(New York) Rare paintings by the Mexican Frida Kahlo and the French Pierre Soulages broke the records of these artists at auction at Sotheby’s in New York, where they were sold Tuesday evening for 34.9 million and 20.2 million dollars .
As expected, the self-portrait of the legendary Mexican painter Diego y yo (Diego and me, 1949), one of those where her husband Diego Rivera’s face appears on his forehead, smashed Frida Kahlo’s old record ($ 8 million in 2016).
It also becomes the most expensive Latin American work of art in history sold at auction, the previous record belonging to a painting by… Diego Rivera, Los Rivales (1931), sold for $ 9.76 million by Christie’s in 2018.
Diego y yo, an oil on Masonite, is emblematic of the self-portraits with an intense and enigmatic gaze that made the Mexican painter, icon of feminism, famous around the world, who died in 1954 at the age of 47.
But on this one, Diego Rivera’s face appears on Frida’s forehead, above her black eyes, from which a few tears seem to escape. Rivera, who at the time was close to the Mexican actress Maria Felix, is represented with a third eye, a sign of the torments he causes to his wife.
Pierre Soulages’ painting, which had spent more than 30 years in a private collection, corresponds to the red period of the century-old French artist, known for his mastery of black. Sold for $ 20.2 million after a heated battle between several buyers in the Sotheby’s room and on the phone, it greatly exceeds the previous record, reached in 2019 (9.6 million euros in Paris).