Frida Kahlo’s self-portrait sets record with $54.7 million sale at Sotheby’s

New York: A rare 1940 self-portrait by Frida Kahlo has become the most expensive artwork by a female artist ever sold at auction, fetching $54.7 million (over ₹48 million) at Sotheby’s here on Thursday.

‘El sueño (La cama)’, alternatively titled ‘The Dream (The Bed)’ in English, depicts the Mexican painter asleep in a floating colonial-style bed, draped in gold and entwined with vines, while a skeleton wrapped in dynamite hovers above. The haunting work surpassed the previous auction record held by Georgia O’Keeffe’s Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1, which sold for $44.4 million in 2014.

The sale also broke Kahlo’s own auction record for a Latin American artist. Her 1949 work ‘Diego and I’ sold for $34.9 million in 2021. Some of Kahlo’s paintings are believed to have changed hands privately for even higher sums.

Because most of Kahlo’s oeuvre in Mexico has been declared part of the country’s artistic heritage, the majority of her works cannot be exported or sold abroad. ‘El sueño (La cama)’ is one of the few pieces to remain in private hands outside Mexico and is legally permitted for international sale. 

Art historians have expressed mixed views about the auction. Some have raised cultural concerns, while others fear the work. Last shown publicly in the late 1990s, it may again vanish from view. Requests have already been made for future exhibitions in New York, London and Brussels. The buyer’s identity remains undisclosed.

Kahlo’s work is inseparable from the physical suffering that shaped her life. Severely injured in a bus crash at the age of 18, she endured repeated surgeries and long periods confined to bed, where she began painting. For Kahlo, the bed became a symbolic threshold between life and death, a theme vividly present in the newly sold portrait.

Speaking ahead of the auction, Kahlo’s great-niece, Mara Romeo Kahlo, reflected on the artist’s enduring appeal.

“I'm very proud that she's one of the most valued women, because really, what woman doesn't identify with Frida, or what person doesn't?” she said. “I think everyone carries a little piece of my aunt in their heart.”

The painting headlined a wider sale of more than 100 surrealist works by artists including Salvador Dalí, René Magritte, Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning. Kahlo herself famously rejected the surrealist label, remarking, “I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality.”

In its catalogue, Sotheby’s described the work as “a spectral meditation on the porous boundary between sleep and death,” suggesting the suspended skeleton reflects Kahlo’s fear of dying in her sleep, a fear made plausible by a life marked by chronic pain.

The auction followed another major sale earlier in the week. Gustav Klimt’s ‘Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer’ achieved $236.4 million, becoming one of the most expensive artworks ever sold at auction, second only to Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi at $450 million. AP