On Friday, Sotheby’s announced that it had secured a blockbuster consignment of Surrealist works, led by Frida Kahlo’s El sueño (La cama). Carrying an estimate of $40 million to $60 million, it is all but certain not only to break Kahlo’s auction record but also that of women artists more generally.
The top price paid for a Kahlo at auction was set at Sotheby’s New York in 2021, when her 1949 work Diego y yo sold for $34.9 million; the result also marked the highest price achieved for a Latin American artwork. The record for a woman artist at auction was set at Sotheby’s New York in 2014 with the $44.4 million sale of Georgia O’Keeffe’s Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1.
Kahlo’s 1940 self-portrait depicts the artist lying on a bed that floats against a cloudy blue sky. Her body is wrapped in curling vines, while atop the canopy bed lies a skeleton wrapped in dynamite and holding a bouquet of dried flowers. (According to Sotheby’s, Kahlo did, in fact, sleep with a papier-mâché skeleton on her canopy.) The work was painted at a turbulent time for the artist: her former lover Leon Trotsky had just been assassinated, and she was in the midst of her divorce from Diego Rivera, whom she later remarried.
Julian Dawes, vice chairman and head of Impressionist and Modern art for Sotheby’s Americas, told the Associated Press that El sueño (La cama) is one of the few Kahlo works not in a museum collection or in Mexico, making it a “rare and special” opportunity.
Sotheby’s will aim to make headlines with the sale in November during its marquee evening auctions in New York. The Kahlo is being presented as part of a single-owner sale of Surrealist “masterpieces” titled “Exquisite Corpus,” featuring 80 paintings, drawings, and sculptures. While none of the other works on offer approach the Kahlo’s estimate, the collection spans both household names such as Salvador Dalí and René Magritte and female Surrealists like Kay Sage and Remedios Varo, who have received more attention in recent years. Unusually for a single-owner sale, Sotheby’s has not disclosed the identity of the collector.
The stage is set for the sale to be a blockbuster: women Surrealists, Kahlo, and Magritte have all seen their prices rise dramatically at auction in recent years. Prior to the sale of Diego y yo in 2021, Kahlo’s auction record was only $8 million, set in 2016 at Christie’s New York. Numerous records for women Surrealists have been set since the 2022 edition of the Venice Biennale, curated by Cecilia Alemani. That show, titled “The Milk of Dreams,” drew its name from a book by Leonora Carrington. And just last November, even amid a shaky art market, the record for a Magritte was reset at $121 million for L’empire des lumières (1954) at Christie’s New York.
El sueño (La cama) will be on view at Sotheby’s London through Tuesday, before traveling to Abu Dhabi, Hong Kong, and Paris.
