{"id":239208,"date":"2025-09-19T15:24:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-19T15:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/239208\/"},"modified":"2025-09-19T15:24:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-19T15:24:09","slug":"frida-kahlo-portrait-could-sell-for-60-million-and-shatter-records-at-sothebys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/239208\/","title":{"rendered":"Frida Kahlo portrait could sell for $60 million and shatter records at Sotheby’s"},"content":{"rendered":"

LONDON (AP) \u2014 Frida Kahlo\u2019s<\/a> face is one of the best known in art, thanks to her bold and challenging self-portraits.<\/p>\n

A lesser-seen self-depiction by the Mexican artist<\/a> is going up for auction at Sotheby\u2019s in what could be a record-setting sale.<\/p>\n

With an estimated price of $40 million to $60 million, \u201cEl sue\u00f1o (La cama)\u201d \u2013 in English, \u201cThe Dream (The Bed)\u201d \u2014 may surpass the top price for a work by any female artist when it goes under the hammer on Nov. 8. That record currently stands at $44.4 million, paid at Sotheby\u2019s in 2014 for Georgia O\u2019Keeffe\u2019s \u201cJimson Weed\/White Flower No. 1.\u201d<\/p>\n

The highest price at auction for a Kahlo work is $34.9 million, paid in 2021 for \u201cDiego and I,\u201d<\/a> depicting the artist and her husband, muralist Diego Rivera<\/a>. Her paintings are reported to have sold privately for even more.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s 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,\u201d said Julian Dawes, vice chairman and head of impressionist and modern art for Sotheby\u2019s Americas. \u201cSo as both a work of art and as an opportunity in the market, it could not be more rare and special.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kahlo vibrantly and unsparingly depicted herself and events from her life, which was upended by a bus accident at 18. She started to paint while bedridden, underwent a series of painful surgeries on her damaged spine and pelvis, then wore casts until her death in 1954 at age 47.<\/p>\n

Painted in 1940, \u201cEl sue\u00f1o (La cama)\u201d shows the artist, wreathed in vines, lying in a four-poster bed floating in a pale blue sky. A skeleton wired with dynamite and clutching a bouquet of flowers lies atop the canopy.<\/p>\n

The image is exploding with symbolism and feels like an allegory \u2013 but the artist really did have a papier-m\u00e2ch\u00e9 skeleton on top of her bed.<\/p>\n

Dawes said it\u2019s a psychological self-portrait by an artist at her peak.<\/p>\n

\u201cHer greatest works derive from this moment between the late 1930s and the early 1940s,\u201d he said. \u201cShe has had a variety of tribulations in her romantic life with Diego, in her own life with her health, but at the same time she\u2019s really at the height of her powers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last exhibited publicly in the late 1990s, the painting is the star of a sale of more than 100 surrealist works by artists including Salvador Dal\u00ed, Ren\u00e9 Magritte, Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning. They are from a private collection whose owner has not been disclosed.<\/p>\n

A century after Andre Breton\u2019s \u201cSurrealist Manifesto\u201d defined a revolutionary artistic movement characterized by unsettling juxtapositions and paradoxical statements, interest in \u2013 and prices for \u2013 surrealist art are booming. Surrealism\u2019s share of the art market rose from 9.3% to 16.8% between 2018 and 2024, according to Sotheby\u2019s. Magritte\u2019s \u201cL\u2019empire des lumi\u00e8res\u201d<\/a> sold last year for $121.2 million, a record for a surrealist work.<\/p>\n

Kahlo resisted being labeled a surrealist, but Dawes said her \u201cfascination with the subconscious\u201d and use of otherworldly imagery place her squarely in that tradition.<\/p>\n

He said it\u2019s no surprise the genre is undergoing a resurgence.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are so many interesting parallels between the 1920s and the 2020s,\u201d Dawes said. \u201cComing out of a crippling global pandemic, a world that has to confront war on a more graphic and intimate level that had ever been experienced before \u2014 and economic and political and social forces swirling in the background that are eerily similar.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Kahlo painting is on show at Sotheby\u2019s in London until Tuesday, and then tours to Abu Dhabi, Hong Kong and Paris before the sale in New York.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON (AP) \u2014 Frida Kahlo\u2019s face is one of the best known in art, thanks to her bold…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":239209,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[128076,648,1032,2122,1033,128075,128073,171,128070,57,128072,128071,1069,128074,67,132,68,5548,107],"class_list":{"0":"post-239208","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-andre-breton","9":"tag-arts","10":"tag-arts-and-design","11":"tag-arts-and-entertainment","12":"tag-design","13":"tag-diego-rivera","14":"tag-dorothea-tanning","15":"tag-entertainment","16":"tag-frida-kahlo","17":"tag-general-news","18":"tag-georgia-okeeffe","19":"tag-julian-dawes","20":"tag-painting","21":"tag-ren-magritte","22":"tag-united-states","23":"tag-unitedstates","24":"tag-us","25":"tag-visual-arts","26":"tag-world-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115231658101419018","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239208\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/239209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}