Frida Kahlo’s $60M Masterpiece Heads to Auction

New York — Sotheby's will auction a painting by Mexican artist Frida Kahlo in early November in New York, with an estimated value between forty and sixty million dollars. The work has the potential to become the most expensive painting by the surrealist painter and could even set a record for any female artist.

The painting, titled 'El sueño (La cama)' ('The Dream (The Bed)'), depicts Kahlo sleeping, covered with tree branches, in a bed that floats among the clouds. Lying on the structure of that bed is a large skeleton surrounded by dynamite and holding a bouquet of flowers in its hand.

This piece is one of the highlights of a sale of surrealist art that includes other famous authors such as Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, René Magritte, and Yves Tanguy. The works can be viewed until Tuesday at Sotheby's headquarters in London before traveling to other cities, according to a statement.

The works from the surrealist sale will be exhibited in New York starting November 8, the date the auction house inaugurates its new headquarters in the brutalist-style building created by architect Marcel Breuer in Manhattan's Upper East Side.

The current record for a work by Kahlo is held by the painting 'Diego y yo' ('Diego and I'), for which a buyer paid $34.9 million in 2021. The record for a female artist is held by Georgia O'Keeffe, whose painting 'Jimson Weed/White Flower No.1' raised $44.4 million in 2014.

November is a key month for major auction houses in New York, which gather their best objects and raise millions of dollars in the highly sought-after sales of 20th and 21st-century art, although categories such as sports memorabilia and luxury items are gaining attraction.