As expected, the painter’s self-portrait mexican Frida Kahlo, entitled “Diego y yo” (“Diego and me”, 1949) smashed the old record of Frida Kahlo (8 million dollars in 2016), Tuesday, November 16, 2021 in New York (United States)
Sold at $ 34.9 million, the painting thus also becomes theartwork most expensive Latin American art in history auctioned. The previous record belonged, in fact, to a painting by Diego Rivera, “Los Rivales” (1931), sold for $ 9.76 million by Christie’s in 2018.
The oil is emblematic of the self-portraits that made the worldwide fame of the Mexican painter, icon of feminism, who died in 1954 at the age of 47.
Diego Rivera’s face appears on Frida’s forehead, above her black eyes, from which some tears seem to escape. Diego 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.
Soulages in red and black
The table of Pierre Soulages, who had spent more than 30 years in a private collection, corresponds to the red period of the French artist, who became famous for his excellence in mastering black.
Estimated at between $ 8 million and $ 12 million, it sold for $ 20.2 million after a heated battle between several buyers in the auction room and on the phone. It greatly exceeds the previous record, reached in 2019 (9.6 million euros in Paris).
Painted on August 4, 1961, its material effects were obtained using the scraping technique, which reveals the red hues under the black, explains Sotheby’s.
Over $ 50 million for Monet
One of the other highlights of the evening was the sale of an impressionist painting Claude Monet, “Coin du bassin aux nymphéas” (1918), for $ 50.8 million, far from its record of $ 110.7 million in 2019, still in New York.
After several mixed seasons due to the pandemic, New York’s fall 2021 sales results look positive, with auction houses claiming to have found a sufficient supply to meet demand that has remained strong.
On Monday, Sotheby’s broke its all-time record for a single auction night, selling 35 works from the highly regarded Macklowe modern and contemporary art collection for $ 676 million.
For his part, Christie’s announced it made $ 1.1 billion last week, against 691 million for these spring sales and 683 million for those of fall 2019, before the pandemic.
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