A self-portrait created by renowned Mexican artist Frida Kahlo in 1940 was recently auctioned off in New York for $54.7 million US ($77 million Cdn), setting a new record as the highest sale price for a piece by a female artist. The painting, titled “El sueño (La cama)” or “The Dream (The Bed)” features Kahlo asleep in a bed and surpassed the previous record held by Georgia O’Keeffe’s “Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1” which sold for $44.4 million US in 2014.
Previously, the highest auction price for a Kahlo artwork was $34.9 million US (then $43.7 million Cdn) for “Diego and I,” a painting depicting Kahlo and her husband Diego Rivera. While her works within Mexico are considered national treasures and cannot be sold abroad or destroyed, this particular self-portrait was part of a private collection and is eligible for international sale.
Art historians have expressed cultural concerns regarding the sale, as the painting, last publicly exhibited in the late 1990s, may disappear from public view following the auction. Requests have already been made for the painting to be showcased in upcoming exhibitions in various cities such as New York, London, and Brussels.
The self-portrait portrays Kahlo sleeping in a colonial-style bed floating in the clouds, draped in a golden blanket and surrounded by crawling vines and leaves. Above her lies a skeleton figure wrapped in dynamite. Kahlo, known for vividly depicting events from her tumultuous life, turned to painting after a bus accident at 18 that left her bedridden. She underwent multiple surgeries on her spine and pelvis and explored themes of mortality during her years of confinement.
The painting is the centerpiece of a sale featuring over 100 surrealist works by artists like Salvador Dalí, René Magritte, Max Ernst, and Dorothea Tanning. Kahlo rejected being labeled a surrealist, emphasizing, “I never painted dreams, I painted my own reality.” Sotheby’s described the painting as a “spectral meditation on the boundary between sleep and death,” interpreting the suspended skeleton as a manifestation of Kahlo’s anxiety about dying in her sleep due to chronic pain and past trauma.
