Khaberni - A poignant self-portrait from 1940 by Mexican visual artist Frida Kahlo was sold for $54.7 million, making it the most expensive work by a female artist ever sold at auction.
The painting, which depicts Kahlo asleep in a bed, titled "The Dream (The Bed)" (El sueño - La cama), surpassed the record held by Georgia O'Keeffe's "Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1", which was sold for $44.4 million in 2014.
The sale, which occurred at Sotheby's in New York on Thursday evening, also broke Kahlo's own record at auction for a Latin American artist's work.
The artist's famous 1949 painting, "Diego and I", which depicts the artist and her husband, muralist Diego Rivera, was sold for $34.9 million in 2021.
Reports indicate that her paintings have been sold privately for even higher amounts.
The self-portrait that broke records on Thursday is one of the few pieces by Kahlo that remains in private hands outside Mexico, as all her works are declared a national artistic monument.
Kahlo's works in public and private collections in Mexico cannot be sold abroad or destroyed. Because the painting sold on Thursday comes from a private collection, it is legally eligible for international sale. Sotheby's mentioned that the owner who auctioned the painting—who remains unidentified—also "wisely" purchased the piece at an auction in New York in 1980. The buyer’s identity has not been disclosed either.
Some art historians have scrutinized the sale for cultural reasons, while others raised concerns that the painting, last publicly displayed in the late 1990s, might disappear from public view once again after the auction.
The painting has already been requested for upcoming exhibitions in cities including New York, London, and Brussels.
The piece depicts Kahlo asleep in a colonial-style wooden bed floating amid clouds. She is covered with a golden blanket entwined with vines and creepers, and above the bed hangs a skeleton wrapped in dynamite.
Kahlo portrayed herself and the events of her life with fierce accuracy and relentlessness, a life transformed by a bus accident at the age of 18.
She started painting while bedridden and underwent a series of painful surgeries on her damaged spine and pelvis, continuing to wear a cast until her death in 1954 at age 47.
During the years Kahlo was confined to her bed, she came to see painting as a bridge between worlds as she explored her courtyard.
Her niece's oldest daughter, Mara Romeo Kahlo, told the Associated Press before the auction, "I am very proud that she is one of the most appreciated women, because really, who does not identify with Frida, or who does not identify with her?".
She added, "I think everybody carries a little piece of my aunt in their heart."
Kahlo resisted being labeled a surrealist, a dreamlike artistic style focused on the fascination with the unconscious mind.
She once said: "I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality."
The new record for Kahlo's painting came just hours after a painting by Gustav Klimt was sold for $236.4 million, setting a new record for a modern art piece.
Klimt's "Portrait of Elizabeth Lederer" was sold after a 20-minute bidding, also at Sotheby's in New York, last Tuesday.
Art enthusiasts and Kahlo's descendants say she has often been reduced to a set of distinctive features that often overshadow her artistic output. Kahlo was famous for her black braids, ornate Mexican dresses, and joined eyebrows.
