Sotheby’s hopes to exceed $ 30 million with a self-portrait of the legendary Mexican painter Frida Kahlo, in which her husband Diego Rivera also appears, at the November auction in New York, which would set the record for a Latin American work to blaze.
It is precisely a work of Diego Rivera, with whom Frida Kahlo had a passionate and tumultuous love affair, which holds this record. In May 2018, the Christie’s house had sold, already in New York, for 9.76 million dollars, “Los Rivales”, a painting of 1931. The previous record was held by a work of… Frida Kahlo (8 million dollars in 2016).
Sotheby’s will auction a Frida Kahlo self-portrait that has a $ 30 million estimate, setting it up to break records https://t.co/cgwZN0mrOJ
– ARTnews (@artnews) September 22, 2021
A painting dating from 1949
“Diego y yo” (“Diego and me”), “one of the star lots at the New York modern art auction party”, in November, “is estimated at more than $ 30 million”, assures Sotheby’s. The work had already been sold at Sotheby’s for 1.4 million in 1990. This oil on masonite is emblematic of the self-portraits with an intense and enigmatic gaze which made the Mexican painter, an icon of feminism, famous throughout the world. died in 1954 at the age of 47.
But in this 1949 painting, Diego Rivera’s face appears on Frida’s forehead, above her black eyes, from which a few tears seem to escape. Rivera, who at the time was close to the Mexican actress Maria Felix, is represented with a third eye, a sign of the torments he causes to his wife. The fall sale, which is due to start on November 15, will also be marked at Sotheby’s by the auctioning of the “Macklowe collection”, named after New York real estate magnate Harry Macklowe, estimated at 600 million dollars. dollars for 65 works, including pieces by Picasso, Warhol, Rothko and even Giacometti.