A self-portrait by celebrated Mexican artist Frida Kahlo sold for $54.66 million in New York on Thursday, setting a record for the price of a painting by a woman, the auction house Sotheby’s said.<\/p>\n
The sale of Kahlo’s 1940 artwork, titled “El sueno (La cama)” — which translates to “The dream (The bed)” — broke the previous record set by American artist Georgia O’Keeffe, whose 1932 painting “Jimson Weed\/White Flower No. 1” sold for $44.4 million in 2014.<\/p>\n
Kahlo’s painting is “the most valuable work by a woman artist ever sold at auction,” Sotheby’s said in a post on social media platform X.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The work was painted during a pivotal decade in Kahlo’s career, marked by her turbulent relationship with Mexican painter Diego Rivera, the auction house said on X.<\/p>\n
The painting went on the auction block with an estimated price range of $40 million to $60 million.<\/p>\n
The buyer’s name was not disclosed.<\/p>\n
The work is a “very personal” painting, in which Kahlo “merges folkloric motifs from Mexican culture with European surrealism,” Anna Di Stasi, the head of Latin American art at Sotheby’s, told AFP.<\/p>\n
The Mexican artist, who died in 1954 at the age of 47, “did not completely agree” with her work being associated with the surrealist movement, Di Stasi said.<\/p>\n
However, “given this magnificent iconography, it seems entirely appropriate to include it,” she said.<\/p>\n
Kahlo struggled with fragile health throughout her life due to childhood illness, polio and a serious bus accident in 1925, and pain and death were central to her work.<\/p>\n
The skeleton depicted in the painting echoed the papier-mache version that hung above Kahlo’s bed, according to Sotheby’s.<\/p>\n
-Women under-represented-<\/p>\n
None of the 162 pieces of art that had previously sold for more than $50 million were by women, according to an AFP tally.<\/p>\n
Less than one percent of the 468 works sold for more than $30 million are by women artists.<\/p>\n
The record-setting sale of Kahlo’s self-portrait came two nights after Sotheby’s made another record sale, with a painting by Austrian artist Gustav Klimt fetching $236.4 million — the second-most expensive artwork ever sold at auction.<\/p>\n
Klimt’s “Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer,” which he painted between 1914 and 1916, depicts the daughter of his main patron standing in front of a blue tapestry.<\/p>\n
The most expensive painting ever sold at auction remains the “Salvator Mundi,” (Savior of the World), a Renaissance work attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, which was bought for $450 million in 2017.<\/p>\n
Female artists whose works have fetched the highest sale prices are primarily prominent 20th century figures.<\/p>\n
The third-highest sale price, after O’Keeffe’s White Flower No. 1,” was for a huge spider sculpture by French visual artist Louise Bourgeois, which sold for $32.5 million in 2023.<\/p>\n
Kahlo’s self-portrait “Diego y yo” (“Diego and I”, 1949) fetched $34.9 million in 2021 and “Portrait of Marjorie Ferry” (1932) by the Polish painter Tamara de Lempicka was sold for $21.2 million in 2020.<\/p>\n
rh\/iv\/sla\/ceg\/ane\/pbt<\/p>\n
\u00a9 Agence France-Presse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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