"Frida Kahlo's self-portrait "El Sueno," or "The Dream," set a new record at Sotheby's on Thursday by becoming the most expensive work by a female artist ever auctioned. The 1940 painting, showing Kahlo asleep in a bed floating among clouds, sold for for $54.7 million (47 million), surpassing the $44.4 million paid at Sotheby's in 2014 for Georgia O'Keeffe's "Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1.""
"'El sueno' was painted during a turning point in Kahlo's life, shaped by health problems from an earlier illness and accident and the upheaval of her divorce and remarriage to Diego Rivera in 1940. She contracted polio at the age of 6 and was injured so severely in a streetcar accident at 18 that she had to wear steel and leather corsets for the rest of her life."
Frida Kahlo's 1940 self-portrait 'El Sueno' depicts the artist asleep in a bed floating among clouds and sold at Sotheby's for $54.7 million, setting a new auction record for a female artist. The sale exceeded the previous high for Georgia O'Keeffe's "Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1" and reflects rising market values for Kahlo's work. The painting was one of the few Kahlo pieces still in private hands outside Mexico and was legally eligible for international sale from an undisclosed private collection. Kahlo painted during a pivotal year marked by illness, accident, divorce, and remarriage, with early polio and a severe streetcar injury shaping her confinement and turn to painting.
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