Frida Kahlo Painting Sells for Record $54.7 Million

A Frida Kahlo self-portrait fetched 54.7 million dollars at Sotheby's auction house in New York on Thursday, shattering the record for the most expensive work by a female artist ever sold at auction. The 1940 painting, titled "El Sueño" or "The Dream," depicts the artist asleep in a wooden colonial-style bed floating amid clouds, draped in a golden blanket entwined with vines and leaves, with a papier-mâché skeleton wrapped in dynamite hovering above. The unidentified buyer secured the piece after four minutes of bidding, surpassing the previous benchmark of 44.4 million dollars paid for Georgia O'Keeffe's "Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1" at the same auction house in 2014.

The sale also established a new high for Kahlo's works at auction, eclipsing the 34.9 million dollars commanded by her 1949 painting "Diego and I" in 2021. One of the few Kahlo pieces remaining in private hands outside Mexico, where her art is designated a national treasure and export is prohibited, "El Sueño" had been legally available for international sale. It last changed hands at Sotheby's in 1980 for 51,000 dollars, acquired by an undisclosed collector whose identity remains private.