jr. in Florida dismissed the Barbie sabotage case against Pinedo in September 2021, but the Superior Court of Justice of Mexico City ruled in the Frida Kahlo Corporation's favor on the issue that December.
The company reportedly celebrated that "finally" people in Mexico would be able to buy the Frida Kahlo Barbie doll.
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