NEW YORK – A haunting self-portrait by celebrated Mexican artist Frida Kahlo sold for $54.66 million ( almost R 1 billion) at Sotheby’s in New York last week, shattering the previous record for artwork by a female artist.

The 1940 masterpiece, titled “El sueño (La cama)” – “The Dream (The Bed)” – surpassed the previous record held by American artist Georgia O’Keeffe, whose 1932 painting “Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1” sold for $44.4 million in 2014.

“This is the most valuable work by a woman artist ever sold at auction,” Sotheby’s announced on social media platform X following Thursday’s sale.

A surreal vision of dreams and death

The artwork depicts Kahlo sleeping in a bed that appears to float through the sky beneath a skeleton with its legs wrapped in sticks of dynamite. The painting emerged during a pivotal decade in Kahlo’s career, marked by her turbulent relationship with fellow Mexican painter Diego Rivera.

“This is a very personal painting, in which Kahlo merges folkloric motifs from Mexican culture with European surrealism,” explained Anna Di Stasi, head of Latin American art at Sotheby’s.

The skeleton in the painting echoed a papier-mâché version that hung above Kahlo’s own bed, according to the auction house. The work had been estimated to sell for $40-60 million, and the buyer’s identity was not disclosed.

Kahlo, who died in 1954 at age 47, struggled with fragile health throughout her life due to childhood polio and a serious bus accident in 1925. Pain and death remained central themes in her work, though Di Stasi noted that Kahlo herself “did not completely agree” with her work being associated with the surrealist movement.

Breaking barriers in art market

The record sale highlights the dramatic underrepresentation of women in the high-end art market. According to an AFP analysis, none of the 162 artworks that previously sold for more than $50 million were created by women. Less than one percent of the 468 works sold for more than $30 million are by female artists.

The Kahlo sale came just two nights after Sotheby’s set another record with Gustav Klimt’s “Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer,” which fetched $236.4 million — the second-most expensive artwork ever sold at auction.

Female artists achieving the highest sale prices remain primarily prominent 20th-century figures. Following O’Keeffe’s record, the third-highest sale was Louise Bourgeois’s spider sculpture, which sold for $32.5 million in 2023.

Kahlo’s previous auction record was set by her self-portrait “Diego y yo” (“Diego and I”), which sold for $34.9 million in 2021.

The most expensive painting ever sold at auction remains Leonardo da Vinci’s “Salvator Mundi” (“Savior of the World”), purchased for $450 million in 2017.

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