{"id":46451,"date":"2025-11-20T20:05:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-20T20:05:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/46451\/"},"modified":"2025-11-20T20:05:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-20T20:05:07","slug":"frida-kahlo-self-portrait-poised-to-shatter-auction-records","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/46451\/","title":{"rendered":"Frida Kahlo self-portrait poised to shatter auction records"},"content":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK \u2014\u00a0A 1940 self-portrait\u00a0by famed Mexican artist\u00a0Frida Kahlo<\/a>\u00a0of her asleep in a bed could make history Thursday when it goes on sale by Sotheby\u2019s in New York.<\/p>\n

With an estimated price of $40 million to $60 million, \u201cEl sue\u00f1o (La cama)\u201d \u2013 in English, \u201cThe Dream (The Bed)\u201d \u2014 may surpass the top price for a work by any female artist when it goes under the hammer. That record currently stands at $44.4 million, paid at Sotheby\u2019s in 2014 for Georgia O\u2019Keeffe\u2019s \u201cJimson Weed\/White Flower No. 1.\u201d<\/p>\n

The highest price at auction for a Kahlo work<\/a> is $34.9 million, paid in 2021 for\u00a0\u201cDiego and I,\u201d\u00a0depicting the artist and her husband,\u00a0muralist Diego Rivera. <\/p>\n

A 1940 self-portrait\u00a0by famed Mexican artist\u00a0Frida Kahlo\u00a0of her asleep in a bed could make history Thursday when it goes on sale by Sotheby\u2019s in New York. Getty Images<\/p>\n

Her paintings are reported to have sold privately for even more.<\/p>\n

The painting up for auction depicts Kahlo asleep in a wooden colonial-style bed, wrapped in a golden blanket embroidered with crawling vines and leaves. Above her, seemingly levitating atop the bedposts, lies a full-sized skeleton.<\/p>\n

In its catalog note, Sotheby\u2019s said the painting \u201coffers a spectral meditation on the porous boundary between sleep and death.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last exhibited publicly in the late 1990s, the painting is the star of a sale of more than 100 surrealist works by artists including Salvador Dal\u00ed, Ren\u00e9 Magritte, Max Ernst, and Dorothea Tanning. <\/p>\n

The painting up for auction depicts Kahlo asleep in a wooden colonial-style bed, wrapped in a golden blanket embroidered with crawling vines and leaves. Nancy Kaszerman\/ZUMA Press Wire \/ SplashNews.com<\/p>\n

Above her, seemingly levitating atop the bedposts, lies a full-sized skeleton. AP<\/p>\n

They are from a private collection whose owner has not been disclosed.<\/p>\n

Kahlo vibrantly and unsparingly depicted herself and events from her life, which was upended by a bus accident at 18. <\/p>\n

She started to paint while bedridden, underwent a series of painful surgeries on her damaged spine and pelvis, and then wore casts until her death in 1954 at age 47.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe suspended skeleton is often interpreted as a visualization of her anxiety about dying in her sleep, a fear all too plausible for an artist whose daily existence was shaped by chronic pain and past trauma,\u201d the catalog notes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK \u2014\u00a0A 1940 self-portrait\u00a0by famed Mexican artist\u00a0Frida Kahlo\u00a0of her asleep in a bed could make history Thursday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":46452,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1149,20023,157,57,9,11,10,58],"class_list":{"0":"post-46451","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-art","9":"tag-auctions","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-metro","12":"tag-new-york","13":"tag-new-york-headlines","14":"tag-new-york-news","15":"tag-us-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46451"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46451\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}