![\"Frida](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/\/1d65a8b8-b662-4c6b-8ca1-48bd24619cb9.jpg\")
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Kahlo\u2019s painting will be sold by Sotheby\u2019s in New York November<\/p>\n
ELLIOTT FRANKS<\/p>\n
Demand for Kahlo\u2019s paintings has grown enormously in the past two decades. With the supply restricted by Mexico\u2019s refusal to let them leave the country, they are snapped up fast when they appear on the private market.<\/p>\n
Julian Dawes, a vice-chairman of Sotheby\u2019s, said he knew of \u201cthree or four\u201d private sales of Kahlo\u2019s paintings for \u201cin excess of $50 million\u201d.<\/p>\n
He also confirmed that a Kahlo<\/a> self-portrait had been sold on the private market for more than $130 million in the past five years. It seems to confirm speculation that Me and My Parrot (1941) had been privately sold for that sum to an Asian collector.<\/p>\n \u2022 The scandal of the missing Frida Kahlo masterpieces<\/a><\/p>\n The record sale price for one of Kahlo\u2019s works was set four years ago when Diego y yo (1949) \u2014 a self-portrait with her husband\u2019s face in the middle of her forehead \u2014 was bought for $35 million<\/a>.<\/p>\n Dawes said \u201ca fundamentally rare energy and mood\u201d entered the market when they appeared.<\/p>\n \u201cBut they have always been scarce,\u201d he said. \u201cThere just has not been any major oil painting [to appear] outside of Mexico<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cAny Frida Kahlo that is in Mexico by law cannot leave so the number of Fridas is quite small, the number of self-portraits even smaller, and the number that are not in museum collections infinitesimally smaller.\u201d<\/p>\n Kahlo, who died in 1954 aged 47, was relatively unknown in her lifetime but has since become a national icon in Mexico and popular around the world. Twenty years ago Tate Modern held the first major exhibition in Britain devoted to Kahlo\u2019s work, saying that she was \u201cnow regarded as one of the most significant artists of the 20th century\u201d.<\/p>\n In its description of El Sue\u00f1o (La Cama), Sotheby\u2019s said it was \u201ca work of profound intimacy and symbolic power \u2026 painted during a year of intense personal trauma and creative renewal\u201d.<\/p>\n It was painted the same year her former lover, the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky, was assassinated in Mexico City and \u201cin the turbulent aftermath of her divorce, and eventual remarriage, to Diego Rivera\u201d. Kahlo spent much of her life in chronic pain<\/a> after a childhood bout of polio, a bus crash and a number of operations on her spine.<\/p>\n Kahlo with her husband, Diego Rivera, the renowned Mexican muralist<\/p>\n EVERETT\/SHUTTERSTOCK<\/p>\n It has emerged for sale at a time when interest is growing in other pioneering female surrealists<\/a> including the British-born Leonora Carrington<\/a> and the Americans Dorothea Tanning and Kay Sage.<\/p>\n Dawes said other female artists were \u201cshattering\u201d personal records, some works being sold for as much as, for example, a Salvador Dal\u00ed.<\/p>\n Prices in general are still modest compared with those of male surrealists, such as Rene Magritte whose L\u2019Empire des lumi\u00e8res was sold for $121 million at Christie\u2019s last year, not to mention the male impressionists, cubists, abstract expressionists and old masters.<\/p>\n![\"Black](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/\/746a8573-3322-4337-ae94-11138540ab46.jpg\")
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