Frida Kahlo's 1940 self-portrait El sueño (La cama) sold for $54.66 million at Sotheby's in New York, establishing a new auction record for a work by a woman. The painting—depicting Kahlo asleep beneath a skeleton—fell slightly above its $40M–$60M estimate; the buyer remains unnamed. The result spotlights the underrepresentation of women among the highest-priced auction sales and follows Sotheby's recent $236.4M Klimt sale.
Frida Kahlo's 1940 Self-Portrait Sells for $54.66M, Setting Auction Record for a Woman Artist
Frida Kahlo's 1940 self-portrait El sueño (La cama) sold for $54.66 million at Sotheby's in New York, establishing a new auction record for a work by a woman. The painting—depicting Kahlo asleep beneath a skeleton—fell slightly above its $40M–$60M estimate; the buyer remains unnamed. The result spotlights the underrepresentation of women among the highest-priced auction sales and follows Sotheby's recent $236.4M Klimt sale.
03:41 PM, 11/21/2025Culture
A self-portrait by Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, El sueño (La cama) (The Dream (The Bed)), sold for $54.66 million at Sotheby's in New York, establishing a new auction record for a work by a woman.
The 1940 painting shows Kahlo asleep on a bed that seems to drift through the sky beneath a skeleton whose legs are bound with sticks of dynamite. Sotheby's described the work as among Kahlo's most powerful iconographic pieces, painted during a decisive decade shaped in part by her turbulent relationship with fellow artist Diego Rivera.
The lot carried an estimate of $40 million to $60 million. The buyer has not been publicly identified.
Anna Di Stasi, head of Latin American art at Sotheby's, said: the painting is intensely personal, merging Mexican folkloric motifs with elements often associated with European surrealism — though Kahlo herself did not always accept that label.
Kahlo, who died in 1954 at age 47, endured lifelong health problems after childhood illness, polio and a severe bus accident in 1925. Themes of pain, mortality and the body recur throughout her work. Sotheby's noted that the skeleton in El sueño (La cama) echoes a papier-mâché figure that once hung above her bed.
Wider market context
The sale highlights the persistent gender imbalance in the high-end art market. Of the works that have previously sold for more than $50 million, none were by women, and under 1% of works sold for more than $30 million were by female artists. The previous record for a painting by a woman was Georgia O'Keeffe's Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1, which fetched $44.4 million in 2014.
The Kahlo record followed quickly after another Sotheby's marquee sale — Gustav Klimt's portrait of Elisabeth Lederer, painted 1914–1916, brought $236.4 million, making it one of the most valuable works sold at auction in recent years. The most expensive painting sold at auction remains the work attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, Salvator Mundi, purchased for $450 million in 2017.
Notable high prices for women artists include Kahlo's own Diego y yo (1949), which sold for $34.9 million in 2021, Louise Bourgeois's large spider sculpture at $32.5 million in 2023, and Tamara de Lempicka's Portrait of Marjorie Ferry (1932), which sold for $21.2 million in 2020.
This sale underscores both Kahlo's enduring global appeal and the broader conversations about representation and valuation in the art market.