ANKARA 

A self-portrait by iconic Mexican painter Frida Kahlo sold for $54.7 million at a Sotheby’s auction in New York, setting a new record for the highest price paid for a work by a female artist, media reports said on Thursday.

The 1940 painting, titled El sueno (La cama) or The Dream (The Bed), surpassed the previous record of $44.4 million set in 2014 by Georgia O’Keeffe’s Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1, according to CBS News.

“This record-breaking result shows just how far we have come, not only in our appreciation of Frida Kahlo’s genius, but in the recognition of women artists at the very highest level of the market,” the outlet quoted Anna Di Stasi, Sotheby’s head of Latin American art, as saying.

The painting depicts Kahlo asleep in a floating bed surrounded by vines, with a dynamite-wrapped skeleton hovering above, which is an image interpreted as a meditation on mortality.

It was last sold for $51,000 in 1980, making the new sale more than 1,000 times its previous price.

It also exceeded Kahlo’s previous personal record set in 2021, when her 1949 painting Diego and I sold for $34.9 million.

The buyer remains anonymous, and the artwork, one of the few Kahlo pieces in private hands outside Mexico, has already been requested for upcoming exhibitions in New York, London, and Brussels.

Despite concerns about its limited public display, the painting continues to symbolize Kahlo’s enduring global influence.

“She never painted dreams,” Sotheby’s noted. “She painted her own reality.”