FRIDA KAHLO'S PAINTING IS ESTIMATED TO SELL FOR UP TO $60 MILLION, BREAKING THE RECORD FOR FEMALE ARTISTS
Frida Kahlo is often listed as one of the greatest artists of all time, making her paintings some of the most coveted among art collectors. And this trend may soon hit unprecedented heights. Kahlo's self-portrait El sueño (La cama), which translates to "The Dream (The Bed)" in Spanish, will be auctioned off later this year, according to Sotheby's. At an estimated $40 million to $60 million, it has the potential to set some incredible records.
Similar to the four-poster bed she used, which is on display at Casa Azul in Mexico City, the painting shows Kahlo dozing off on it. The artist appears, resting on her side, covered in curling vines, floating in a cloudy blue sky. A dynamite-wrapped skeleton with a bunch of dried flowers rests in the same spot atop the canopy. Kahlo actually had a papier-mâché skeleton on top of her bed, even if the painting seems to be an allegory for the artist's personal observations of death and the whimsical attitudes toward it in Mexican society.
“El sueño stands among Frida Kahlo’s greatest masterworks—a rare and striking example of her most surrealist impulses,” says Anna Di Stasi, Sotheby’s senior vice president and head of Latin American Art. “In this composition, Kahlo fuses dream imagery and symbolic precision with unmatched emotional intensity, creating a work that is at once deeply personal and universally resonant. It is an enduring testament to her genius and its appearance on the market presents an unparalleled opportunity to acquire a cornerstone of Surrealism.”
El sueño (La cama) will get the highest price ever for a Kahlo painting if it sells for slightly above its low estimate. Diego y yo (1949), which sold for $34.9 million in 2021 and features the artist holding hands with her partner, Diego Rivera, is currently the record holder. More impressively, it has the potential to become the most costly piece created by a female artist. Georgia O. Keeffe's Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1 (1932), which brought $44.4 million in 2014, currently holds the title.
“It’s not just one of the more important works by Kahlo, but one of a few that exists outside of Mexico and not in a museum collection,” Julian Dawes, vice chairman and head of impressionist and modern art for Sotheby’s Americas, told AP. “So as both a work of art and as an opportunity in the market, it could not be more rare and special.”
Since Kahlo frequently rejected this classification, the painting is part of a sizable private collection that was committed to a sale called "Exquisite Corpus," which featured 80 surrealist "masterpieces" and related pieces like hers. Although the collector has not been identified by Sotheby's, The Art Newspaper suggests that it is the late record label executive Nesuhi Ertegun and his wife Selma because his collection was on display in the 1991 Surrealist exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, where El sueño (La cama) and other pieces were on display. Works by Remedios Varo, Salvador Dalí, and René Magritte are also up for sale.
Following its presentation in London concurrent with the announcement, El Sueño (La Cama) will be on display in Abu Dhabi, Hong Kong, and Paris before its November 8 sale at Sotheby's New York.