Diego y yo is a quintessential example of Frida Kahlo’s singular approach to portraiture. Intense and emotional, this important work by the beloved and renowned artist is poised to shatter her current auction record of $8 million. When it comes up at Sotheby’s Modern evening sale in New York in November it may become the most valuable work of Latin American art ever sold at auction. The estimate for the final fully realised bust self portrait completed before her death in 1954 is in excess of $30 million.
The Modern Evening Sale, formerly the Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale, will inaugurate a larger reorganisation of Sotheby’s General Fine Art evening sale with further details yet to be announced. Brooke Lampley, Sotheby’s Chairman and Worldwide Head of Sales for Global Fine Art, remarked: “Frida Kahlo’s 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. 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.”
