Frida Kahlo painting sells at auction for record $8m

A painting by Frida Kahlo depicting two nude women sold in New York for a record $8 million, the highest price yet for any work by the iconic Mexican artist, Christie's said.

The 1939 painting "Two Nudes in the Forest (The Earth Itself)" was estimated to be worth $8 to $12 million. Despite selling at the bottom of that range, it surpassed the previous auction record for Kahlo.

In 2006, her painting "Roots" sold for $5.6 million during a Sotheby's auction in New York.

Kahlo (1907-1954) was the first Latin-American artist to cross the million-dollar threshold when her painting "Diego y Yo" went for $1.4 million in 1990.

Her personality, style and relatively small number of works have made her one of the most sought-after Latin American artists for decades.

The price of sale Thursday, $8.005 million to be exact, is also a record for any Latin American artist at auction, Christie's said.

The painting is slated to appear in the exposition "Paint the Revolution: Mexican Modernism, 1910-1950," which opens in October at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

The same exposition is set to be shipped in 2017 to the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City, where visitors will be able to view the painting.

Thursday's sale was the last big event of spring auction week in New York.

Among other notable sales were Claude Monet's "Pond with Water Lilies" (1919), which sold for $27.04 million and Amedeo Modigliani's "Young Woman with Rose (Margherita)" (1916), which went for $12.76 million.