Frida Kahlo Painting Sets Auction Record

Frida Kahlo's 1940 self-portrait, 'El sueño (La cama)' (The Dream (The Bed)), sold for $54.7 million at Sotheby s in New York, setting a new auction record for a female artist. The painting depicts Frida Kahlo asleep in a floating bed with a skeleton wrapped in dynamite above her, reflecting her struggles with chronic pain and mortality. This sale surpassed the previous record held by Georgia O Keeffe Museum's 'Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1' and Frida Kahlo's own record for a Latin American artist with 'Diego and I'. The painting was one of the few Frida Kahlo pieces remaining in private hands outside Mexico, where her work is considered an artistic monument and cannot be exported. The buyer's identity was not disclosed. The auction also featured other surrealist works, and followed another major sale of Gustav Klimt's 'Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer' for $236.4 million.