The night started with a sale of 13 lots from the estate of the late Chicagoan collectors Cindy and Jay Pritzker that surpassed Sotheby's high estimate of $88.5.m to bring in $91.7m ($109.5m with fees). A stellar group of 24 works by Surrealist heavy-hitters from an unnamed collection (marketed as "Exquisite Corpus") followed, generating $81.9m ($98m with fees), squarely within the group's estimate range ($66.7m-$98.9m).
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 monument. This painting, held in an undisclosed private collection, was legally eligible for international sale.
With an estimated price of $40 million to $60 million, "El sueño (La cama)" - in English, "The Dream (The Bed)" - may surpass the top price for a work by any female artist when it goes under the hammer. That record currently stands at $44.4 million, paid at Sotheby's in 2014 for Georgia O'Keeffe's "Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1."
"This museum was home to the Kahlo family for four generations; we open it to share our legacy." Thus reads a sign at the entrance of Museo Casa Kahlo, a new institution dedicated to Frida Kahlo that opened on 27 September. Memories, family ties and storytelling shape the intimate space, located a five-minute walk from Casa Azul in Mexico City's Coyoacán neighbourhood-Kahlo's central pilgrimage enclave.
