Frida Kahlo’s self-portrait sets record with $54.7 Million sale at Sotheby’s in New York City on November 20, 2025

‘El sueño (La cama)’, alternatively titled ‘The Dream (The Bed)’ in English, depicts the Mexican painter asleep in a floating colonial-style bed, draped in gold and entwined with vines, while a skeleton wrapped in dynamite hovers above. The haunting work surpassed the previous auction record held Kahlo’s haunting work surpassed the previous auction record held by Georgia O’Keeffe’s Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1, which sold for $44.4 million in 2014. The sale also broke Kahlo’s own auction record for a Latin American artist. Her 1949 work ‘Diego and I’ sold for $34.9 million in 2021. Kahlo’s work is inseparable from the physical suffering that shaped her life. Severely injured in a bus crash at the age of 18, she endured repeated injuries. Kahlo’s work is inseparable from the physical suffering that shaped her life. Severely injured in a bus crash at the age of 18, she endured repeated surgeries and long periods confined to bed, where she began painting. For Kahlo, the bed became a symbolic threshold between life and death, a theme In its catalogue, Sotheby’s described the work as “a spectral meditation on the porous boundary between sleep and death,” suggesting the suspended The auction followed another major sale earlier in the week. Gustav Klimt’s ‘Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer’ achieved $236.4 million, becoming one of becoming one of the most expensive artworks ever sold at auction, second only to Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi at $450 million. Some of Kahlo’s paintings are believed to have changed hands privately for even higher sums. Because most of Kahlo’s oeuvre in Mexico has been declared part of the country’s artistic heritage, the majority of her works cannot be exported or sold abroad. ‘El sueño (La cama)’ is one of the few pieces to remain in private hands outside Mexico and is legally permitted for international sale. A rare 1940 self-portrait by Frida Kahlo has become the most expensive artwork by a female artist ever sold at auction, fetching $54.7 million dollars.