Overview
- Sotheby's sold Frida Kahlo's 1940 self-portrait Le rêve (La chambre) for $54.66 million during its New York sale, presented at the house's reopened Breuer Building flagship.
- The price surpasses the previous auction record for a work by a woman, Georgia O'Keeffe's 2014 result of $44.4 million.
- The buyer was not disclosed after the hammer fell.
- The painting depicts Kahlo sleeping in a sky-borne bed beneath a large skeleton, a motif Sotheby's linked to a papier-mâché figure that hung above her actual bed.
- AFP data underscore the imbalance at the market's top end, noting that before this sale none of 162 works sold above $50 million were by women and only four of 468 above $30 million were by women.