In less than two minutes during a Sotheby’s auction in 2021, Frida Kahlo’s self-portrait “Diego and I” (1949) shattered records by selling for an astonishing $34,883,000, making it the highest price ever fetched by a Latin American artist at auction. This coming November, Kahlo’s artistic legacy is poised to reclaim the spotlight as another significant painting is set to go under the hammer.
Previously held in a private collection, Kahlo’s under-the-radar piece from 1940, titled “El sueño (La cama)” — translated as “The Dream (The Bed)” — is scheduled for auction at Sotheby’s in New York City on November 8. Experts anticipate it will achieve a staggering price between $40 million and $60 million, potentially establishing a new benchmark for works by women artists at auction. The current record is held by Georgia O’Keeffe’s “Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1,” which sold for $44 million back in 2014.
This piece is one of 80 artworks featured in Exquisite Corpus: Surrealist Treasures from a Private Collection, marking Sotheby’s inaugural marquee sale in its newly acquired Brutalist Breuer building. Notable pieces in the sale also include Salvador Dalí’s “Symbiose de la tête aux coquillages” (1930) and René Magritte’s “La Révélation du présent” (1936), both of which are expected to sell for between $2 million and $3 million.
“El sueño (La cama)” is distinctive within Kahlo’s oeuvre, as it is another self-portrait painted in 1940, the same year she remarried Diego Rivera, despite the turmoil caused by his prior affair with her sister. The painting depicts Kahlo lying comfortably in a canopy bed, seemingly suspended in a dreamscape. Above her, a skeleton rests on the canopy, entwined in green vines and holding explosives and flowers, symbolizing a meditation on mortality. Sotheby’s notes that this motif was inspired by a real-life papier-mâché skeleton that Kahlo kept above her bed.
1940 was also the year Kahlo produced her impactful work “Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair,” which is now part of the Museum of Modern Art’s collection. In it, she depicted herself shearing off her hair while dressed in a suit, symbolizing the turmoil of her relationship with Rivera. That year also saw the assassination of Leon Trotsky, with whom Kahlo had an affair, adding layers of complexity to her emotional landscape.
Anna Di Stasi, head of Latin American Art at Sotheby’s, praised “El sueño” as “one of Frida Kahlo’s major masterpieces — a striking example of her surrealist vision.” She added that the work harmonizes dream-like imagery and symbolic depth with emotional intensity that resonates universally.
Kahlo’s fascination with beds is a recurring theme in her paintings, featured prominently in works such as “My Birth” and “Henry Ford Hospital” (both 1932), the latter depicting her experience with miscarriage. Following a serious bus accident in her youth that left her with disabilities, Kahlo often painted from bed, utilizing a specially designed easel made by her mother.
Before its auction at Sotheby’s in New York, “El sueño (La cama)” will traverse notable locations including Sotheby’s London, the Bassam Freiha Art Foundation in Abu Dhabi, Sotheby’s Hong Kong, and a location on Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré in Paris.
