Frida Kahlo: Sotheby's hopes for a record auction with a self-portrait

Sotheby's hopes to exceed thirty million dollars 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.

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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 euros. dollars,

, a painting from 1931. The previous record was held by a work by ... Frida Kahlo (eight million dollars in 2016).

Iconic self-portrait

Diego y yo

("Diego and I"),

, in November,

, 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 was at the time 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.