NEW YORK, NY.- On 22 November Sotheby’s will offer a remarkable Frida Kahlo portrait, the whereabouts of which have been unknown for decades. The only record of Niña Con Collar has been a black-and-white photograph taken by the artist’s friend Lola Álvarez Bravo who documented her early works. That picture was used as the work’s catalogue raisonné entry and has been the only documentation of the painting until now. In the summer of 2016 the work surfaced when Sotheby’s was approached by a former personal assistant of Kahlo’s who had been given the work as a keepsake by Diego Rivera the year after Kahlo’s death in 1954. Niña Con Collar will be offered as part of the Latin America: Modern Art sale with an estimate of $1.5 / 2 million.

Axel Stein, Sotheby’s Head of Latin American Art, commented: “I have known Niña Con Collar since 1988 when I saw the black and white photograph in the newly published catalogue raisonné. I never imagined it would surface and turn out to be such a beautiful and warm painting.”

With the subject’s direct stare from under her spreading monobrow and the rigid symmetry of a frontal pose, Niña Con Collar immediately recalls some of the artist’s most celebrated paintings. Indeed, with those elements as well as her dress and jewelry, Niña con collar is nothing less than the seed of many self-portraits that Kahlo will produce thereafter in her signature style.