Psst, want to buy a Kahlo?

At a recent symposium on collecting at the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach, the moderator lobbed a tough question at New York dealer Mary-Anne Martin: How can one avoid forgeries?

“Understand that there are many people out there ready to fool you,” she said. “Frida Kahlo probably made 200 paintings and some drawings in her life. Yet I am offered five to 10 new works by Frida Kahlo every month.”

If Cuban artist Wifredo Lam had worked 24 hours a day during the 1940s, he could not have produced the thousands of works attributed to him during that period. As for Mexican master Rufino Tamayo, 10 or 15 fakes show up on EBay every day, she said.

The problem is that scholarship on Latin American artists lags way behind their fully documented European counterparts, Martin said.

So what’s a collector to do?

Above all, beware of bargains, she said. “Just remember, if someone were offering you a diamond ring, you would go to an appraiser.”