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Tom Gurney BSc (Hons) is an art history expert with over 20 years experience
Page created on March 2, 2018 / Page updated on October 6, 2026
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Introduction

Frida Kahlo painted her younger sister Cristina in 1928, presenting her seated and still against a spare blue-grey setting. The portrait is a family likeness, but it is also an exercise in carefully controlled shape and scale: a small tree stands at a distance while a much larger leafy branch presses into the foreground. Those features can be seen without deciding that the sitter or the plants carry a single hidden meaning. [1] [2]

The work passed from Kahlo to Cristina and then through her family before entering the auction record. It appeared again at Christie’s in New York in 2023, where its sale brought an old claim that it was still in a Caracas collection into question. Some of the basic published information is surprisingly unsettled, including its measurements, so this article distinguishes what the sources actually record from what remains to be verified. [1] [3]

At a Glance

  • Artist and sitter: Frida Kahlo and her younger sister Cristina Kahlo. [1] [2]
  • Date and inscription: Painted in 1928; Christie’s catalogues a lower-right signature and date reading “FRIEDA KAHLO, 1928.” [1]
  • Medium: Oil on panel in the 2023 auction catalogue; the Museo Frida Kahlo item describes oil on wood. [1] [2]
  • Published size: Christie’s gives 79.8 × 60.3 cm, while an older Kettenmann caption gives 99 × 81.5 cm. Christie’s printed inch measurement for the height is itself inconsistent with its metric figure. [1] [3]
  • Family and later ownership: Recorded by Christie’s as a gift from Kahlo to Cristina, then inherited by Cristina’s daughter Isolda; the buyer at the 2023 sale is not named. [1]
  • Spanish title: Retrato de Cristina, mi hermana in the Museo Frida Kahlo’s contributed object record. [2]

Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. What the Portrait Shows
  3. A Sister and an Early Portrait
  4. Style, Influence and Interpretation
  5. Why Published Measurements Differ
  6. From Family Gift to Public Record
  7. Looking Beyond the Later Story
  8. Related Reading

What the Portrait Shows

Cristina sits close to the picture plane, her body turned slightly while her face looks outward. Her dark, close-cut hair frames a composed expression; a pale sleeveless dress and the meeting of her hands low in front of her organise the figure into clear, restrained shapes. The background offers little narrative setting, making the silhouette, dress and gaze unusually important to the picture’s effect. [1] [3]

Vegetation interrupts that restraint. A thin tree appears small and distant near the lower part of the background, whereas a dense branch enters from the right at a much larger scale. Andrea Kettenmann called attention to this contrast in her Spanish discussion of the painting, reading it as a means of constructing depth within otherwise rigid contours. The spatial contrast is visible; the reason Kahlo chose these particular plants is not documented by the sources inspected here. [3]

The outer edge of the painted scene also matters. Abby McEwen’s 2023 Christie’s essay describes the panel as inserted into a stretcher frame and says the composition continues beyond it, connecting this device with older portrait traditions. The published front image lets a viewer see an unusual relation between the inner pictorial field and its border, but it does not independently settle how the structure was made or altered. A conservation report would be needed before making a technical claim about the frame, panel or sequence of construction. [1]

Watch: Frida Kahlo

Five perspectives to view here alongside the article.

Frida Kahlo’s The Two Fridas: Great Art Explained

Great Art Explained

A focused visual introduction to the painting and its context.

A Sister and an Early Portrait

The portrait belongs to a period in which Kahlo was painting people she knew. Christie’s places Cristina alongside other late-1920s portraits of family members and acquaintances, including Portrait of Alicia Galant and Portrait of Dorothy Fox Brown. That grouping helps show why the painting should be studied as a portrait in its own right, not merely as an illustration of Kahlo’s later reputation or family drama. [1]

Christie’s provenance begins with a gift from the artist to her sitter. It does not say on what day the painting changed hands, whether it marked an occasion, or whether Cristina had requested it. The documented gift creates a direct relationship between maker, subject and first owner, but no letter from 1928 has been found here to explain what either sister thought the work meant. [1]

Spanish scholar Jesús González Fisac approaches early Kahlo portraits through the way faces, necklines and garments shape one another. He specifically includes Cristina’s 1928 likeness among portraits in which the neckline seems to lengthen and visually isolate the face; the visible meeting of her hands adds another formal point of attention below. His reading is an argument about how the portrait is organised, not evidence that Cristina’s expression encodes a particular feeling or that Kahlo planned a later biographical allegory. [8]

Their later correspondence gives a modest, firmer glimpse of the relationship without answering that earlier question. In letters to their mother from 1930 and 1931, Kahlo asks after “Kitty” and her child and wishes that “Cristi” would write more often. The National Museum of Women in the Arts’ January 1931 transcription uses those two forms in the same request about family letters, making the nickname connection especially clear. These are records of family contact years after the picture was painted; they are not a key to a secret message in the portrait. [4] [5]

Style, Influence and Interpretation

Two published readings of the picture’s style point in different directions. Kettenmann sees hard contours and the landscape devices as evidence of Diego Rivera’s influence on Kahlo around 1928–29. In the 2023 lot essay, McEwen instead transmits Luis-Martín Lozano’s comparison with the precise, cool portraiture associated with Germany’s New Objectivity and Christian Schad. Such comparisons describe possible artistic conversations; neither source supplies a statement by Kahlo saying which model she followed for this portrait. [1] [3]

McEwen’s essay also draws on Lozano’s account of Kahlo learning to handle retouching and light and shade in her father Guillermo’s photographic studio. That background can help explain the interest in precise portrait surfaces, but it does not prove that Cristina sat for a photograph used here. No particular source photograph has been securely linked to this panel, and Christie’s quotations from the 2021 TASCHEN catalogue do not establish the contents of its full portrait entry. [1]

The branch and tree have generated more symbolic readings. Lozano, quoted by Christie’s, identifies grapefruit foliage and connects the vegetation with the Tree of Knowledge and Eve. This is a named interpretation rather than a botanical determination or a declaration of Kahlo’s intent. A viewer can consider it alongside the more immediate visual facts—the large branch near the sitter, the small tree behind her and their striking difference in scale—without treating the biblical analogy as compulsory. [1] [3]

One further move needs particular care. The Christie’s essay relates its Eve reading to Cristina’s later affair with Rivera, which occurred years after the portrait was made. A later event may affect how people subsequently respond to an earlier image, but it cannot show that Kahlo foresaw or encoded that event in 1928. This portrait should not be reduced to a retrospective story of betrayal; its sitter, composition and original family setting come first. [1]

Why Published Measurements Differ

Christie’s 2023 object line calls the painting oil on panel and gives a size of 79.8 × 60.3 cm. It also prints 31⅞ × 23¾ inches, but 31⅞ inches converts to about 81.0 cm, not 79.8 cm. The width conversion is close to the published 60.3 cm. Thus even within the recent catalogue, the height is not given in fully consistent units. [1]

An older caption in Kettenmann’s Spanish book lists oil on wood and 99 × 81.5 cm, together with an Otto Atencio Troconis collection credit in Caracas. That is substantially larger than either height in the recent Christie’s line, and neither publication explains the difference. The catalogue essay’s description of an inserted panel and surrounding frame raises a possible measurement question, but it does not say that one figure includes the frame and the other does not. Until a registrar or conservation record reconciles the numbers, it is more accurate to identify the sources and their dates than to choose an unexplained “true” size. [1] [3]

The medium descriptions are less starkly opposed: “oil on panel” and the Museo Frida Kahlo’s Spanish “oil on wood” both describe a rigid support. Neither is an analysis of wood species, preparation or condition. Such technical matters should not be inferred from an auction photograph, including the reverse image whose labels are not legible enough here to transcribe. [1] [2]

Portrait of Cristina, My Sister in Kahlo’s career

Timeline source: Museo Frida Kahlo chronology [9].

From Family Gift to Public Record

The latest detailed provenance starts with Cristina and says the painting passed to her daughter Isolda around 1964. Christie’s then records New York sales in 1985, 1988 and 2001, followed by acquisition by the late Jerry Moss at the 2001 sale. A contemporary Artnet report independently places the portrait in that 2001 auction and records a sale result of $1,655,750. The identity of intermediate private owners is not supplied in the inspected catalogue, so this is a sequence of documented transfer points rather than a complete day-by-day custody history. [1] [6]

The portrait was not wholly hidden from public view while it remained in private hands. Christie’s lists a 1977 Palacio de Bellas Artes exhibition in Mexico City, a 1978 United States tour and the 2007–08 Kahlo exhibition that travelled through Minneapolis, Philadelphia and San Francisco. Those entries are useful evidence of a documented exhibition history, although the original checklists have not been independently examined for this article. [1]

The same lot entry provides a trail through printed scholarship, including the 1988 catalogue raisonné and the 2021 TASCHEN catalogue of Kahlo’s paintings. It identifies entries for this portrait but does not reproduce their full text. The older Kettenmann caption’s Caracas owner label can therefore be understood as a historical catalogue statement; the later sequence does not justify presenting that city or collector as the portrait’s current home. [1] [3]

At Christie’s on 9 November 2023, the painting realised US$8.23 million. That figure records a market event, not the reason the portrait matters as art. The buyer was not identified in the sources inspected for this article, and no current display site is established. “Private collection” is a cautious description of its present public status, not an invitation to invent a new location. [1] [7]

Looking Beyond the Later Story

Portrait of Cristina, My Sister is unusually rich precisely because its evidence does not collapse into one explanation. A sitter and a dated family gift are secure; the visual contrast of near and far vegetation is available to every viewer; scholars have offered distinct stylistic and symbolic readings. The later ownership, exhibitions and auction records show the picture’s changing public life, while its exact measurements and present whereabouts remain more qualified than a simple object card might suggest. [1] [2] [3]

Keeping those layers apart allows the painting to remain an early portrait rather than a prophecy of later conflict or a trophy of the art market. The strongest reading begins with Cristina as Kahlo painted her in 1928, then considers what later documents and interpreters can—and cannot—add. [1]

The Frida Kahlo overview places this portrait in her wider career. Kahlo’s family and childhood gives more context for the sisters, while photography considers an influence that should not be confused with an identified source photograph for this picture. The collections and provenance article explores the wider question of where Kahlo’s works are held.

Discussion

Use the cited evidence and your own close looking to explain your view. The prompts below are starting points, not fixed interpretations.

Reader Insights

Close Looking

What can the sitter, hands and contrasting plants tell us before a symbol is assigned?

Context

How do a family gift and later letters illuminate different periods without revealing Kahlo's 1928 intentions?

Open Question

Why should conflicting catalogue measurements remain visible instead of being silently reconciled?

Join the Conversation

Which reading best fits the evidence, and where does uncertainty remain?

References

  1. Christie’s, Frida Kahlo, Portrait of Cristina, My Sister, New York evening sale, lot 9B, 9 November 2023, object details and Abby McEwen essay, especially provenance, literature, exhibition and interpretation sections. The full 1988 and 2021 catalogue entries cited there have not been read here. View source text.
  2. Museo Frida Kahlo, contributed object record, Retrato de Cristina, mi hermana, via Google Arts & Culture, identifying the 1928 oil-on-wood picture and private-collection status. “Courtesy of Sotheby’s” is an image credit, not an ownership claim. View source text.
  3. Andrea Kettenmann, Frida Kahlo: Dolor y pasión, Spanish edition, PDF p. 18 (printed p. 15) for the reproduced plate and formal discussion; PDF p. 97 (printed p. 94) for the historic 99 × 81.5 cm and Caracas catalogue caption. Only these relevant pages were directly read, not the complete monograph. View source text.
  4. National Museum of Women in the Arts, Kahlo to Matilde Calderón de Kahlo, 30 January 1931, Spanish transcription, pages 1–2, on Kitty/Cristi and family correspondence. View source text.
  5. National Museum of Women in the Arts, Kahlo to Matilde Calderón de Kahlo, 10 November 1930, Spanish transcription, p. 5, on Kitty and her daughter; and 18 December 1931, pp. 1 and 7–8, on Cristi/Kitty letters. These are later family records, not evidence of 1928 intent. and. View source text 1; View source text 2.
  6. Artnet, “Kahlo Tops at Sotheby’s Latin American,” contemporary June 2001 auction report, naming the portrait and $1,655,750 result. View source text.
  7. Christie’s, “Tamara de Lempicka and Frida Kahlo: the Jerry Moss Collection,” 2023 sale report, confirming the dated realised-price context. View source text.
  8. Jesús González Fisac, “Frida Kahlo: (auto) retrato y devenir-rostro,” Fedro: Revista de Estética y Teoría de las Artes 9 (2010), pp. 51–53, identifying Cristina's portrait in a formal discussion of face, neckline and hands. The author-uploaded full text was read; the journal's article page did not load. View source text.
  9. Museo Frida Kahlo, Frida interactive chronology, selected work dates used for the comparison timeline. The current work's date follows its cited object record. View source text.