New York: Portraiture by Frida Kahlo, an artist who is known for its raw emotional intensity, sells for $ 34.9 million in Sotheby on Tuesday, setting auction benchmark for the most expensive artwork by a Latin American artist.
Finished five years before his death in 1954, oil painting, “Diego and I”, was one of Kahlo’s last self portraits.
This work offers a window into a marriage that is turbulent with cheap Mexico Diego Rivera, which is described on it right above the eye full of artists.
In setting new height for a Latin American artist at auction, Kahlo surpassed the benchmarks set by Rivera in 2018, when one of his paintings sold by auctioned $ 9.7 million – or equivalent to $ 10.7 million today.
Sotheby spokesman identified the buyer’s painting as Eduardo F.
Costantini, founder of the museum in Buenos Aires.
The work was bought for his personal collection.
A spokesman refused to reveal the seller’s identity.
Referring to “Diego and I,” Adriana Zavala, who corresponded the Kahlo 2015 exhibition, said, “This is an important late job of the period in which physical suffering is increasing and his painting becomes erratic.
He looks less polished and ready.” Kahlo, Born in 1907 in Mexico City, began painting in 1926 while recovering from a bus accident that had left him with chronic pain.
He developed rich iconography touching on the realm of life and death, mixing violence and vulnerability in a way that often surprised viewers by encouraging gender norms.
He died at the age of 47.
Some admirers consider Kahlo’s ability to go beyond his husband’s record as a sign at that time.
Often with a married artist couple, it is a woman who is forgotten, said the art curator of Jorge Daniel Veneciano.
“In terms of gender politics, this is a good thing.
Now we can say that Diego Rivera is Frida Kahlo’s husband, because he defeated him.”