Sotheby's sold at its headquarters in New York the work of Frida Kahlo "Diego y yo" in the sum of 34.9 million dollars. The piece was acquired by Eduardo Costantini, and was owned by New York real estate magnate Harry Macklowe and his wife Linda; it was part of a remarkable collection of art whose dispersion was caused by the couple's divorce after 57 years of marriage.
On November 16 it was sold at Soteby's for $ 34.9 million. Record for a Latin American work of art, and second highest worldwide price for a work by a woman artist paid at auction.
When I read the news, the acquisition of the work "Self-portrait with monkey and parrot" (1942) immediately came to my memory, for which Costantini paid in the same Auction House, in 1995, the sum of 3,192,500 million of dollars.
Diego y yo, a small painting measuring only 28 cm x 22 cm, shows us an anguished Frida, perhaps the product of a new infidelity by Diego Rivera supposedly linked to a relationship with the actress Maria Felix.
Frida appears from the front, with her curly hair that slides down to her neck in the form of a chain, with her usual intense gaze and her united eyebrows, dressed in a tunic like those worn by Tehuana women. The preponderant circular image of Diego Rivera is located in the middle of Frida's forehead, drawing the viewer's attention in a resounding way towards this “third eye”. The message is very clear, where a life surrounded by jealousy, infidelity, cross loves and excessive passions, was mixed with ideology and party politics, forming a complex and torturous universe. And in that world, both were the most important thing to the other, despite countless ups and downs and tensions.
Frida Kahlo painted many self-portraits, her favorite genre. She used to express: "I paint self-portraits because I am alone very often, and I am the person I know best." Great definition to understand immediately, as this woman of extreme physical fragility, she managed to meet with effort and pictorial skill all the requirements to become the Ibero-American painter who has reached the highest prices so far.
Regardless of any movement, I believe that Frida Kahlo exclusively painted her reality. We can link her to the surrealism against which she rebelled despite her bond and admiration for André Breton, or perhaps to her magical realism. But this artist who expressed everything with controlled, very elaborate and synthetic brushstrokes recreating her own inner world, her tragedy and her frustrations, has managed not only to be a myth, but is an absolute phenomenon of contemporary art. . We can attribute it to her phenomenal personality, to her marriage to Diego Rivera, or to her participation in public life and politics. But the figures mark an absolute reality. This work was sold in 1994 for just over a million dollars, which shows us that the rise in values of Frida Kahlo has been substantially vertiginous.
Eduardo Costantini has bet once again on Frida de ella, investing in a piece that is more than representative of the artist's life and linked to the essence of the founding origins of the Museo de ella. We celebrate that, in this uncertain moment, he has acquired this work so that we can enjoy it like so many others, on the walls of the Malba.