Frida Kahlo Painting Sells at Sotheby's for $54.7 M., a Record for a Woman Artist at Auction

"Frida Kahlo's 1940 self-portrait El sueño (La cama) sold for $54.7 million on November 20. The painting was part of a Sotheby's sale of Surrealist art in New York. Because the painting had a pre-sale estimate of $40 million to $60 million, it was all but guaranteed to break Kahlo's auction record of $34.9 million, set at Sotheby's New York in 2021 for the 1949 painting Diego y yo."

"It was discussed in depth by art historian Whitney Chadwick by her landmark 1985 book Women Artists and the Surrealist Movement, which centered women within a movement that had previously sidelined them long before that was fashionable. Chadwick noted that the skeleton is lined with explosives and wires, hinting at the possibility of destruction, and that the work evinces Kahlo's "identification with the Mexican belief in the indivisible unity of life and death.""

Frida Kahlo's 1940 self-portrait El sueño (La cama) sold for $54.7 million at Sotheby's New York on November 20, setting new auction records for Kahlo and for a woman artist. The painting carried a pre-sale estimate of $40–$60 million and hammered at $47 million before buyer's premiums raised the total to $54.7 million. Sotheby's senior vice president Anna Di Stasi secured the work for a phone bidder. The painting was consigned by the estate of Selma Ertegun. The work depicts Kahlo reclining on a floating bed with a skeleton; the skeleton is lined with explosives and wires and evokes the Mexican belief in the unity of life and death. Kahlo maintained a vexed relationship with the male-dominated Surrealist movement.

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