Volkswacht Bodensee - Frida Kahlo painting auctions for $54.6 mn, record for woman artist

The sale of Kahlo's 1940 artwork, titled "El sueno (la cama)" -- which translates to "The dream (The bed)" -- breaks the previous record in this category, set by American artist Georgia O'Keeffe, whose 1932 painting "Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1," sold for $44.4 million in 2014.

Kahlo's painting is "the most valuable work by a woman artist ever sold at auction," Sotheby's said in a post on X.

The auction house said Kahlo's work was "painted in 1940 during a pivotal decade in her career, marked by her turbulent relationship with Diego Rivera."

Kahlo's self-portrait went on the auction block at Sotheby’s with an estimated price ranging from $40 million to $60 million.

The buyer's name was not disclosed.

The artwork depicts the artist sleeping in a bed that appears to float among clouds in the sky, laying beneath a skeleton with legs that are wrapped with sticks of dynamite.

This painting is a "very personal" image, in which Kahlo "merges folkloric motifs from Mexican culture with European surrealism," Anna Di Stasi, head of Latin American art at Sotheby's, told AFP.

The Mexican artist, who passed away in 1954 at age of 47, "did not completely agree" with her work being associated with the surrealist movement, Di Stasi said.

However, "given this magnificent iconography, it seems entirely appropriate to include it" in this movement.

The record-setting sale came two nights the New York auction house reeled in another record sale, with a painting by Austrian artist Gustav Klimt fetching $236.4 million on the block -- the second most expensive artwork ever sold at auction.

Klimt's "Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer," which he painted between 1914 and 1916, depicts the daughter of his main patron dressed in a white imperial Chinese dress, standing before a blue tapestry with Asian-inspired motifs.

The most expensive painting ever sold at auction remains the "Salvator Mundi," attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, which was bought for $450 million in 2017.

L.Maurer--VB