Frida Kahlo-Portrait Sale of Shatter-Portrait Shatters Auction Record for female artists
Listen to this article
Approximately 3 minutes
The audio version of this article is produced by text-to-speech, a technology based on artificial intelligence.
A 1940 self-portrait by the famous Mexican artist Frida Kahlo sold on Thursday for $54.7 million US ($77 million CDN) at a New York art auction and became the highest selling price for a work by a woman.
Painting of Kahlo lying in bed – titled El Sueño (La Cama) or, in English, dream (bed) – Passed the record held by Georgia O’keeffe’s Jimson Undead / White Flower No. 1Steby’s sales were $44.4 million US in 2014.
The previous highest price for a kahlo work at auction is $34.9 Million US (then $43.7 million CDN), paid in 2021 Diego and meit shows the artist and her husband, the muralist diego rivera. His paintings are reported to have sold privately.
The self-portrait is among the few Kahlo pieces that have remained in private hands outside of Mexico, where her work has defined an artistic monument. His works in public and private collections within the country cannot be sold abroad or destroyed.
The painting comes from a private collection whose owner has not been disclosed, and is legally eligible for international sale.
Some ART historians have examined the sale for cultural reasons, while others have raised concerns that the painting – last shown publicly in the late 1990s – could disappear from public view after the auction.
There have already been requests for upcoming shows in cities including New York, London and Brussels.
Visualizing the artist’s concerns
The piece shows Kahlo lying on a wooden bed, as if floating in the clouds. He was clothed in a golden robe and entered into a vine with leaves on his waist. Above the bed lies a skeletal figure wrapped in dynamite.
Kahlo violently and unpleasantly expressed himself and events in his life, which was inspired by a bus accident at the age of 18.
He began to paint while lying in bed, requiring a series of painful operations on his injured spine and pelvis, and wearing compasses until his death in 1954 at the age of 1954.
Years ago confined to her bed, Kahlo came to see it as a bridge between worlds as she contemplated her death.
The painting is the star of the sale of more than 100 works by artists including Salvador Dalí, René Magritte, Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning. Kahlo resisted the label surrealist, a dreamy art style
“I never draw dreams,” she said. “I drew from my reality.”
Frida Kahlo’s work is considered by Mexico as a national treasure, so the country sends qualified inspectors to ensure that its paintings are not damaged.
In its catalog, Sotheby’s says The Painting “offers a meditation that looks at the porous border between sleep and death.”
“The suspended bones are often interpreted as his understanding of his anxiety about his own death, a fear that is all unreasonable for this artist with constant present pain and the pain of the past,” the catalog notes.
