Frida Kahlo Breaks World Auction Record

A Frida Kahlo painting sets an auction record for a woman and a Latin American artist

New York (AFP) – A self-portrait by Mexican artist Frida Kahlo sold for $54.6 million at auction in New York on Thursday, making it the most expensive painting ever sold by a woman and a Latin American artist, Sotheby's reported.

The painting, titled "The Dream (The Bed)," from 1940, surpassed the record held by American artist Georgia O'Keeffe, whose painting fetched $44.4 million in 2014.

The price achieved on Thursday is also an all-time high for a work by any Latin American artist, male or female. The previous record was held by Kahlo herself with the self-portrait "Diego and I," which sold at Sotheby's in 2021 for $34.9 million.

"The Dream (The Bed)" is "the most valuable work by a female artist ever sold at auction," the auction house highlighted on social media.

The work was "painted in 1940 during a crucial decade in her career, marked by her turbulent relationship with Diego Rivera," the famous Mexican muralist.

The self-portrait went up for auction with an estimated price of between $40 and $60 million.

The buyer's name was not revealed.

The painting depicts the artist sleeping in a bed that appears to float in the sky. Above the canopy lies a massive skeleton with its legs wrapped in dynamite.

"Magnificent iconography"

This painting by Kahlo is a "very personal" image, in which the artist "fuses folkloric motifs from Mexican culture with European surrealism," Anna Di Stasi, head of Latin American art at Sotheby's, explained to AFP.

Pain and death have always been central elements in her work. Throughout her life, Frida Kahlo struggled with fragile health, marked by childhood polio and a serious bus accident in 1925.

Kahlo, who died at age 47 in 1954, "did not agree" with her work being associated with the Surrealist movement, the expert added.

But "in light of this magnificent iconography, it seems entirely appropriate to include her" in this movement, Di Stasi opined.

The painting was presented by the renowned auction house at its new flagship location in New York, the Breuer Building, a modernist Manhattan building that reopened to the public after having been part of the Whitney Museum for many years.

The most expensive works by women artists sold to date are primarily by major figures of the 20th century.

In addition to Georgia O'Keeffe's previous record, the next highest price is held by a giant spider sculpture by French sculptor and artist Louise Bourgeois, which sold for $32.5 million in 2023.

The record sale of Kahlo's work came two nights after the New York auction house set another record, with a painting by Austrian artist Gustav Klimt fetching $236.4 million.

It depicts the daughter of the painter's main patron in a white Chinese imperial dress, standing in front of a blue tapestry with Asian-inspired motifs.

The most expensive painting ever sold at auction remains "Salvator Mundi," attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, which sold for $450 million in 2017.

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