Mexican artist Frida Kahlo’s “Diego y yo” set a new auction record for work by a Latin American artist, selling for $34.9 million at Sotheby’s on Tuesday night.
Tolga Akmen / AFP via Getty Images
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Tolga Akmen / AFP via Getty Images
Mexican artist Frida Kahlo’s “Diego y yo” set a new auction record for work by a Latin American artist, selling for $34.9 million at Sotheby’s on Tuesday night.
Tolga Akmen / AFP via Getty Images
Frida Kahlo’s painting “Diego y yo,” with her husband on her forehead, sold for $34.9 million at a Sotheby’s auction Tuesday night. The art dealer describes it as “the last of her wonderful self-portraits.”
This is the highest amount ever paid in an auction for a work by a Latin American artist. The price is also more than three times the previous highest amount paid for a Kahlo work in an auction.
This isn’t the first time “Diego y yo” has made history: when the painting sold for $1.4 million in 1990, Kahlo became the first Latin American artist to cross the $1 million mark in auction.
Kahlo created the painting in 1949, 20 years after she first married artist Diego Rivera. It marked a time when the Mexican artist was at the peak of her ability, and also when her health was declining: Kahlo was many surgeries on her spine in 1949, and she began a nine-month hospital stay. When she emerged, she often relied on a wheelchair.
In the movie “Diego y yo”, Kahlo describes herself with three tears streaming from her eyes, with her husband overlapping her famous eyebrows.
“She has a strong gaze. She just stares at you and she just cuts through,” said Anna Di Stasi, Sotheby’s Latin American art director. “And the three tears that rolled down her check were just the most powerful tears I’ve ever seen in art history.”
By 1949, Kahlo and Rivera had reconciled their many differences in a turbulent relationship in which both artists were entangled in numerous love affairs. But the painting is seen by many as Kahlo’s expression of grief over Rivera’s love affair with her friend, actress María Félix – Rivera painted a portrait of a barely clothed Félix in the same year. there.
“This completely ruined her,” Di Stasi said of Kahlo’s predicament.
With a final sale price of $35 million, “Diego y yo” cleared the previous auction record for a piece of Latin American art set by Rivera’s painting “The Rivals.”
Kahlo’s husband painted “The Rivals” a few years after they were married; it took one Price $ 9.8 million at a Christie’s auction in 2018.
“You might call tonight’s result the ultimate revenge, but in reality it’s the ultimate validation of Kahlo’s extraordinary talent and global appeal,” Di Stasi said in a statement. press about the sale.
The record for the highest price ever paid at auction for a work by a female artist is held by Georgia O’Keeffe’s “Jimson Weed / White Flower No. 1,” which sold at Sotheby’s for several years. for more than 44 million USD.
