Frida Kahlo self-portrait sells for $55 million, setting auction record for a female artist

A 1940s surrealist painting by Frida Kahlo has sold for $54.7 million (£41.8 million), breaking the auction record for a work of art by a female artist.

After a fierce bidding war between two collectors, the painting fetched more than 1,000 times its original price at auction in 1980, according to Sotheby’s.

The auction also broke the previous record for the highest price paid for a Kahlo portrait, which was sold for $34.9 million in 2021.

The work is titled “El sueño (la cama),” which translates as “The Dream” (The Bed), and depicts Kahlo asleep on a four-poster bed beneath a skeleton wrapped in explosives.

Sotheby’s said the self-portrait, one of the Mexican artist’s most “psychologically charged” self-portraits, was painted during a turbulent chapter in Kahlo’s life – the year her former lover was assassinated and shortly after her divorce and remarriage.

Kahlo, who died in 1954, was widely considered one of the greatest painters of the past century and was best known for his personal portraits.

Her work often conveys her painful relationship with the body, having been disabled by polio as a child and severely injured after a bus accident.

Anna Di Stasi, Sotheby’s head of Latin American art, said that when “El sueño” (la cama) was first auctioned at Sotheby’s in 1980 for $51,000, few could have imagined that it would sell for $55 million.

She added: “This record-breaking result shows how far we have come, not only in our appreciation of the genius of Frida Kahlo, but also in the recognition of female artists at the highest levels of the market.”

“El sueño (la cama)” is one of the few Kahlo paintings remaining on the public market since the 1980s, when Mexican authorities declared her work an artistic monument and banned its unauthorized export.

In 2002, Kahlo’s story was adapted into a biopic starring Salma Hayek, which recounted her rocky relationship with her artist husband, Diego Rivera, and the damage she suffered.

The previous highest auction price for a work by a female artist was Georgia O’Keeffe’s “Jimson Grass/White Flower No. 1”, which was sold at Sotheby’s in 2014 for $44 million.