Frida Kahlo’s 1940 Self-Portrait Could Make Auction History
NEW YORK — A self-portrait by the iconic Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, painted in 1940 and depicting her asleep in bed, is set to be auctioned off this Thursday at Sotheby’s in New York, potentially making history.
The painting, titled “El sueño (La cama),” or “The Dream (The Bed)” in English, has an estimated value of between $40 million and $60 million. If it sells within that range, it could surpass the current record for a work by a female artist, which is $44.4 million for Georgia O’Keeffe’s “Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1,” sold at Sotheby’s in 2014.
The highest auction price for a Kahlo painting previously reached $34.9 million in 2021 for “Diego and I,” featuring Kahlo and her husband, Diego Rivera, who was also a prominent muralist.
It’s interesting to note that some of her paintings have reportedly been sold privately for even higher sums.
The auction piece presents Kahlo resting on a colonial-style wooden bed, enveloped in a golden blanket adorned with intricate vines and leaves. Hovering above the bed, a life-sized skeleton adds an eerie touch.
Sotheby’s describes the painting in their catalog as offering “a spectral meditation on the porous boundary between sleep and death.”
Last seen in public exhibitions during the late 1990s, this artwork is part of a collection that includes over 100 surrealist pieces from artists like Salvador Dali, René Magritte, Max Ernst, and Dorothea Tanning.
The collection belongs to a private owner who hasn’t been identified.
Kahlo is known for vividly documenting her life, especially the profound changes after a bus accident when she was only 18. During her recovery, she turned to painting, enduring various painful surgeries on her spine and pelvis until her death at 47 in 1954.
According to the catalog, “The hanging skeleton is often interpreted as a visualization of her anxiety about dying in her sleep, an all-too-plausible fear for an artist whose daily life has been shaped by chronic pain and past trauma.”
