Art auction: New York auction records

At the end of the New York autumn auctions, records are raining again: A very special collection is being auctioned – and Frida Kahlo’s work becomes the most expensive in Latin America.

A self-portrait by the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) was sold at auction in New York for the equivalent of around 31 million euros (34.9 million dollars) – making it the most expensive work from Latin America ever to be auctioned.

The 1949 picture “Diego y yo” (Diego and I) was acquired from the collection of the Argentine entrepreneur Eduardo Costantini, announced the auction house Sotheby’s on Wednesday.

The work, created five years before Kahlo’s death, shows the artist with a second portrait of her partner Rivera on her forehead. It was last auctioned for $ 1.4 million in 1990 – making Kahlo the first artist from Latin America to have a work auctioned for more than $ 1 million. With the record that has now been set, the Kahlo work surpassed the auction price for a painting by Rivera, which had been auctioned for 9.76 million US dollars in 2018.

Sotheby’s had previously sold Linda and Harry Macklowe’s art collection put up for auction due to their divorce for around $ 700 million. This makes it the auction with the highest total value in the history of the auction house, as the auction house announced.

“I was happy to see the validation of our selection and our connoisseurship that we have shown since the beginning of our collection in the 1960s,” said Harry Macklowe of the German Press Agency in New York. “I enjoyed living with the art, acquiring it – and now I have also enjoyed seeing how it is passed on to others. Collecting is a passion and an adventure and once you are a collector, you’re always a collector. It never stops. “

The most expensive item in the auction was the painting “No. 7” by US artist Mark Rothko (1903-1970), which was sold for around $ 82.5 million. The sculpture “Le Nez” by the Swiss artist Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966) brought in around 78.4 million dollars. Around 35 other works were auctioned for double-digit million amounts, bringing the total to a good 676 million dollars.

Linda and Harry Macklowe had been married for nearly 60 years. The New York real estate mogul and the art expert argued long and bitterly in court about the details of their divorce. A judge eventually ordered that the couple’s art collection – dozens of modern and contemporary masterpieces gathered over decades – must be largely sold.

The first part of the collection was now the final highlight of the traditional New York autumn auctions, the second part is to be auctioned at Sotheby’s next year. Meanwhile, competitor Christie’s announced that it had auctioned art worth more than one billion dollars in the fall auctions.

© dpa-infocom, dpa: 211116-99-25591 / 3 (dpa)

Sotheby’s zu Macklowe

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