Frida Kahlo (1907-1954)
Dos desnudos en el bosque (La tierra misma) ($8-12 million). Courtesy Christie’s Images Ltd., 2016.
There was a world record for Frida Kahlo at Christie’s in New York last night when Dos desnudos en el bisque (La tierra misma) sold for $8,005,000 at Christie’s Impressionist and Modern Art evening sale. This was a record for any Latin American artist at auction.
The top lot of the sale was Monet’s Le bassin aux nympheas which made $27,045,000. Modigliani’s Jeune Femme a la rose (Margherita) made $12,765,000 and Au Petit Gennevilliers by Monet sold for $11,365,000. The sale total was $141,532,000 in an auction where 44 of the 51 lots offered found buyers.
The sale attracted registered bidders from 36 countries, with strong bidding from Asia, Europe and the United States.
Brooke Lampley, Head of Impressionist & Modern Art at Christie’s New York, remarked: “The strong outcome of tonight’s sale is the result of confidence and enthusiasm in the market at the tail end of a successful week. This was a tightly edited sale that united rare and blue-chip works at a variety of price levels. Bidders competed vigorously for works by Barbara Hepworth, Francis Picabia, Paul Klee, Hermann Max Pechstein, and Marc Chagall. We saw Asian bidding for a wide range of artists at a variety of price points. It was gratifying to witness a sophisticated and intelligent market at work. We are particularly proud of the result achieved for Frida Kahlo’s Dos desnudos en el bosque, which set the world auction record for the artist and became the highest price for any work by a Latin American artist. Tonight’s results bring our running total to $620.7 million”.
(See post on antiquesandartireland.com for April 19, 2016)