"Frida Kahlo's self-portrait "El Sueno" ("The Dream") set a new record at Sotheby's on Thursday, 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 $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." The piece was one of the few Kahlo works still in private hands outside Mexico, where her art is protected as a national treasure."
"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 six 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. Confined to bed after the accident, Frida Kahlo began painting to pass the time."
The 1940 self-portrait "El Sueno (The Dream)" sold at Sotheby's for $54.7 million, establishing a new auction record for a work by a female artist and surpassing the previous high of $44.4 million. The painting depicts Kahlo asleep in a bed floating among clouds and was one of the few of her works in private hands outside Mexico; it was legally eligible for international sale and held in an undisclosed private collection. The sale also exceeded Kahlo's prior Latin American artist record. Kahlo painted amid serious health struggles, including polio and a major streetcar accident, which led her to begin painting while confined to bed.
Read at www.dw.com
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