Overview
- Sotheby’s sold El sueño (La cama) for $54.7 million including fees at its Exquisite Corpus evening sale in New York on November 20.
- Bidding opened at $22 million and concluded in about five minutes, with Anna Di Stasi winning the lot by phone for an undisclosed client.
- The price surpasses Georgia O’Keeffe’s $44.4 million 2014 benchmark and eclipses Kahlo’s prior high of $34.9 million set in 2021.
- Pre-sale expectations were $40 million to $60 million, and the work came from the Selma and Nesuhi Ertegun collection, which acquired it in 1980 for $51,000.
- The 1940 self-portrait depicts Kahlo asleep beneath a skeleton figure entwined with dynamite, a vivid image tied to her personal iconography and life events.