A self-portrait by renowned Mexican artist Frida Kahlo from 1940 was auctioned in New York for $54.7 million US ($77 million Cdn), setting a new record as the highest sale price for a piece by any female artist. The painting, titled “El sueño (La cama)” or “The Dream (The Bed)” shows Kahlo asleep in a bed, surpassing the previous record held by Georgia O’Keeffe’s artwork “Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1” sold for $44.4 million US in 2014.
The highest amount paid at an auction for Kahlo’s work was $34.9 million US ($43.7 million Cdn) in 2021 for “Diego and I,” a painting depicting the artist and her husband, Diego Rivera. While her paintings have reportedly fetched even higher prices in private sales, this self-portrait is among the rare Kahlo pieces that have stayed in private hands outside Mexico. Kahlo’s body of work in Mexico has been declared an artistic monument, preventing public and private collections within the country from being sold abroad or destroyed.
The painting comes from an undisclosed private collection and can legally be sold internationally. The sale has attracted scrutiny from some art historians for cultural reasons, with concerns raised that the painting, last publicly exhibited in the late 1990s, could once again disappear from public view post-auction. Requests for upcoming exhibitions in cities like New York, London, and Brussels have already been made.
The artwork portrays Kahlo asleep in a colonial-style bed suspended in the clouds, draped in a golden blanket and surrounded by crawling vines and leaves. Above the bed hovers a skeleton figure wrapped in dynamite. Kahlo, known for vividly depicting events from her tumultuous life, began painting after a bus accident at 18, endured multiple surgeries, and explored her mortality during years of bedridden confinement until her death at 47.
The self-portrait is the highlight of a sale featuring over 100 surrealist works by artists such as Salvador Dalí, René Magritte, Max Ernst, and Dorothea Tanning. Kahlo resisted being classified as a surrealist, emphasizing that she painted her own reality rather than dreams. Sotheby’s noted in its catalogue that the painting symbolizes a contemplation of the fine line between sleep and death, reflecting Kahlo’s anxiety about dying in her sleep due to chronic pain and past trauma she experienced.
