A self-portrait by Mexican artist Frida Kahlo has sold for $US54 million ($85 million), setting a new record for the price of a painting by a woman, according to the auction house.<\/p>\n
Kahlo’s 1940 artwork, titled El sueno (la cama) \u2014 which translates to The dream (The bed) \u2014 sold in New York on Thursday.<\/p>\n
The painting breaks the previous record in this category, set by American artist Georgia O’Keeffe, whose 1932 painting Jimson Weed\/White Flower No. 1, sold for $US44.4 million in 2014.<\/p>\n
Kahlo’s painting is “the most valuable work by a woman artist ever sold at auction,” Sotheby’s Auction said in a post on X.<\/p>\n
The auction house said Kahlo’s work was “painted in 1940 during a pivotal decade in her career, marked by her turbulent relationship with Diego Rivera”.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
This picture of husband Diego Rivera still bears Frida Kahlo’s lipstick mark. (Frida Kahlo Museum: Anonymous, 1940)<\/p>\n
The record-setting sale<\/p>\n
Kahlo’s self-portrait went on the auction block at Sotheby’s with an estimated price ranging from $US40 million to $US60 million.<\/p>\n
The buyer’s name was not disclosed.<\/p>\n
The artwork depicts the artist sleeping in a bed that appears to float among clouds in the sky, laying beneath a skeleton with legs that are wrapped with sticks of dynamite.<\/p>\n
This painting is a “very personal” image, in which Kahlo “merges folkloric motifs from Mexican culture with European surrealism,” Anna Di Stasi, head of Latin American art at Sotheby’s, told AFP.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
A photograph of the young Frida Kahlo. (Frida Kahlo Museum: Guillermo Kahlo)<\/p>\n
The Mexican artist, who passed away in 1954 at the age of 47, “did not completely agree” with her work being associated with the surrealist movement, Ms Di Stasi said.<\/p>\n
However, “given this magnificent iconography, it seems entirely appropriate to include it” in this movement.<\/p>\n
The record-setting sale came two nights after the New York auction house reeled in another record sale, with a painting by Austrian artist Gustav Klimt fetching $US236.4 million on the block \u2014 the second most expensive artwork ever sold at auction.<\/p>\n
Klimt’s Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer, which he painted between 1914 and 1916, depicts the daughter of his main patron dressed in a white imperial Chinese dress, standing before a blue tapestry with Asian-inspired motifs.<\/p>\n
The most expensive painting ever sold at auction remains the Salvator Mundi, attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, which was bought for $US450 million in 2017.<\/p>\n
AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A self-portrait by Mexican artist Frida Kahlo has sold for $US54 million ($85 million), setting a new record…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":298989,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[64,2728,63,134,100234,171024,1025,33394,151256,2727],"class_list":["post-298988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-au","tag-auction","tag-australia","tag-entertainment","tag-frida-kahlo","tag-gabriel-lederer","tag-new-york","tag-painting","tag-self-portrait","tag-sothebys"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298988"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298988\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/298989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}