{"id":148255,"date":"2025-09-19T22:51:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-19T22:51:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/148255\/"},"modified":"2025-09-19T22:51:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-19T22:51:08","slug":"frida-kahlo-painting-could-shatter-women-artist-record-at-sothebys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/148255\/","title":{"rendered":"Frida Kahlo Painting Could Shatter Women Artist Record at Sotheby\u2019s"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tOn Friday, Sotheby\u2019s announced that it had secured a blockbuster consignment of Surrealist works, led by Frida Kahlo<\/a>\u2019s El sue\u00f1o (La cama). Carrying an estimate of $40 million to $60 million, it is all but certain not only to break Kahlo\u2019s auction record but also that of women artists more generally.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe top price <\/a>paid for a Kahlo at auction was set at Sotheby\u2019s New York in 2021, when her 1949 work Diego y yo sold for $34.9 million; the result also marked the highest price achieved for a Latin American artwork. The record for a woman artist<\/a> at auction was set at Sotheby\u2019s New York in 2014 with the $44.4 million sale of Georgia O\u2019Keeffe\u2019s Jimson Weed\/White Flower No. 1.<\/p>\n

Kahlo\u2019s 1940 self-portrait depicts the artist lying on a bed that floats against a cloudy blue sky. Her body is wrapped in curling vines, while atop the canopy bed lies a skeleton wrapped in dynamite and holding a bouquet of dried flowers. (According to Sotheby\u2019s, Kahlo did, in fact, sleep with a papier-m\u00e2ch\u00e9 skeleton on her canopy.) The work was painted at a turbulent time for the artist: her former lover Leon Trotsky had just been assassinated, and she was in the midst of her divorce from Diego Rivera, whom she later remarried.<\/p>\n

\t\tRelated Articles<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"a<\/p>\n

\n\tJulian Dawes, vice chairman and head of Impressionist and Modern art for Sotheby\u2019s Americas, told the Associated Press<\/a> that El sue\u00f1o (La cama) is one of the few Kahlo works not in a museum collection or in Mexico, making it a \u201crare and special\u201d opportunity.<\/p>\n

\n\tSotheby\u2019s will aim to make headlines with the sale in November during its marquee evening auctions in New York. The Kahlo is being presented as part of a single-owner sale of Surrealist \u201cmasterpieces\u201d titled \u201cExquisite Corpus,\u201d featuring 80 paintings, drawings, and sculptures. While none of the other works on offer approach the Kahlo\u2019s estimate, the collection spans both household names such as Salvador Dal\u00ed and Ren\u00e9 Magritte and female Surrealists like Kay Sage and Remedios Varo, who have received more attention in recent years. Unusually for a single-owner sale, Sotheby\u2019s has not disclosed the identity of the collector.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe stage is set for the sale to be a blockbuster: women Surrealists, Kahlo, and Magritte have all seen their prices rise dramatically at auction in recent years. Prior to the sale of Diego y yo in 2021, Kahlo\u2019s auction record was only $8 million, set in 2016 at Christie\u2019s New York. Numerous records<\/a> for women Surrealists have been set since the 2022 edition<\/a> of the Venice Biennale, curated by Cecilia Alemani. That show, titled \u201cThe Milk of Dreams,\u201d drew its name from a book by Leonora Carrington. And just last November, even amid a shaky art market, the record <\/a>for a Magritte was reset at $121 million for L\u2019empire des lumi\u00e8res (1954) at Christie\u2019s New York.<\/p>\n

\n\tEl sue\u00f1o (La cama) will be on view at Sotheby\u2019s London through Tuesday, before traveling to Abu Dhabi, Hong Kong, and Paris.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Friday, Sotheby\u2019s announced that it had secured a blockbuster consignment of Surrealist works, led by Frida Kahlo\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":148256,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[6225,6485,6486,1120,96,65261,68208,59583,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-148255","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-design","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-frida-kahlo","14":"tag-sothebys-new-york","15":"tag-surrealism","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom","18":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148255\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/148256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}