Frida Kahlo Painting Sells for $1.8 Million
A Frida Kahlo painting which was previously unseen was just sold by Sotheby’s for $1.8 million dollars.
The name of the painting is Girl with the Necklace, and dis one of the earliest painting of Frida Kahlo,
before she started painting self portraits.
The painting which had not been seen publically for sixty years was sol d to an unidentified European buyer.
“The painting is in remarkable condition”, said Axel Stein, head of Latin American Art at Sothebys in New York.
“The painting looks very fresh. It was in a dark room of a residence, which is why the colors look so bright and so alive”, explained Stein.
This painting is among the very first of the 143 paintings executed by Frida Kahlo is her very short life.
Experts believe that the painting was left unfinished on purpose, (although there is no way to really know this for sure) so that it could serve as a source of permanent inspiration. The work, whose subject is about 13 or 14 years old, was done before the Mexican painter, married to Diego Rivera, began her series of self portraits.
Frida Kalo began her self portraits wearing her iconic, regional textiles created by the different indian groups in Mexico. When the painter’s health began to fail she was confined to her bed in the “Blue House”, La casa Azul, where she lived with her husband. The canopy of Frida’s bed was lined on the inside with a huge mirror, and the painter was able to do her portraits lying flat on her back. This is the reason the painter depicts her image with a full frontal gaze, which is very singular to her style and quite arresting.
Works by Frida Kahlo have fetched more than any other Latin American artist in international art markets.
In May of 2016 Kahlo’s painting “Dos desnudos en el bosque” was sold for over eight million dollars, a world record both for Frida Kahlo and Latin American artists in general.
