The art market is witnessing a historic moment: a self-portrait by Frida Kahlo, The Dream (The Bed), has sold for $54.66 million at Sotheby’s in New York — becoming the most expensive painting ever created by a woman. The sale shatters the previous record held by Georgia O’Keeffe, whose Jimson Weed / White Flower No.1 fetched $44.4 million in 2014.
Painted in 1940, the work belongs to a decisive chapter in the Mexican artist’s life, shaped by her intense and tumultuous relationship with Diego Rivera. Sotheby’s notes that this decade was among the most productive and symbolically charged of Kahlo’s entire career.
The Dream (The Bed) depicts the artist asleep in a floating bed suspended in the sky, above which hovers a giant skeleton wrapped in sticks of dynamite — an iconography blending Mexican symbolism, European Surrealism, and autobiographical metaphors, explained by Anna Di Stasi, Sotheby’s specialist in Latin American art.
A striking detail: this skeleton was not just a figment of imagination. Frida Kahlo actually kept a large papier-mâché skeleton hanging above her bed — a constant reminder of the pain and death that shadowed her life. Kahlo, who died in 1954 at age 47, made her physical suffering — polio, a devastating bus accident, repeated surgeries — a central material of her art.
The buyer’s identity has not been disclosed, as is often the case for record-setting acquisitions.
A male-dominated market: Frida Kahlo finally cracks the glass ceiling
This record arrives in an art market still overwhelmingly dominated by men. Of the 162 artworks sold for more than $50 million, not a single one until now was created by a woman. And among the 468 works sold above $30 million, only four are by women — less than 1% of the total.
With this sale, Frida Kahlo enters an extremely exclusive circle of women artists who have reached such heights. Other major female auction records include:
- Georgia O’Keeffe — Jimson Weed / White Flower No.1 ($44.4M, 2014)
- Louise Bourgeois — Spider ($32.5M, 2023)
- Frida Kahlo — Diego y yo ($34.9M, 2021)
- Tamara de Lempicka — Portrait of Marjorie Ferry ($21.2M, 2020)
- Joan Mitchell — Blueberry ($16.6M, 2018)
Classical women artists remain drastically underrepresented. Rare exceptions include Après le déjeuner by Berthe Morisot ($10.9M, 2013) or Artemisia Gentileschi’s Lucretia (€4.8M, 2019).
A week of blockbuster sales: Klimt pushes the market to new heights
Kahlo’s record comes just as another major milestone shook the auction world: on Tuesday, a portrait by Gustav Klimt sold for $236.4 million, becoming the second most expensive artwork ever sold at auction — just behind Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi ($450M, 2017).
Together, these two sales confirm the extraordinary momentum of today’s high-end art market, powered by global demand and renewed interest in modernist and expressionist masterpieces.
For Anna Di Stasi, Kahlo’s soaring result carries a deeper meaning:
“Frida Kahlo has never stopped touching generation after generation. Today, she is finally receiving the financial recognition her work deserves.”