Completed five years before her death in 1954, the oil painting “Diego and I”(Diego and I)is one of Frida Kahlo's last self-portraits, opening her stormy marriage to Mexican muralist Diego Rivera - who is depicted in the painting on her forehead, above Kahlo's tear-filled eyes.
Kahlo's work surpassed the benchmark set by Rivera in 2018, when one of his paintings sold for $9.76 million, the equivalent of $10.75 million today if inflation is taken into account.
The painting "Diego and I" reflects the tragedy of Frida Kahlo's life. - Photo: Sotheby's
A Sotheby's spokesman said that Mr. Eduardo F. Costantini - founder of a museum in Buenos Aires (capital of Argentina) successfully purchased the work "Diego and I" and put it into his private collection.
In an interview with The New York Times on November 17, Mr. Costantini said that he had placed a large bid for “Diego and I” and planned to display it at the Museum of Latin American Art, also known as Malba, in Buenos Aires next year. “I had seen it many times in books, and then suddenly it came up for auction,” Mr. Costantini said. “That made me start to hope to have it in my collection.”
“This is an important work by Frida Kahlo in a period when her physical pain was becoming more severe, and her paintings were becoming more chaotic,” said Adriana Zavala, curator of the 2015 Kahlo exhibition in New York.
"She lost her usual elegance and composure."
Portrait of Frida Kahlo. - Photo: Sotheby's
Born in 1907 in Mexico City, Frida Kahlo began painting in 1926 while recovering from a bus accident that left her in chronic pain. She often created rich images of life and death, blending violence and vulnerability in ways that shocked viewers by challenging gender norms. She had her first solo exhibition in Mexico in 1953, before dying at the age of 47 in 1954.
The value of Kahlo’s paintings has increased significantly since 1980, when one of her portraits sold for $85,000. Some art historians attribute the price increase to the limited number of her paintings. The last time “Diego and I” sold at Sotheby’s in 1990, it was the first work by a Latin American artist to sell for more than $1 million.
