Frida Kahlo painting auctions for $71m, record for woman artist
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El Sueno by Frida Kahlo at Sotheby’s Marquee Sales Series in New York on Nov 8.
PHOTO: AFP
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NEW YORK – A self-portrait by legendary Mexican artist Frida Kahlo sold for US$54.66 million (S$71 million) in New York on Nov 20, setting a new record for the price of a painting by a woman, the auction house Sotheby’s said.
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. That was set by American artist Georgia O’Keeffe, whose 1932 painting Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1 sold for US$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 artwork had an estimated price from US$40 million to US$60 million. The buyer’s name was not disclosed.
It said Kahlo’s work was “painted in 1940 during a pivotal decade in her career, marked by her turbulent relationship with Diego Rivera”. The couple were married.
The artwork depicts the artist sleeping in a bed that appears to float among clouds in the sky, laying beneath a skeleton with legs wrapped with sticks of dynamite.
This painting is a very personal image, in which Kahlo merges folkloric motifs from Mexican culture with European surrealism, said Ms Anna Di Stasi, head of Latin American art at Sotheby’s.
The Mexican artist, who died in 1954 at the age of 47, “did not completely agree” with her work being associated with the surrealist movement, Ms 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 after the New York auction house reeled in another record sale, with a painting by Austrian artist Gustav Klimt
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 US$450 million in 2017. AFP
