Frida Kahlo self-portrait sells for $54.7m to set new auction record for a female artist

"A 1940 self-portrait by famed Mexican artist Frida Kahlo has sold for $54.7m (41.8m, A$84.7m) at a New York art auction, setting a new top sale price for a work by any female artist. El sueno (La cama), or The Dream (The Bed), which depicts Kahlo asleep in a bed with a smiling skeleton wrapped in dynamite on the canopy above her, sold on Thursday night at a Sotheby's auction of surrealist art after four minutes of bidding."

"The price tag, which includes fees, surpasses the record held by Georgia O'Keeffe's Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1, which sold at Sotheby's for $44.4m in 2014. Sotheby's has yet to identify the successful buyer of the painting. El sueno (La cama) was forecast to fetch between $40 and $60m. The $54.7m sale smashes the record for Latin American art previously set by Kahlo's painting Diego y Yo (Diego and I) in 2021 when it sold for $34.9m."

Frida Kahlo's 1940 self-portrait El sueno (La cama) sold for $54.7m at a Sotheby's surrealist-auction in New York after four minutes of bidding. The painting shows Kahlo asleep in a bed with a smiling skeleton wrapped in dynamite on the canopy above her. The sale, including fees, surpassed Georgia O'Keeffe's record and broke the Latin American art record, exceeding Kahlo's Diego y Yo, which sold for $34.9m in 2021. The work remained in private hands outside Mexico and is legally eligible for international sale. Some historians raised cultural concerns and feared the painting could vanish from public view. Kahlo depicted herself and life events boldly after a bus accident at 18.

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