Frida Kahlo’s ‘Diego y yo’ set to break records at auction

One of the last portraits by Frida Kahlo is set to break records on Tuesday.

Her 1949 self-portrait, titled “Diego y yo,” will be auctioned for the first time in over 30 years, and the starting price is $30 million. The painting will be auctioned at Sotheby’s Modern Evening Sale in New York on Tuesday night.

The painting is set to become the most valuable piece of Latin American artwork and could surpass the most valuable artwork by a woman. 

Painted five years before her death, “Diego y yo” is considered to be Kahlo’s final self-portrait. The 11.7-inch by 8.8-inch oil painting shows a teary-eyed Kahlo with a portrait of her husband, Diego Rivera, embedded above her brow.

“Diego y yo” is an intense painting that speaks to the state of her fragile marriage and was created during a time when she was experiencing a great deal of physical pain, said art historian Natalia Zerbato, who studies the life and work of Kahlo at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and offers tours based on Kahlo’s life. 

“Diego y yo” was last auctioned by Sotheby’s in 1990 for $1.4 million. Frida’s personal auction record is $8 million for her 1939 painting “Two Nudes in the Forest,” auctioned in 2016, according to Sotheby’s.

“I think this is very powerful too, because it’s not even one of her most famous works,” said Zerbato.

“I think if you use just the numbers to talk about how important Frida’s work is, it looks very important and very marketable,” Zerbato said.

In Mexico, much of Frida’s art is recognized as an artistic monument, a legal status that prevents the sale of prominent 19th and 20th century Mexican art, Zerbato explained.

“For Mexico, the meaning of Frida can’t be given a price,” she said. “From my point of view, I can’t put a price on Frida.”

Kahlo’s ability to speak to so many identities is what makes her art and story so enduring, according to Mexican and Latin American art expert and lecturer Gregorio Luke.

“I believe that the reason of Frida’s popularity is that she is multicultural. She is multiracial. She embodies this more than any other artist,” said Luke, who is the former director of the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach, California. 

“Frida Kahlo is the daughter of a German Hungarian Jew, and [has] a mother that is Indigenous. So she has in her personal heritage this fusion of races,” he said, explaining that Kahlo often puts these different cultures and influences on display in her painting.

Kahlo was inspired by an array of influences ranging from pre-Hispanic and European works. Luke pointed to her fascination with Eastern cultures and the use of the symbolic third-eye in “Diego y yo.”

“She blends all these things together,” he said. “She creates something that has a mixture of everybody. So when people look at Frida, they find in that painting something that speaks directly to them.”

Tuesday’s auction is expected to be a historic milestone for the iconic artist. Diego Rivera’s “The Rivals” currently holds the record for the most valuable Latin American piece of art, selling at Christie’s for $9.8 million in 2018. Georgia O’Keeffe’s “Jimson weed/White flower no. 1” holds the record for the most valuable artwork by a woman, selling for more than $44 million in a 2014 Sotheby’s sale, Barron’s reported. 

In a statement about “Diego y yo,” Julian Dawes, Sotheby’s senior vice president and co-head of impressionist and modern art, said: “When I look at this painting, the phrase ‘abre los ojos,’ Spanish for ‘open your eyes,’ immediately comes to mind.”

“I think it also symbolizes the incredible moment this painting will surely usher in for Kahlo, as the market opens its eyes to Kahlo in a new way and secures her place in the auction echelon she belongs,” he stated. 

The ever-growing popularity of Kahlo’s artwork is likely one example of why the art world is thinking more critically about worth and representation in its auctions. 

“To offer it [‘Diego y yo’] in our Modern Evening Sale in November heralds the recent expansion of the Modern category to include greater representation of underrepresented artists, notably women artists, and rethink how they have historically been valued at auction,” Sotheby’s Chairman Brooke Lampley said in a statement. 

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