Fri Nov 21 03:43:39 UTC 2025: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Frida Kahlo Self-Portrait Shatters Records, Sells for $54.7 Million
New York, NY – A haunting 1940 self-portrait by iconic Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, titled “El sueño (La cama)” (The Dream/The Bed), fetched a staggering $54.7 million at a Sotheby’s auction in New York on Thursday evening, making it the most expensive work by a female artist ever sold at auction. The sale surpassed the previous record held by Georgia O’Keeffe’s “Jimson Weed/White Flower No 1,” which sold for $44.4 million in 2014.
The painting, depicting Kahlo asleep in a bed with a skeleton figure wrapped in dynamite above her, also broke Kahlo’s own auction record for a Latin American artist, previously held by her 1949 work “Diego and I,” which sold for $34.9 million in 2021.
The identity of the buyer, as well as the seller, were not disclosed. Sotheby’s confirmed the seller had purchased the painting in 1980.
“El sueño (La cama)” is one of the few Kahlo pieces remaining in private hands outside of Mexico, where the artist’s body of work is considered an artistic monument and cannot be sold abroad or destroyed.
The sale has garnered attention from art historians, with some expressing concern that the painting, which has been requested for upcoming exhibitions in New York, London and Brussels, could disappear from public view once again.
Kahlo, who resisted being labeled a surrealist, famously stated, “I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality.” Her work is known for its unsparing depictions of her life, including the physical and emotional pain caused by a debilitating bus accident at age 18.
The record-breaking sale occurred hours after a Gustav Klimt portrait sold for $236.4 million, setting a new record for a modern art piece.
First Piper 