Frida Kahlo’s 1940 self-portrait El sueño (La cama) could become the most expensive artwork by a woman artist ever to be sold at auction when it goes on sale in November. The painting, which carries an estimate of $40 million–$60 million, will be auctioned at Sotheby’s New York as part of Exquisite Corpus, a major private collection sale of more than 80 Surrealist works.
Kahlo’s current auction record was set when Diego y yo (1949) sold for $34.9 million at Sotheby’s New York in 2021. The result is also the highest price for a Latin American artwork at auction. Meanwhile, the record for a work by a woman artist at auction was set when Georgia O’Keeffe’s Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1 (1932) sold for $44.4 million at Sotheby’s New York in 2014. Kahlo’s El sueño is positioned to challenge both benchmarks.
El sueño was painted at a time of intense personal upheaval and suffering for Kahlo. Her former lover, Leon Trotsky, was assassinated in 1939, and in 1940, she divorced from the artist Diego Rivera. This image portrays the artist lying in bed, intertwined with vines. Above her, a skeleton wired with dynamite hovers over the bed, holding a bouquet of dried flowers. The painting has been out of the public eye for almost 30 years and will travel to London, Abu Dhabi, Hong Kong, and Paris before the showing in New York ahead of the sale during the marquee November auction season.
“El sueño stands among Frida Kahlo’s greatest masterworks—a rare and striking example of her most surrealist impulses,” said Anna Di Stasi, senior vice president at Sotheby’s. “In this composition, Kahlo fuses dream imagery and symbolic precision with unmatched emotional intensity, creating a work that is at once deeply personal and universally resonant. It is an enduring testament to her genius, and its appearance on the market presents an unparalleled opportunity to acquire a cornerstone of Surrealism.”
Women Surrealists feature prominently in the Exquisite Corpus auction. Dorothea Tanning’s Interior with Sudden Joy (1951), estimated at $2 million–$3 million, is among the most significant examples of the artist’s psychologically charged interiors to appear at auction. Kay Sage’s The Point of Intersection (1951–52), meanwhile, estimated at $1 million to $1.5 million, offers a counterpoint with its desolate landscapes of scaffolding-like structures and suspended drapery.
Other highlights from leading Surrealist figures at the sale include René Magritte’s La Représentation (1962) and La Révélation du présent (1936), estimated at $4 million–$6 million and $2 million–$3 million, respectively. Also featured is Salvador Dalí’s Symbiose de la tête aux coquillages (1931), painted the same year as his most famous work, Persistence of Memory, which is expected to fetch $2 million–$3 million.
The announcement of the Exquisite Corpus auction follows last week’s $136 million white-glove sale at Sotheby’s London of works from Pauline Karpidas’s collection, which included Surrealist pieces by Magritte and Max Ernst.
