Diego Rivera 1928 Painting Sells Privately For Record-Breaking $15.7M

Last month, a Frida Kahlo painting sold for a record-breaking $8 million at a New York City auction, but only weeks later, a painting by Kahlo’s partner Diego Rivera broke that record by nearly double the amount, as it sold privately for $15.7 million. The new price tag has set a new world record price for any Latin American work of art.

The piece, titled “Dance in Tehuantepec,” was acquired by Argentinian collector and founder president of the Museum of Latin American Art of Buenos Aires (MALBA), Eduardo Costantini, who had been trying to buy it for over 20 years. “I always wondered who had bought the painting and where it was,” he told the Associated Press.

The painting, created in 1928, is Rivera’s most important work in private hands, outside of his native Mexico, according to August Uribe, deputy chairman of the Americas at Phillips. It is also Rivera’s biggest canvas measuring 79” x 69.5.” “[The painting] shows Rivera's efforts to establish a national identity by breaking from European modernism and embracing Mexicanism,” Uribe explained.

It first appeared in 1930 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and a year later, it became part of a Diego Rivera retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA).

Costantini had allegedly attempted to buy the painting at a Christie’s auction in 1995 but was unsuccessful.

He plans to exhibit the piece at the Philadelphia Museum of Art during the fall, then at the ARCO Madrid next February and then take it back to Argentina in March.

While this sale set a new record for Latin American work all over the world, Kahlo could still hold a record for Latin American artist at an auction sale, as Rivera’s was sold privately. At the time, Brooke Lampley, head of Impressionist & Modern Art at Christie's New York, expressed her excitement on the significant sale. “We are particularly proud of the result achieved for Frida Kahlo's ‘Dos desnudos en el bosque,’ which set the world auction record for the artist and became the highest price for any work by a Latin American artist.”