A self-portrait by Mexican artist Frida Kahlo was sold for $54.66 million (€47 million) by Sotheby’s in New York on Thursday, November 20, becoming the most expensive painting by a woman. The name of the buyer has not been released.
This work from 1940 is entitled “Dream (Room)”beating the previous record in this field, set by a painting by American Georgia O’Keeffe which achieved a sum of 44.4 million dollars in 2014.
The work depicts the artist sleeping on a bed that seems to be floating in the sky, visible by a giant skeleton whose legs are surrounded by sticks of dynamite.
This painting by Frida Kahlo is an image “very personal”Where “he combined folklore motifs from Mexican culture with European surrealism”explained to Agence France-Presse (AFP), Anna Di Stasi, who is responsible for Latin American art at Sotheby’s.
Mexican artist, who died in 1954 at the age of 47, “not completely agree” by seeing his work linked to the surrealist movement, the expert added. But “given this extraordinary iconography, it seemed especially relevant to include it” in this flow.
The large skeleton depicted above the bed is not unique to the painting: Frida Kahlo actually had an object of this kind made of papier-mâché above her bed, according to Sotheby’s.
Pain and death have always been central elements of her work: throughout her life Frida Kahlo had to struggle with declining health, marked by childhood illness, poliomyelitis and a serious bus accident in 1925.
The painting is being presented by the famed auction house at its new flagship in New York, the Breuer Building, a modernist building in Manhattan that is reopening to the public after long being part of the Whitney Museum.
20th century artists are more appreciated
The women whose works have sold the most to date are mostly major figures of the 20th century.e century. In addition to the previous record held by Georgia O’Keeffe (Jimson Weed/White Flower No.11932), came in a giant way Spider by French sculptor and visual artist Louise Bourgeois, sold for $32.5 million in 2023.
Self-portrait of Frida Kahlo Diego you (Diego and me1949) jumped to $34.9 million in 2021 and Portrait of Marjorie Ferry (1932) by Polish painter Tamara de Lempicka reached $21.2 million in 2020.
Older or classical artists rarely exceed the 10 million mark: After lunchby impressionist Berthe Morisot, sold for $10.9 million in 2013, the statue Waltz by Camille Claudel was sold for 5.2 million euros in the same year and a painting by baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi representing Lucretia was bought for almost 4.8 million euros in 2019.
If all types of art are combined, 162 works have sold for more than $50 million so far and none were created by women, according to the AFP database. Of the 468 jobs exceeding $30 million, only four are women’s jobs, or less than 1%.
The most expensive painting in the world remains Mundi Savior attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, sold for $450 million in New York in 2017.
