Frida Kahlo Self-Portrait Sells for $54.7M, Sets auction Record for a Female Artist
LONDON – Frida Kahlo’s 1940 self-portrait, “El Sueño (La Cama),” sold for $54.7 million at a Sotheby’s auction in london on Tuesday, establishing a new auction record for a work by a female artist. The painting, depicting Kahlo lying in bed with a floating skeleton, is one of the few Kahlo pieces remaining in private hands outside of Mexico, where her work is considered an artistic monument and cannot be sold abroad.
The work comes from a private collection and is legally eligible for international sale. It was last publicly exhibited in the late 1990s and has been requested for upcoming exhibitions in New York, London, and Brussels.
Kahlo’s art vibrantly reflects her life, which was profoundly impacted by a bus accident at age 18, leading to chronic pain and numerous surgeries. Confined to her bed for extended periods, she viewed it as a space between worlds, exploring themes of mortality in her work.
“I never painted dreams,” kahlo once said. “I painted my own reality.”
Sotheby’s catalog note describes the painting as “a spectral meditation on the porous boundary between sleep and death,” interpreting the suspended skeleton as a visualization of kahlo’s anxiety about dying in her sleep.
The sale is part of a larger auction of more than 100 surrealist works, including pieces by Salvador Dalí, René Magritte, Max Ernst, and Dorothea Tanning. Kahlo herself resisted being labeled a surrealist.
The auction follows a critically important week for art sales in New york, where Sotheby’s sold $706 million of modern art, including a Gustav Klimt painting for $236.4 million – the second most expensive artwork sold at auction in history. Christie’s also reported $690 million in sales of 20th-century art.
