Five new World Record prices in Christie's $16.8m Latin art sale

Frida Kahlo's Survivor, depicting a lonely Mexican, brought $1.2m and was the top lot in New York

Christie's Latin American sale on Wednesday evening (May 26) realised $16.8m and was sold 81% by lot and 80% sold by value.

Leading the blockbuster auction was Frida Kahlo's (Mexican 1907-1954) Survivor, which went for ten times more than its estimate of $100,000-150,000, achieving a final $1,178,000 including buyer's premium.

Kahlo's work - depicting a lonely Mexican idol, symbolising survival and the artist's own feelings of alienation - is surrounded with an Oaxaca-made tin frame, an inexpensive metal often used in Mexico for religious objects.

Frida Kahlo's Survivor, showing loneliness, survival and alienation in Mexico

Meanwhile, five new world auction records were set for José Clemente Orozco, Jesús Rafael Soto, Alfonso Michel, Beateriz Milhazes and Alfredo Jaar.

Among these, José Clemente Orozco's (Mexican 1883-1949) The City was the auction's second-highest seller. It realised an incredible $1,142,500 over its original estimate of $200,000-300,000.

José Clemente Orozco's The City, based on his mixed impressions of Depression-era New York

Orozco's work was painted during his time in New York. It reveals the artist's mixed senses of celebration and ambiguity over the city's new skyscrapers, in an aesthetically jarring work also influenced by the Stock Market Crash of 1929.

There were no hints of a financial crash at Christie's successful auction, which was held at the Rockefeller Plaza in New York City.

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 www.paulfrasercollectibles.com

Images: Christie's