Sotheby’s Sales 2021 Break All Records in 277 Year History

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Patti xo

COPYRIGHT 2007-2021 Patti Friday All photographs, works of art and words are original content, unless specified otherwise. All rights reserved. Patti Friday: Reporting from inside 'The Art Dept.' at the international 'Embassy of Ideas' I am an Artist who carries a paintbrush, camera and notebook. Instagram: @pattifriday

Photog Crush: Ishiuchi Miyako

Ishiuchi Miyako – 2014 Hasselblad Award Winner

During a period of 35 years Ishiuchi Miyako has established an international career, which is both impressive and highly significant. Her strength of character and uncompromising vision has resulted in some of the most powerful as well as personal representations of postwar Japan. Ishiuchi Miyako's work is extremely coherent and developing in a determined and distinctive way; using the camera and all of its aesthetic potential to investigate the intersection of the political and the personal aspects of memory Ishiuchi Miyako has been both a pioneer and a role model for younger artists, not least as a woman working in the male-dominated field of Japanese photography. She has continued to innovate, explore and agitate throughout her career, both in terms of ideas and of her style and approach.

After Frida Kahlo’s death in 1954, her husband Diego Rivera shut her belongings in a bathroom at their Mexico City home, the Blue House, the marvelous house they shared—and then insisted that it be locked up until 15 years after his death (which, in the event, happened in 1957). In fact, the room wasn’t opened until 2004, when Ishiuchi Miyako was given permission to photograph its intimate contents. The photographs will be on display at the Michael Hoppen Gallery in London from 
May 14 through July 12.

Patti Friday, reporting from inside 'The Art Dept.' at the international 'Embassy of Ideas'

Frida Kahlo's Newly Discovered Love Letters Auction

You know that spare $100,000.00 you have kicking around?

I know what you can buy today.

Frida's Love Letters.

Bid Form Here

My Bartoli…I don’t know how to write love letters. 

But I wanted to tell you that my whole being opened for you. 

Since I fell in love with you everything is transformed and is full of beauty…. 

love is like an aroma, like a current, like rain. 

You know, my sky, you rain on me and I, like the earth, receive you.

- Frida Kahlo, October 1946

Lot 231 KAHLO, FRIDA 

An important unpublished archive of approximately twenty-five autograph letters to Jose Bartoli, with photographs and various enclosures. 

Mostly Coyoacan, Mexico: 1946-49. The archive comprising approximately twenty-five autograph letters in Spanish from Kahlo to Bartoli ranging from 2 to 12 pages in length, variously written in colored inks and in pencil, many on a very thin paper, with various enclosures including an original drawing of a sleeping cat, pressed flowers, pieces of ribbon, beads, a few enclosed with drafts of letters in Bartoli's hand with numerous cross-outs, edits and one drawing, each letter with its original or early envelope, most stamped and postmarked. Also included are a fine group of vintage photographs and color slides depicting Kahlo (several by Nickolas Muray) including one with an important inscription by Kahlo relating to her 1946 painting Tree of Hope. Finally, a 1958 letter from Ella Wolf to Bartoli is also present which encloses several photographs of Bartoli.

The letters in an excellent state of preservation, usual folds, the letters and envelopes handled and with occasional creases, short tears, or misfolding, a few stamps excised from the envelopes, the photographs lightly handled and creased. 
Provenance: 
Jose Bartoli, by descent within the family to the current owner 

A rare unpublished archive from one of the 20th century's most important artists. Poetically composed with a touch of Kahlo's characteristic surrealism, the letters contain illuminating content on important paintings including her 1946 Tree of Hope, an unknown pregnancy, her post-surgery relationship with Diego Rivera, personal and professional struggles, and her unwavering love for Bartoli. For a synopsis of each letter in the lot, please contact the Book Department. 

C  
Estimate $80,000-120,000 

Patti Friday, reporting from inside 'The Art Dept.' at the international 'Embassy of Ideas'

Rare Photos of Frida Kahlo From the Last Years of Her Life

In 1950, photographer Gisèle Freund embarked on a two-week trip to Mexico, but she wouldn’t leave until two years later. There she met the legendary couple Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera.

 Welcomed into their home, she immersed herself in their private lives and the cultural and artistic diversity of the country, taking hundreds of photographs. These powerful photographs, among the last taken before Kahlo’s death, bear poignant witness to Frida’s beauty and talent.

Showcasing more than 100 of these rare images, many of which have never been published before, the book also includes previously unpublished commentary by Gisèle Freund about Frida Kahlo, texts by Kahlo’s biographer Gérard de Cortanze and art historian Lorraine Audric, as well as a link to a previously unreleased color film, shot by Freund, showing Diego Rivera at work.

Order your copy here.

Patti Friday, reporting from inside 'The Art Dept.' at the international 'Embassy of Ideas'