Frida Kahlo’s teary self-portrait could break the record as the artist’s most expensive piece of art ever auctioned

Frida Kahlo’s teary self-portrait could break the record as the artists’s most expensive piece of art ever auctioned. The painting features the Mexican artist with tears in her eyes and Diego Rivera’s face painted on her forehead.

Named Diego y yo and painted in 1949, the piece seeks to break the 2016 record. The Latin American art has a starting price of 30 million dollars, more than triple the piece Two Nudes in a Forest, which sold for eight million dollars.

© Sotheby's

The Sotheby’s house is in charge of auctioning the art. According to Razon, the news surprised collectors because this is the first time in 30 years that Diego y yo have been auctioned.

In 1990, it was bought for 1.4 million dollars by a private collector, becoming the first time a Latin American piece of art exceeded one million dollars in a bid.

“It is an emblematic work,” said the director of Latin American Art at Sotheby’s, Anna Di Stasi, to EFE, adding that Diego y yo is a “fundamental” piece for the artist. “This is the decade in which she paints her great works, especially those that make Kahlo’s contribution to modern and surrealist art recognized,” explained the expert.

Di Stasi said the canvas represents the turbulent relationship between Kahlo and Rivera. “Here, her loose hair almost seems to strangle her; she has flushed cheeks and an intense, tearful look,” Sotheby’s said in a press release.

“The painting captures an inner restlessness and anguish, reflected movingly in three tears that flow from her eyes evoking Our Lady of Sorrows, an iconic image in the history of Western art,” the document elaborated.