Frida Kahlo's Diego and I Might Shatter The Artist's Auction Record

Throughout modern art, a large number of female artists made a significant contribution to the expansion of creativity and emancipation. One of the most important women of the 20the century is without any doubt, the legendary Frida Kahlo.

This icon of Modernism has not only been celebrated for her outstanding paintings, and striking appearance, but also for the way she merged life, art, and politics. Kahlo was a pioneering painter who responded well to traditional figuration, but at the same time appropriated innovative and bold strategies of (self)representation that reshaped the way we look at and speak off an artwork.

Frida Kahlo’s Diego and I (Diego y yo) seminal self-portrait will soon go under the hammer at Sotheby’s New York. This tremendous piece made in 1949 only five years before the artist died will be featured as a star lot in the Modern Evening Sale in New York with an estimate of $30 million.

Diego y yo perfectly encapsulates Frida Kahlo’s revision of portraiture, so it is not unusual that news regarding its sail sparked such an interest in the media. The painting might become the most valuable work by a Latin American artist ever sold at auction.

Frida and Diego – A Turbulent Relationship

Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera had a turbulent relationship and marriage that fascinated many. Both had played an important role not only in the further dissemination of Modernism but also in terms of social and political shifts their native Mexico was undergoing at the time. Each of them had a peculiar passion for life, and all the earthly delight, while together they have shared a strong interest in ideological matters, especially the Marxist thought, that had been spreading through the public sphere in both Europe and abroad.

Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo got married in 1929, divorced in 1940, and then married again that same year. The actions of these larger-than-life figures had a tremendous effect on the Mexican culture –  from Rivera’s revolutionary murals made in Mexico and around the world as a reflection of speak of politics, history, and the workers’ struggle to Kahlo’s more intimate, but equally groundbreaking paintings that dealt with the matters of representation in terms of gender, sexuality, and race.

The Painting

Frida Kahlo’s Diego and I (Diego y yo) is a compelling bust self-portrait of the artist made in 1949 that excels her exploration of this particular genre. Although a couple of these bust self-portraits she has made throughout this decade might be more famous than this one, this painting stands as the strongest visual statement, a sort of the testimony honoring Diego Rivera, the love of her life.

To understand the multifaceted meaning of this particular work it is important to note that after she remarried Rivera, Kahlo was under the great influence of Aztec and Eastern mythology, medicine, and botany. She was focused on expressing the everyday struggle she was going through with her medical condition, but also the heartache caused by the ever-complicated relationship with Rivera.

A fascinating and very intimate iconography Kahlo came up with at the time showed the outstanding technical mastery, which is nicely illustrated with Diego y yo. By combining the techniques and motifs typical for the European Renaissance portraiture and numerous details found in the local tradition, the artist has built a powerful, highly dramatic composition that responded well to the present-day themes of identity and experience, the notion of the gaze, and one’s sense of self.

In Diego y yo, Kahlo wears a now-iconic huipil, the tunic that is part of the traditional women’s dress of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec (Tehuanas). The artist worn this particular red huipil in many of her recognizable self-portraits of this period, as well as in a famous series of photographs taken by Nickolas Muray. The painting is also a double portrait since Kahlo included a small image of Rivera whom she depicted with a third eye to underline the importance of his presence in her consciousness.

This work was also made as a reaction to Rivera’s relationship with María Félix, the Mexican diva and Kahlo’s friend, whom the famed muralist also painted the same year. Their liaison was the talk of the town – Kahlo joked about it publicly, however, she felt broken inside. Therefore, Diego y yo shows the artist’s torment and vulnerability accentuated with the loose hair that seems to strangle her.

Frida Kahlo’s Diego and I On Auction

Sotheby’s Chairman and Worldwide Head of Sales for Global Fine Art, Brooke Lampley, underlined that the “emotionally bare and complex portrait Diego y yo is a defining work by one of the few artists whose influence transcends the world of fine art to pop culture and beyond.” In the light of the forthcoming auction, she added:

To offer this portrait 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.

This masterpiece evokes more than just the artist’s personal story and tackles existential questions regarding life, death, pain, and love. Therefore, it can be said that Frida Kahlo’s Diego and I speaks the universal language which can be widely understood regardless of almost ghoulish or surreal imagery.

Diego y yo was displayed from October 7th until October 11th in Sotheby’s Hong Kong franchise and from October 22nd until October 25th in a London franchise before landing in their New York venue for the November auction in 2021.