A self-portrait by legendary Mexican artist Frida Kahlo sold for $54.66 million (\u20ac47.34m ) in New York yesterday, setting a new record for the price of a painting by a woman, the auction house Sotheby’s said.<\/p>\n
The sale of Ms Kahlo’s 1940 artwork, titled “El sue\u00f1o (La cama)” – which translates to “The dream (The bed)” – 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 $44.4m in 2014.<\/p>\n
Ms Kahlo’s painting is “the most valuable work by a woman artist ever sold at auction,” Sotheby’s said in a post on X.<\/p>\n
The auction house said Ms Kahlo’s work was “painted in 1940 during a pivotal decade in her career, marked by her turbulent relationship with Diego Rivera”.<\/p>\n
Ms Kahlo’s self-portrait went on the auction block at Sotheby’s with an estimated price ranging from $40m to $60m.<\/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 Ms Kahlo “merges folkloric motifs from Mexican culture with European surrealism,” Anna Di Stasi, head of Latin American art at Sotheby’s, said.<\/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 $236.4m on the block – the second most expensive artwork ever sold at auction.<\/p>\n
Mr 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 $450m in 2017.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A self-portrait by legendary Mexican artist Frida Kahlo sold for $54.66 million (\u20ac47.34m ) in New York yesterday,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":151759,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[307,304,305,306,308,93,61,60],"class_list":{"0":"post-151758","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-artsdesign","12":"tag-design","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-ie","15":"tag-ireland"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151758"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151758\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/151759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}