A self-portrait depicting Mexican artist Frida Kahlo lying in bed, titled El sueño (La cama), has sold at a New York auction for $54.7 million, making it the most expensive artwork by a woman ever auctioned, reports Baltimore Chronicle, with reference to Tagesschau.
According to Sotheby’s, two bidders engaged in a five-minute competitive bidding war over the painting, which Kahlo completed in 1940. The auction house did not disclose the winning bidder. Previously, the highest price paid for a woman’s artwork at auction was $44 million for Jimson Weed / White Flower no.1 by American artist Georgia O’Keeffe in 2014. The previous record for a Kahlo painting was $34.9 million, achieved in 2021.
El sueño (La cama) was last auctioned in 1980 for $51,000, roughly one-thousandth of its current value. Anna Di Stasi, head of Latin American art at Sotheby’s, commented that the record reflects not only the growing recognition of Frida Kahlo’s genius but also the increasing acknowledgment of female artists at the highest levels of the art market.
Earlier this week, a record was set at New York’s traditional autumn auctions when a painting by Austrian artist Gustav Klimt (Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer) sold for $236.4 million, making it the second most expensive artwork ever auctioned. The most expensive auctioned artwork remains Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi (1452–1519), which sold in New York in 2017 for $450.3 million.
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