Frida Kahlo Painting Could Shatter Women Artist Record at Sotheby’s

On Friday, Sotheby’s announced it received a blockbuster shipment of surreal works led by Frida Kahlo El Sueño (La Cama). The estimated at $40 million to $60 million is almost certainly a goal not only to break Carlo’s auction record, but also to break the auction record of female artists more widely.

The highest price paid for Kahlo at auction was set in 2021 at Sotheby’s New York, when her 1949 job Diego y yo Sold for $34.9 million; the result also marks the highest price of Latin American art. A female artist’s record in 2014 in Sotheby’s New York was set in a $44.4 million sale in O’Keeffe, Georgia Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1.

Kahlo’s 1940 self-portrait depicts the artist lying on a surface bed, floating out of the blue sky. Her body was wrapped in curling wicks, while the top of the canopy was covered with bones wrapped in explosives and held a bouquet of dried flowers. (According to Sotheby’s, Kahlo does sleep with a paper skeleton on the canopy.) The work paints the artist in a turbulent moment: her former lover, Leon Trotsky, was just assassinated, and was in the midst of a divorced Diego Rivera, who later remarries her.

Sotheby’s America’s Impressionism and Modern Art Director and Modern Art Director Julian Dawes told Associated Press That La Cama It is one of the few Carlo works not in museum collections or Mexico, and it is a “rare and special” opportunity.

Sotheby’s aims to make the sale headlines at a major night auction in New York in November. Kahlo is part of a single-player “Masterpiece” for surrealism, titled “A beautiful corpus” with 80 paintings, paintings and sculptures. While none of the other works offered are close to Kahlo’s estimates, the series covers both household names like Salvador Dalí and René Magritte, as well as female surrealists like Kay Sage and Remedios Varo, who have received more attention in recent years. For single-person sales, Sotheby’s has not disclosed the collector’s identity.

The stage will be a blockbuster: female surrealists, Kahlo and Magritte, with auctions rising sharply in recent years. Before sale Diego y yo Kahlo’s auction record was only $8 million in 2021, setting it in Christie’s New York in 2016. Since the 2022 edition of the Venice Biennale curated by Cecilia Alemani, many records have been created for female surrealists. The show is called “Milk of Dreams” and is taken from a book by Leonora Carrington. Just last November, Magritte’s record was reset to $121 million even in a shaky art market L’Empire des Lumières (1954) in Christy’s New York.

La Cama Will be viewed on Tuesday in Sotheby’s London before heading to Abu Dhabi, Hong Kong and Paris.