New York auction smashes record for Frida Kahlo work

New York (AFP) – A rare painting by Frida Kahlo sold in a New York auction house Tuesday for almost $35 million, a record price for a work by the iconic Mexican artist.

At the same sale, a painting by French artist Pierre Soulages also broke a record for his work by reaching $20.2 million dollars. 

As expected, the self-portrait of Kahlo entitled “Diego y yo” (“Diego and me,” 1949), where the face of the painter’s husband Diego Rivera appears on her forehead, smashed the former record of $8 million set by a Kahlo in 2016. 

That made it the most expensive Latin American work of art in history sold at auction, the previous record having gone to a painting by Diego Rivera himself, whose work “Los Rivales” (1931) sold for $9.76 million in 2018. 

“Diego y yo” is emblematic of Kahlo’s self-portraits, known for their intense and enigmatic gaze that made the Mexican painter, a feminist icon, famous around the world.

In the painting, Rivera’s face appears on Frida’s forehead, above her distinctive eyebrows and dark eyes from which a few teardrops fall.

The depiction of Rivera, who at the time was close to Mexican actress Maria Felix, as a third eye symbolizes the extent to which he tormented her thoughts, art experts say.

Kahlo and Rivera married each other twice. She died aged just 47 in 1954.

“Diego y yo” last sold at Sotheby’s for $1.4 million in 1990.

Soulages’ painting, which had spent more than 30 years in a private collection, corresponds to the red period of the century-old French artist. 

It sold for $20.2 million after a heated battle between several bidders, some of them in Sotheby’s auction room and others on the phone, greatly exceeding the previous record reached in 2019 of $9.6 million euros in Paris.