Frida Kahlo’s self-portrait “El Sueno” (“The Dream”) set a new record at Sotheby’s on Thursday, becoming the most expensive work by a female artist ever auctioned.
The 1940 painting, which depicted Kahlo sleeping on a bed floating among clouds, sold for $54.7 million (€47 million), more than the $44.4 million paid at Sotheby’s for Georgia O’Keeffe’s “Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1” in 2014.
The piece was one of the few works of Kahlo still in private hands outside Mexico, where her art is preserved as a national treasure.
The painting, housed in an undisclosed private collection, was legally eligible for international sale.
The name of the buyer was not disclosed.
Prices for Frida Kahlo’s works have risen steadily.
“El Sueño” was painted during a turning point in Kahlo’s life, shaped by health problems from an earlier illness and accident and the turmoil of her divorce and remarriage to Diego Rivera in 1940.
At the age of six she contracted polio, and at the age of 18 she was so seriously injured in a streetcar accident that she had to wear a steel and leather corset for the rest of her life.
Frida Kahlo, confined to bed after the accident, began painting to pass the time.
This was the beginning of a phenomenal career that made her Mexico’s most famous artist.
“I never dreamed,” she once said. “I painted my own reality.”
Thursday’s sale also topped Kahlo’s own auction record for a work by a Latin American artist.
A painting depicting Kahlo and her husband sold for $34.9 million in 2021, the previous highest price paid for her work, although her paintings have reportedly been sold privately for even higher prices.
The most expensive painting ever sold at auction is Leonardo da Vinci’s “Salvator Mundi”, which was purchased for $450 million in 2017.
Edited by: Shawn Sinko