A self-portrait by the legendary Mexican artist Frida Kahlo has shattered auction records for artwork by a female artist, selling for $34.66 million (1.77 billion baht) at Sotheby's in New York on Thursday. The 1940 painting, titled "El sueño (la cama)" or "The Dream (The Bed)" in English, surpassed the previous record held by American artist Georgia O'Keeffe.
The sale breaks O'Keeffe's previous record of $44.4 million, which was set in 2014 when her 1932 painting "Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1" went under the hammer. Sotheby's confirmed in a post on X (formerly Twitter) that Kahlo's work is now "the most valuable work by a woman artist ever sold at auction." The painting had been estimated to sell for between $40 million and $60 million, and the identity of the buyer has not been disclosed.
Kahlo's self-portrait depicts the artist sleeping in a bed that appears to float among clouds in the sky, with a skeleton lying above her whose legs are wrapped with sticks of dynamite. According to Anna Di Stasi, head of Latin American art at Sotheby's, the painting represents a "very personal" image in which Kahlo "merges folkloric motifs from Mexican culture with European surrealism." The artwork was created in 1940 during what Sotheby's described as "a pivotal decade in her career, marked by her turbulent relationship with Diego Rivera."
Despite the painting's surrealist imagery, Di Stasi noted that the Mexican artist, who died in 1954 at the age of 47, "did not completely agree" with her work being associated with the surrealist movement. However, Di Stasi added that "given this magnificent iconography, it seems entirely appropriate to include it" in this artistic movement, highlighting the complex relationship between Kahlo's personal vision and established art movements.
The record-breaking sale came just two nights after Sotheby's achieved another milestone when a painting by Austrian artist Gustav Klimt sold for $236.4 million, making it the second most expensive artwork ever sold at auction. Klimt's "Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer," painted between 1914 and 1916, depicts the daughter of his main patron dressed in a white imperial Chinese dress, standing before a blue tapestry featuring Asian-inspired motifs.
The art market continues to see extraordinary prices for masterworks, though the most expensive painting ever sold at auction remains "Salvator Mundi," attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, which was purchased for $450 million in 2017. These recent sales demonstrate the ongoing strength of the high-end art market and the growing recognition of female artists' contributions to art history.
