Frida Kahlo’s self-portrait sells for $55 million, sets record for female artist at auction
A 1940s surrealist painting by Frida Kahlo has sold for $54.7 million (£41.8 million), breaking the auction record for a work of art by a female artist.
The painting sold for more than 1,000 times its original price in 1980, after a tense bidding battle between two collectors, according to auction house Sotheby’s.
The auction also broke the previous record for the highest amount paid for a Kahlo portrait, selling for $34.9 million in 2021.
The work – titled El sueño (la cama), which translates to The Dream (The Bed) – depicts Kahlo asleep in a four-poster bed beneath a skeleton entwined with dynamite.
It is one of the Mexican artist’s most “psychologically charged” self-portraits, Sotheby’s said, and was painted during a turbulent chapter in Kahlo’s life – the year of her former lover’s assassination and shortly after her divorce and remarriage.
Kahlo, who died in 1954, is widely considered one of the greatest painters of the last century and became known for her personal portraits.
Her work often reflected her painful relationship with her body, disabled by polio as a child and serious injuries following a bus accident.
Few could have imagined that El sueño (la cama) would sell for $55 million when it first sold at Sotheby’s in 1980 for $51,000, said Anna Di Stasi, the auction house’s head of Latin American art.
“This record result shows how far we have come, not only in our appreciation of the genius of Frida Kahlo, but also in the recognition of women artists at the highest levels of the market,” she added.
El sueño (la cama) is one of the few Kahlo paintings on public markets since Mexican authorities declared her works as artistic monuments in the 1980s, preventing their unauthorized export.
Kahlo’s story was adapted into a biographical film starring Salma Hayek in 2002, telling the story of her difficult relationship with her husband, artist Diego Rivera, and her injuries.
The previous highest price at auction for a work by a female artist was Georgia O’Keeffe’s Jimson Weed/White Flower No.1, which sold at Sotheby’s in 2014 for $44 million.
