Completed five years before her death in 1954, the oil painting, “Diego and I,” is one of Kahlo’s final self-portraits and an example of the unsettling intimacy that has attracted collectors to her paintings.
The winning bid for $34.9 million after fees was taken by Anna Di Stasi, Sotheby’s director of Latin American art.
Kahlo, who was born in 1907 in Mexico City, began painting in 1926 while recovering from a bus accident that had left her with chronic pain.
The last time “Diego and I” was sold at Sotheby’s was in 1990, when it became the first work by a Latin American artist to sell for more than $1 million.
“Frida is becoming one of the most popular artists in the world,” said Gregorio Luke, the former director of the Museum of Latin American Art in California.
Often with married artist couples, it is the woman who is forgotten, explained Jorge Daniel Veneciano, senior curator at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles.