Topline

One of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo’s final self-portraits broke several art market records Tuesday when it sold for $34.9 million, the highest price ever realized for artwork by a Latin American artist at auction. . .The last time “Diego y yo” went to auction in 1990, it sold for $1.4 million in a historic auction that made Kahlo the first Latin American artist to sell a work for seven-figures at auction, according to Sotheby’s. . .

Key Background

Kahlo is one of the most recognizable female painters of all time. Though she died in 1954, her work surged in popularity decades later along with the advent of the feminist movement in the 1970s. Kahlo lived most of her life in chronic pain rooted in a childhood case of polio and surviving a horrific bus wreck as a teenager. Kahlo completed roughly 200 paintings during her lifetime. Many of them deal with pain, along with how Mexican culture and the country’s indigenous traditions intersect with colonialism, gender and class.

PROVENANCE

(Source: https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2021/modern-evening-auction/diego-y-yo-2 )

Sam Williams & Florence Arquin, Chicago (acquired directly from the artist) 

Sotheby’s, New York, 2 May 1990, lot 18 (consigned by the above) 

Mary-Anne Martin Fine Art, New York (acquired from the above)

Private Collection, Texas (acquired from the above)

Private Collection, New York (acquired from the above circa 1995)

Acquired by descent to the present owner 

Literature

Raquel Tibol, Frida Kahlo: Crónica, testimonios y aproximaciones, Mexico City, 1997, n.p., illustrated 

Hayden Herrera, Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo, New York, 1983, pl. XXVI,

illustrated in color 

Rauda Jamis, Frida Kahlo: Autoportrait d’une femme, Paris, 1985, n.p., illustrated

Araceli Rico Cervantes, Frida Kahlo: Fantasia de un cuerpo herido, Mexico City, 1987, p. 67, illustrated 

Martha Zamora, Frida, El Pincel de la angustia, Mexico City, 1987, p. 351, illustrated in color 

Helga Pringnitz Poda, Salomon Grimberg & Andrea Kettenmann, Frida Kahlo, Das Gesamtwerk, Frankfurt, 1988, no. 119, p. 164, illustrated in color 

Hayden Herrera, Frida Kahlo: The Paintings, New York, 1991, pp. 172-73, illustrated in color 

Andrea Kettenmann, Frida Kahlo: 1907-1954, Cologne, 1993, pp.78-79, illustrated in color 

Robin Richmond, Frida Kahlo in Mexico, San Francisco, 1994, pp. 8-9 & 135, illustrated in color 

Salomon Grimberg, Frida Kahlo, Greenwich, 1997, pp.114-15, illustrated in color 

Luis-Martín Lozano, ed., Frida, Colima, 2000, p. 207, illustrated in color 

Helga Prignitz-Poda, Frida Kahlo: The Painter and Her Work, New York, 2003, no. 40, pp. 244-45, illustrated in color 

Exh. Cat., Hamburg, Bucerius Kunst Forum, Frida Kahlo, 2006, fig. 5, p. 44, illustrated in color 

Exh. Cat., Munich, Martin-Gropius-Bau, Frida Kahlo—Retrospective, 2010, fig. 14, p. 51, illustrated in color 

Luis-Martín Lozano, ed. 

The Complete Paintings of Frida Kahlo, Taschen 2021, pp. 288-289, illustrated in color

Exhibited

Mexico City, Palacio de Bellas Artes, Frida Kahlo: Exposicion Nacional de Homenaje, 1977

Mexico City, Museo Nacional de Arte, Frida Kahlo, Tina Modotti, 1983, no. 53

Madrid, Salas Pablo Ruiz Picasso, Frida Kahlo, (1907-1954), 1985, no. 41, illustrated in color 

Dallas, The Meadows Museum, Frida Kahlo, 1989, n.p., illustrated in color

Frankfurt, Schirn Kunsthalle & Houston, Museum of Fine Arts, The World of Frida Kahlo, 1993, no. 66, illustrated in color

Martigny, Fondation Pierre Gianadda, Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, 1998, no. 46, n.p., illustrated in color & on the cover

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Tearful Frida Kahlo Self-Portrait Could Topple Multiple Records

ArtfixDaily

A self-portrait by Frida Kahlo is estimated to fetch $30 million at auction in November.

Slated for Sotheby's Modern Evening sale, the painting Diego y yo ("Diego and I") is expected to reach far above the artist's auction record of $8 million, set in 2016, the auction house said in a statement. Diego y yo previously sold at Sotheby’s in 1990, for $1.4 million, securing then-record prices for the artist and Latin American art.

The auction price record for a female artist is $44.4 million set by Georgia O’Keeffe’s Jimson Weed/White Flower No.1 (1932) in 2014

Diego y yo is expected to exceed the current $9.8 million auction record for a work by a Latin American artist, set by a work by Kahlo's husband, Diego Rivera, in 2019. 

Rivera looms large in Kahlo's oeuvre, along with symbols representing her personal struggles and the tumult of their relationship. Diego y yo features Rivera's portrait bust with a third eye placed on his forehead, superimposed on Kahlo's forehead. 

With tears streaming down her flushed face, and her usually tightly braided hair wrapped wildly around her neck, Kahlo's "emotionally bare and complex portrait Diego y yo is a defining work," a Sotheby's statement reads. 

Painted in 1949, five years before her death, Kahlo's final bust-portrait coincides with Rivera's affair with her friend, María Félix, according to Sotheby's. 

“I adore Frida," Rivera was quoted as saying, "but I think my presence is very bad for her health.”

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