A rediscovered portrait by Frida Kahlo portrait comes up at Sotheby’s in New York on November 22. In the summer of 2016 Niña Con Collar surfaced when Sotheby’s was approached by a former personal assistant of Kahlo’s who had been given the work as a keepsake by Diego Rivera the year after Kahlo’s death in 1954. It will be offered as part of the Latin America: Modern Art sale with an estimate of $1.5 / 2 million.
The only record of Niña Con Collar had been a black-and-white photograph taken by the artist’s friend Lola Álvarez Bravo who documented her early works. That picture was used as the work’s catalogue raisonné entry and has been the only documentation of the painting until now.
Axel Stein, Sotheby’s head of Latin American art, commented: “I have known Niña Con Collar since 1988 when I saw the black and white photograph in the newly published catalogue raisonné. I never imagined it would surface and turn out to be such a beautiful and warm painting.” With the subject’s direct stare from under her spreading eyebrow and the rigid symmetry of a frontal pose, Niña Con Collar immediately recalls some of the artist’s most celebrated paintings.
UPDATE: THIS WORK SOLD FOR $1,812,500