{"id":306236,"date":"2025-11-22T01:42:27","date_gmt":"2025-11-22T01:42:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/306236\/"},"modified":"2025-11-22T01:42:27","modified_gmt":"2025-11-22T01:42:27","slug":"54-7m-sale-of-frida-kahlo-self-portrait-breaks-auction-record-for-female-artists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/306236\/","title":{"rendered":"$54.7M sale of Frida Kahlo self-portrait breaks auction record for female artists"},"content":{"rendered":"

A haunting 1940 self-portrait by famed Mexican artist Frida Kahlo sold Thursday for $54.7 million and became the top-selling work by any female artist at an auction.<\/p>\n

The painting of Kahlo asleep in a bed \u2014 titled \u201cEl sue\u00f1o (La cama)\u201d or in English, \u201cThe Dream (The Bed)\u201d \u2014 surpassed the record held by Georgia O\u2019Keeffe\u2019s \u201cJimson Weed\/White Flower No. 1,\u201d which sold for $44.4 million in 2014.<\/p>\n

READ MORE: Gustav Klimt portrait that spared its subject from Nazis breaks modern art record with $236M sale<\/a><\/p>\n

The sale at Sotheby\u2019s in New York also topped Kahlo\u2019s own auction record for a work by a Latin American artist. The 1949 painting \u201cDiego and I,\u201d depicting the artist and her husband, muralist Diego Rivera, went for $34.9 million in 2021. Her paintings are reported to have sold privately for even more.<\/p>\n

The self-portrait is among the few Kahlo pieces that have remained in private hands outside Mexico, where her body of work has been declared an artistic monument. Her works in both public and private collections within the country cannot be sold abroad or destroyed.<\/p>\n

The painting comes from a private collection, whose owner has not been disclosed, and is legally eligible for international sale. Some art historians have scrutinized the sale for cultural reasons, while others have raised concern that the painting \u2014 last exhibited publicly in the late 1990s \u2014 could again disappear from public view after the auction. It has already been requested for upcoming exhibitions in cities including New York, London and Brussels.<\/p>\n

The buyer\u2019s identity was not disclosed.<\/p>\n

WATCH: Auction of Bob Ross paintings aims to fill funding gaps for public broadcasting<\/a><\/p>\n

The piece depicts Kahlo asleep in a wooden, colonial-style bed that floats in the clouds. She is draped in a golden blanket and entangled in crawling vines and leaves. Above the bed lies a skeleton figure wrapped in dynamite.<\/p>\n

Kahlo vibrantly and unsparingly depicted herself and events from her life, which was upended by a bus accident at 18. She started to paint while bedridden, underwent a series of painful surgeries on her damaged spine and pelvis, then wore casts until her death in 1954 at age 47.<\/p>\n

During the years Kahlo was confined to her bed, she came to view it as a bridge between worlds as she explored her mortality.<\/p>\n

Before the auction, her great-niece, Mara Romeo Kahlo, celebrated the significance of the upcoming sale during a recent interview with The Associated Press in Mexico City.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m very proud that she\u2019s one of the most valued women, because really, what woman doesn\u2019t identify with Frida, or what person doesn\u2019t?\u201d she said. \u201cI think everyone carries a little piece of my aunt in their heart.\u201d<\/p>\n

The painting was 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

Kahlo resisted being labeled a surrealist, a style of art that\u2019s dreamlike and centers on a fascination with the unconscious mind.<\/p>\n

\u201cI never painted dreams,\u201d she once said. \u201cI painted my own reality.\u201d<\/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

\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

Earlier this week, a Gustav Klimt painting that helped save the life of its Jewish subject during the Holocaust sold at Sotheby\u2019s for $236.4 million. Klimt\u2019s \u201cPortrait of Elisabeth Lederer\u201d became one of the most expensive pieces of artwork ever sold at auction, second only to Leonardo da Vinci\u2019s \u201cSalvator Mundi\u201d at $450 million \u2014 the record-holder over all and among male artists.<\/p>\n

Associated Press video journalists Mart\u00edn Silva Rey in Mexico City and Cassandra Allwood in London contributed to this report.<\/p>\n

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