Modern art museum to put record-breaking self-portrait on display; Mexican artist’s creation was purchased last year by Eduardo Constantini and is the highest-priced Latin American artwork in history
Buenos Aires has a new cultural attraction: Diego y yo, the record-breaking painting by legendary Mexican artist Frida Kahlo.
Starting on August 26th, the Museum of Latin American Art of Buenos Aires (MALBA), is opening the 1949 artwork up the viewing public for the next year.
The painting, which purchased last Novemeber by Argentine businessman and MALBA co-founder, Eduardo Constantini, at Sotheby’s auction house in New York for US$34.9 million, is already hanging in its own special room, next to the other Frida Kahlo from MALBA’s permanent collection: 1942’s Autorretrato con chango y loro.
Also on display, is a documentary series, with photographs and other objects, made by Raquel Tibol, the Mexican artist’s first biographer.
Diego y yo is the last self-portrait painted by Kahlo before her death in 1954. The piece arrived in Buenos Aires in august 2022 and will be the attraction of an exhibition, Tercer Ojo, in which Constantini will show off other artworks of his private collection, including paintings by Cuban artist, Alfredo Lam, the MExicans Miguel Covarrubias and Rosa Rolanda, and Brazil’s Vicente do Rego Monteiro.
INTERTWINED COLLECTIONS
MALBA’s latest exhibition brings together the museum’s permanent collection and Constantini’s private collection under the same roof.
“There is the same vision in the creation of these two collections. In that same vision, there is an empathy and solidarity between the pieces. The idea is to generate dialogues between the works”, explained García.
The exhibition comprises more than 240 works, many of which have not been shown publicly for 30 years.
“The aim is to disseminate Latin American art”, Constatini summarized.
During the presentation, Eduardo Constantini referred to the team that helps him daily to choose the works in his collection, from the Acquisitoons Commitee to García, the Museum’s curator,, and even Elina, his wife.
;MALBA, a private museum created in 2011, treasures some 700 works of the most important Latin American art from the 20th century onwards.