Frida Kahlo " Roots " Sets $5.6 Million Record at Sotheby's

New York City- May 24, 2006 – Sotheby’s made auction history when a masterpiece by famed Mexican artist Frida Kahlo (lot 6) sold for $5,616,000 to an anonymous bidder on the telephone, setting a new record for a Latin American work of art at auction and for the artist at auction.  Roots, 1943, oil on metal, one of the most beautifully detailed works from Kahlo’s most celebrated period, had never before appeared on the public market.  The evening sale totaled $18,658,800, the highest total ever for a sale of Latin American Art at auction, far above its pre-sale estimate (est. $11.9/16.2 million*), and set records for a number of artists, including Francisco Zúñiga, Tomás Sánchez, Luis Tomasello and Edmund Darch Lewis, and also set a record for a Botero sculpture at auction and tied the record for Botero at auction.

Carmen Melián, Director of Sotheby’s Latin American Art Department, said: "Tonight’s landmark sale of Latin American Art, the highest evening total ever for an auction of this category, was more than $5 million higher than the previous record, set in 1994 with our IBM sale.  The success of the sale is a result of the broadening market over the past two decades.  We were especially pleased by the price achieved for Grupo de Cuatro Mujeres de Pie by Zúñiga, one of the great sculptors of the 20th century. Works by Kinetic artists sold well tonight: the Tomasello set a record for the artist at auction, and works by Soto and Le Parc achieved solid prices."

Completed after Kahlo remarried her lifelong love, Diego Rivera, Roots symbolizes their unity after years of pain and suffering.  It is among the few full-length self-portraits by Kahlo in existence, measures 30.5 by 49.9 cm (12 by 19 1/2 ins).  Roots had been in a North American Collection for over twenty years and was exhibited last year in the 2005 Frida Kahlo retrospective at the Tate Modern.  Of the limited number of works produced during Kahlo’s lifetime, her self-portraits are her most famous and well-known.  Executed in 1943, following Kahlo’s reunion with Rivera, Roots depicts Kahlo in a rocky area, the Pedregal in the south of Mexico City, where Rivera designed the Anahuacalli Museum to house his pre-Columbian art collection.

At least three bidders competed for Francisco Zúñiga’s Grupo de Cuatro Mujeres de Pie, 1974, which brought an astounding $3,712,000, over four times its high estimate, ultimately selling to an anonymous bidder in the room (lot 19, $700/900,000).  Grupo de Cuatro Mujeres de Pie is the artist’s answer to Rodin’s famous Les Bourgeois de Calais and is the most important work by the artist -- one of the most distinguished masters of sculpture -- ever to be offered at auction. The sculpture, acquired directly from the artist by its current owner, depicts a girl and four women standing, each representing all the ages of woman: childhood, adolescence, motherhood and maturity or old age.

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Sotheby’s is currently the dominant force in the international market for Latin American Art. Sotheby’s sales total of Latin American Art in 2005 exceeded any annual total for any auction house in the field. Since 1985, Sotheby’s has achieved seventeen of the top twenty annual sales totals and, in the past five years alone, has outperformed the nearest competitor by $32.2 million. Sotheby’s held the previous record for a work by Frida Kahlo at auction: in May 2000.

Self-Portrait, 1929, sold for $5,065,750 (est. $3/4 million), which, at the time, was a also record for a female artist at auction.